Toad Media

Tim Winton at the Perth Forum

Toads are toxic

The purpose of today’s forum has been to alert you to an environmental and social emergency. It’s mostly the work of volunteers, so we apologize if it hasn’t been very slick or shiny. After the Kununurra Cane Toad Forum in March, 2005 I made a commitment to the people of the Kimberley to present their plight to the rest of the state.

The Kimberley is a long way from Perth where all the power and media are. It’s vital that these people be heard by their fellow citizens. Today we’ve tried to reflect their fears, their sense of urgency. But also their local knowledge and commonsense. We’ve tried to share something of what they have to lose and what they have to offer. These people aren’t whingers; they’re not alarmists. They’re not ill-informed and they’re most certainly (and I can tell you this from experience) not putting up with any bullshit. From you or me or any ‘shiny-arsed bastard from the south with half a mind on his super-payout’.

In many ways they have proved to be way ahead of the government and its agencies when it comes to cane toads.

Because of cane toads many Kimberley people’s livelihoods are in real danger. I’m talking about tourism, agriculture, fishing, people’s jobs. Toads are toxic. People’s health is at risk, as is their whole lifestyle. For some of them their whole culture – their life, no less – hangs in the balance. To hear the elders of the Mirrawong-Gaijjerong people pleading, pleading for their country to be spared… that isn’t something you can easily leave behind you when you get on the plane to fly back to Perth where these dilemmas seem so comfortably remote. After every indignity, every outrage that northern Aboriginal people have endured and survived in two hundred years, could it be possible that we’d stand by while they face this final dispossession? Could it be that we wouldn’t fight to save their bush tucker, the prime means they have of simply being themselves, of passing on culture to their young people? No, it can’t stand. Surely not. We can’t let it happen.

But let’s not pretend that Kimberley people are the only Western Australians at risk here. Let’s bring it home a little. If we don’t keep the toad from crossing the border we all lose. It costs us all, as you’ve heard, governments and communities alike. In money terms, of course, it’ll be massively expensive. But think of the lifestyle cost. The old Perth Skyshow won’t be quite the same with poisonous toads sharing the Onkaparinka travel rug. Ask anyone who’s been to the Byron Bay blues festival lately. Your back lawn won’t be quite the same on a summer evening when it’s dotted with toads eating the food out of your dog’s bowl. We’re all facing the prospect of living under a kind of occupation, a feral invasion. Let’s not wait till the toad hits the beach house at Eagle Bay before we decide that it’s finally a statewide issue. Let’s wake up. And let’s wake everybody else up while we’re at it.

Now, some of what you’ve heard today reflects the frustration felt by people who’ve been trying to bring this matter to the urgent attention of authorities for years. But we’re not here to flog the government or its agencies for its sins of omission. It’s tempting to flog them rotten, but it’s a waste of time and passion. And let’s face it, we’re all pretty late to the party when it comes to toads. We want a battle- bring it on – but we want to fight toads, not the government or its agencies. There’s a sudden, hot rush going on, a change in the air, a recent shift of attitude from agencies, an apparently genuine interest from government, and we want to foster this. We’re not even going to take credit for it – there isn’t time and who gives a damn anyway. We just want to defend our state from something that doesn’t belong here. I’m not even going to take a cheap shot at the Federal Immigration policy about border protection – there isn’t time for that either, even though some of us do give a damn.

We all face this crisis together and now we have to fight it together. But it’s going to take teamwork. We came here today to be part of a team. And we need more players. All kinds of players. As you may have gathered, we’re not very particular about who we’ll play with. Already we’ve combined cotton farmers and greenies and businesspeople and students and pastoralists, blackfellas and whitefellas and quite a few people who’d rather not be referred to as fellas of any description, thank you very much. This issue is already pulling together people from diverse backgrounds, people who aren’t usually allies. But this is not your run of the mill campaign. This is not one interest group or community against another. This is not a “green” thing. It’s about a brown thing that nobody wants here. None of us bureaucrats, none of us volunteers, none of us PHds , none of us kindy kids.

There’s no adversary here but ignorance, no enemy but interia and time itself. And let’s be plain. The odds are against us, as they were in Busselton two days ago when CALM and a whole community of volunteers teamed up to save stranded whales. That, my friends, was a good news story. And don’t we need them. We shouldn’t fear failure and neither should our government, for there’ll be no shame in trying and losing. If those brave efforts to get a hundred whales off the beach hadn’t been a success who’d have poured scorn on those who busted their guts to do what they could? Scorn will be reserved for those who do nothing.

We want to be part of a combined effort, government and non-government, professional and volunteer, corporate and individual, to take the fight up to the toad. To make history for even trying. We want to begin trapping in the Vic River region now. We’re not certain it’ll work, but trapping is the only tool that’s offered any practical hope of toad control since 1935. Of course we need a broad, overlapping, multi-layered strategy that includes every other option available, but we can’t go back defeatist thinking, we can’t rely on passive measures first and foremost, we can’t sit around waiting for some silver-bullet ‘biological control’ to finally become available. There isn’t time. We’re years too late.

Back in 1935 people tended to accept what their ‘betters’ did with a little more meekness than us. Nobody was held to account for the disaster that came about from releasing cane toads into the cane fields of Queensland. But things are different now. The public is more educated, more wary, less meek. We have ways of holding people to account. Not just our elected representatives, but those who advise them. We know their names. We know how decisions are made and who makes them. We will scrutinize the process. We will hold these people to account as we, the community, should hold ourselves to account when volunteers are needed, when practical help is required.

I want to quote Prof. Peter Newman, the architect of the Gallop government’s groundbreaking Sustainability Strategy, who says that “the growing cultural sensibilities of the public can be used to guide the public sector. For nothing of significance will happen unless it is grounded in the values of civil society. The options which need to be considered in a more sustainability-oriented public sector will undoubtedly have to require a greater involvement of the public”.

Well, Premier, Minister, heads of departments, agency reps, advisors, spindoctors. Here we are. The public is here. We are watching and listening. We didn’t come here to attack you. There isn’t time for that. We came to play. We want to be on the team. Or you can be on our team if you like. We can talk colours and jumpers later. Again it doesn’t matter, there isn’t time. One team, two teams, whatever. Who cares as long as we’re working to one purpose. This is citizenship, civics in action.

For all of us, government and non-government, professional and volunteer, regional or metropolitan, young or old, left or right, Eagles or Dockers, this is a chance to pull together. To defend our state, our most vulnerable people, our natural heritage, our economy. Surely, this is another good news story in the making. Because win, lose or draw we’ll at least know we gave it a red hot go. We’re not asking for miracles. We’re not trying to do the impossible. We’re not trying to get Eddie McGuire off the airwaves. We’re just trying to stop the toad from colonising our home.

I hope everyone here today will join the team, that you’ll give your moral support, your practical aid, your donations. Encourage the government, let it know how you feel and what you expect- urgent on-ground action now. Please support the Stop the Toad Foundation with your tax-deductible dollars. Get on the database, grab a sticker, tell your friends, write to the paper. Let’s see what we can do, see what a real community might be. Maybe there’ll be something to tell the grandkids at the end of it, something to be proud of.

Tim Winton.

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