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The Sustainable Hour no. 599 | Transcript | Podcast notes
First Nations Leader Polly Cutmore on water theft, women’s law and learning to listen.
As NAIDOC Week draws to a close, our guest in The Sustainable Hour on 15 July 2026, Gamilaraay woman Polly Cutmore delivers a fierce, unfiltered message from Moree about water, country, community and cultural survival.
Her words challenge the systems that have fenced First Nations people away from rivers, drained wetlands for irrigation and rewarded those who take far more than the land can sustain.
Yet her message reaches deeper than water management. It is about the kind of society we have created – a society that values machinery, profit and control while losing touch with human intelligence, cultural responsibility and care.
The answer, Polly tells us, begins with curiosity.
Get to know First Nations people. Sit down. Have a yarn. Learn how to listen.
. . .
RIGHTS WITHOUT CONSCIENCE
Mik Aidt opens the hour by reflecting on the extraordinary profits flowing to the world’s largest fossil fuel corporations. These profits grow during war, instability, rising energy prices and worsening climate breakdown. People struggle with the cost of living while corporations profit from the conditions causing that pain.
Companies have been granted many of the legal rights of human beings. Yet our laws do little to ensure that they demonstrate anything resembling a human conscience.
A corporation can pursue its own financial interests while leaving the environmental and human consequences to everybody else.
As artificial intelligence increases the power and reach of corporations, this problem could become even more serious. Without changes to corporate law, democracy will continue struggling to protect the public interest against concentrated corporate power.
. . .
GLOBAL OUTLOOK
Colin Mockett OAM begins his Global Outlook with the vast evacuation operation carried out as Typhoon Bavi struck eastern China, following flooding caused by Typhoon Maysak.
He then turns to the lethal heatwaves and fires affecting Europe and the United States. Thousands of excess deaths have been recorded as temperature records fall across Europe.
In the United States, President Donald Trump continues promoting coal and dismantling climate protections. Yet extreme heat forced the cancellation of Washington’s Independence Day parade – a striking collision between political denial and physical reality.
In Australia, researchers are investigating marine cloud brightening as a possible way to protect parts of the Great Barrier Reef from extreme ocean heat.
Colin finishes with encouraging research into electric vehicle batteries. Modern batteries are proving significantly more durable than many motorists expect, with most likely to remain useful well beyond the typical ownership period of a car.
. . .
WOMEN, WATER AND MEMORY
Polly Cutmore comes from Moree and has family and cultural connections across northern New South Wales. She joins our program from her Aboriginal shop, surrounded by clothing, artwork, bags and other products created by First Nations people.
Polly recently helped organise an Aboriginal women’s water gathering in Moree. Around 40 women attended, including Elders and participants from communities across the Murray-Darling Basin.
They shared stories about rivers, wetlands, water management and the lives of earlier generations.
Some Elders remembered carrying water long distances through the bush, sometimes on their backs and sometimes using prams. Every container had to provide enough water for drinking, cooking, washing, cleaning and caring for children.
When water must be carried by hand, waste becomes unthinkable.
That careful relationship stands in stark contrast to the enormous irrigation dams now visible across parts of northern New South Wales and Queensland.
Water that once flowed through rivers, wetlands and floodplains has been captured behind walls and fences. Some private dams are wider than the rivers that feed them. Polly describes irrigators using ski boats on water taken from country while rivers, fish, turtles and wetlands struggle to survive.
She questions whether some events described as drought are partly the result of water being removed from rivers and stored on private land.
THE THEFT OF A FLOOD
Polly speaks with anger about industrial irrigation and the political systems protecting it. She describes the diversion of an entire flood and asks a simple question: how does somebody steal a flood?
The penalties imposed for illegal water extraction can be smaller than the value of the water taken. To Polly, this reveals a system that treats environmental crime as a manageable business expense.
The damage extends far beyond the river channel. Wetlands are nurseries for fish, turtles, birds and countless other species. When they are drained, cultivated or disconnected from natural floods, entire living systems begin to collapse.
The rivers of the northern Murray-Darling Basin are paying the price for cotton, irrigation and a political culture that continues rewarding extraction.
WOMEN’S LAW
For Polly, solutions require a renewed respect for women’s law. Women have traditionally carried responsibility for children, food, water, community wellbeing and the continuation of culture. Mothers, aunties, grandmothers and Elders helped establish the rules that enabled communities to survive.
Women’s law does not mean that every woman is gentle. Strong women and soft women both have their place. The strength lies in balance – knowing when firmness is needed and when care must lead.
Polly argues that modern Australian society has pushed this knowledge aside. Domination, hierarchy and profit have become more powerful than nurturing, balance and responsibility.
