...

It is difficult to tell whether the hypocrisy of locking up our own natural resources while plundering those of other countries is perpetrated through political cunning for green electoral advantage or stupidity from not being able to comprehend the global environmental impacts.

Many nations in our region that supply us with food, seafood and timber products have appalling environmental standards. We on the other hand are strangling our food producers with over-burdensome 'green tape' like we have done with our timber producers, of which the net effect is perverse environmental outcomes through shifting our demand offshore.

If Julia Gillard's vision of Australia as a regional food superpower is to be realised, we need to realign the rhetoric of environmental values based on outdated ideology with the realities of imperfect, but well-managed Australian food production that minimises global environmental impact.

Max Rheese is executive director of the Australian Environment Foundation. View his full profile here.

------------------------------

One has to be VERY skeptical about what this fellow writes... He comes from "the other side"... The "Australian Environment Foundation"... It is a foundation hell-bent on ENVIRONMENTAL DESTRUCTION...