There is quite a deal of ‘smoke and mirrors’ in the politics of quarantine & biosecurity policy.

The international processes of the WTO that promotes liberalising the movements of trade commodities inevitably lead to new organisms finding new countries to colonise. No matter what we do to intercept these unwanted travellers at our borders, the movement of people and the paraphernalia will cause several opportunistic species to become as cosmopolitan as humanity itself. And all the while local ecologies and biodiversities will collapse mirroring the collapse of self-sustaining local industries and food production under the weight of globalisation and lowest-cost production.

Tim Low - the author of “A Feral Future” - calls it “the MacDonaldisation of the World”.

So good Tasmanian Times readers, when you hear the prattle about ‘clean, green and clever’ and ‘keeping our State disease-free’, don’t be seduced by it. It is an ideal whose sun has set because there was no leadership; only prattle.

Sorry to disillusion you all but humanity is insatiable in its busy-ness and ‘bugger up’ capacities.  We just can’t help ourselves and our politicians and decision-makers are merely a reflection of that systemic human frailty.