Her message is direct: bring the mothers, aunties and nannies back into the centre of community life.
ARTIFICIAL VERSUS HUMAN INTELLIGENCE
The conversation turns towards artificial intelligence, automation and masculinity. Mik raises the danger that AI could amplify the values already embedded in powerful institutions – extraction, domination, competition and control.
If machines are built within the same culture that created the climate crisis, they may accelerate the same destructive patterns. Automation could also remove millions of jobs. For men whose identity and sense of worth have been built almost entirely around paid employment, that transition could generate anger, isolation and despair.
Polly warns that this unresolved rage may be directed towards women. For her, the deeper failure is already visible. Society has become so absorbed by money, machines and individual ambition that people have forgotten the human touch.
We have forgotten how to sit still. We have forgotten how to breathe beneath a tree. We have forgotten how to look after one another.
As Colin observes, the discussion about artificial intelligence may really be exposing the loss of human intelligence.
WHAT MAKES A BETTER HUMAN BEING?
Polly questions why children are taught that money is the most important measure of life. “Surely,” she says, “the purpose should be to become a better human being, contribute to the community and understand that we belong to something larger than ourselves.”
Culture provides a pathway. People can learn where they come from, who their ancestors were and how earlier generations lived. That cultural knowledge may be closer than we imagine.
Most people wake in the morning wanting the same basic things – to live peacefully, feel connected and experience the natural world.
First Nations cultures learnt how to become part of country. Industrial society learnt how to destroy it.
GET TO KNOW US
Towards the end of the conversation, Polly offers practical advice to non-Indigenous Australians:
Get to know First Nations people. Visit their communities. Enter their shops. Sit down and have a yarn. Listen without arriving with a predetermined answer.
Polly’s shop has become a place where Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people come to yarn, breathe and escape the pressures of the world outside.
Real multiculturalism requires more than celebrating food, flags and festivals. It requires people to adopt one another in the deeper sense – caring for each other, defending each other and building each other up.
Polly says that when Australians genuinely begin to understand First Nations people, they may also discover more about themselves.
A CULTURAL OBLIGATION
Polly does not see her work as a job. It is a cultural obligation. Her nieces and nephews are watching. They may not stand beside her every day, yet they are learning what must be carried forward.
Their responsibility will be to continue protecting country, community and culture – ensuring that the world’s oldest continuing culture remains alive.
There is no better reflection of the cultural obligation that drives her work than her shop. It is so much more than a place where First Nations artifacts are bought and sold. It runs cultural awareness and other First Nations workshops, all aimed at bridging the First Nations/white divide.
Polly knows that some people dislike what she says. They will have to get used to hearing it. She is opening her mouth, telling the truth and refusing to disappear.
Polly’s shop is called the MEHI Centre (pronounced ME EYE). You can find out more about it on: www.mehicentre.com
. . .
SONGS OF RELATIONSHIP
The episode features two songs from the Force of Life Collective.
‘Becoming Earth’ explores the dissolving boundary between the human body and the living Earth. Soil, roots, bones and breath become parts of one continuous life.
Charles Eisenstein closes the song by reminding us that Earth is alive. Forests, wetlands, whales, fish, mangroves and coral reefs are not interchangeable stores of carbon. They are organs and tissues within a living planet.
‘Learn to Listen’ carries voices from country into a song about truth, healing and responsibility. Water guides. Fire teaches. Stars sing. Country can speak to anyone who knows how to listen.
. . .
PROGRESS BEYOND ENDLESS GROWTH
Yale Law Professor Daniel Markovits reflects on the approaching end of the era of continuous material growth. Human civilisation cannot keep multiplying population, production and consumption forever on a finite planet. That does not mean abandoning the idea of progress. A better future can be built through moral, cultural, spiritual, artistic and social development. For most of human history, these were among the central ways societies understood improvement.
The task ahead is to redirect human energy away from endless material accumulation and towards richer relationships, stronger communities and more meaningful lives.
. . .
BRING BACK THE BUSH
The hour closes with Costa Georgiadis making the case for Australia to embrace a fuller, denser and wilder bush.
For decades, we have cleared understorey, stripped creek banks and treated bare ground as tidy. Nature needs density and diversity. Animals need places to shelter, feed, nest and disappear. Australia has already lost more mammal species than any other continent, while thousands of remaining species face extinction. The answer is simple: allow the bush to grow.
. . .
Be curious. Get to know each other. Learn to listen.
. . .
“It’s just about this money, money, money. Money, money, money. And I don’t know why society has taught its kids that that’s the most important thing. I thought the most important thing is to make sure that you become a better human being and give back to your community, and know that you’re a part of a community.”
~ Polly Cutmore, First Nations Leader in Moree
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We at The Sustainable Hour would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we are broadcasting, the Wadawurrung People. We pay our respects to their elders – past, present, and emerging, and extend that respect to all First Nations people.
The traditional custodians lived in harmony with the land for millennia, nurturing it and thriving in often harsh conditions. Their connection to the land was deeply spiritual and sustainable. This land was invaded and stolen from them. It was never ceded. Today, it is increasingly clear that if we are to survive the climate emergency we face, we must learn from their land management practices and cultural wisdom.
True climate justice cannot be achieved until Australia’s First Nations people receive the justice they deserve. When we speak about the future, we must include respect for those yet to be born, the generations to come. As the old saying reminds us: “We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.” It is deeply unfair that decisions to ignore the climate emergency are being made by those who won’t live to face the worst impacts, leaving future generations to bear the burden of their inaction.
“The Indigenous worldview has been marginalised for generations because it was seen as antiquated and unscientific and its ethics of respect for Mother Earth were in conflict with the industrial worldview. But now, in this time of climate change and massive loss of biodiversity, we understand that the Indigenous worldview is neither unscientific nor antiquated, but is, in fact, a source of wisdom that we urgently need.”
~ Robin Wall Kimmerer, weallcanada.org
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TRANSCRIPT
of The Sustainable Hour no. 599
António Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General: (00:00)
Cooperation over chaos. We are all in this together.
Jingle: (00:16)
The Sustainable Hour. For a green, clean, sustainable Geelong: The Sustainable Hour.
Tony Gleeson: (00:24)
Welcome to The Sustainable Hour podcast. We’d like to start off as always by acknowledging that we’re broadcasting from the land of the Wadawurrung people. We pay tribute to their elders – past, present, and those that earn that great honour in the future. At this time of the year we’d like to emphasise that we are in NAIDOC Week which seems to be expanding each year to fit all the events in. And part of that always is acknowledging the incredible depth and width of ancient knowledge that they accumulated. Accumulated by nurturing both their land and their communities. And we spend a great deal of the show today talking about that, that acquired wisdom and how it’s been lost, how it’s been destroyed, and how it’s it survives.
Mik Aidt (01:23)
The eight largest fossil fuel companies in the world have reported that they were pocketing an extra $9.4 billion Australian dollars of profits. [ https://lnkd.in/p/eqUGd6V6 ] And that’s an increase of their profits, almost $10,000 million dollars in the first quarter of this year. And this was when the Middle East crisis had only just started. Since then we have seen oil prices climb and oil companies’ profits have been rising even further. It stands out because these profits are made on people’s cost of living pain, on instability in the world, and a climate as we’re seeing it that’s breaking down and killing people in the thousands every week. How is this even acceptable?
There’s so much talk at the moment about AI and about whether AI will become conscious and we hear the experts discussing what is consciousness actually. How do we define consciousness? Well, I suggest we take a look at the consciousness of fossil fuel companies. Or in general the consciousness of companies. Because the truth is we have written our laws in a way that gives companies the same rights as human beings. But we have not been demanding from companies that they have a conscience.
We allow the formation of corporations with the rights of human beings, but none of the obligations. We could have here in Australia written in the law, in the Business Act [the Corporations Act 2001] that companies need to have a conscience. They can’t just act as if they don’t care about what impact they have on the environment, on the climate, on people. It’s our government that’s allowing these companies to use their power to pursue self-interest and greed.
And as we’re seeing AI coming in, the ongoing development of AI is only going to make this situation worse. We need to amend the corporate law so it will give corporations something that resembles a human conscience. Because until we do that, democracy will continue to lose that contest between the pursuit of corporate self interest and profits and the protection of us, the people and the public interest.
And the public will continue to lose faith in democracy as we are seeing it happen. We’ve talked about this in the Sustainable Hour. Over the years we’ve heard former corporate lawyer Robert Hinkley say this again and again. And it remains the truth: we need to change the laws.
And where does that process begin? Well, it begins with becoming active in politics. That’s a longer story, of course. But we do have a another election coming up in two years’ time and there are initiatives also around Geelong where groups are beginning to mobilise for that election.
We’ll come back to that in another Sustainable Hour because right now let’s hear what’s been happening around the world and for that we have Colin Mockett OAM who has been scanning all the the good and the bad news from the situation out there in the world. What do you have for us today, Colin?
Colin Mockett’s Global Outlook (04:42)
Well yes, before I start on the Outlook, Mik, during the course of my lifetime I have witnessed large corporations like banks, utilities and trusted corporations have moved from being literally trusted and they were pillars of society to becoming villains who are only after your money. and it’s a a really a a sizeable change. But now to the roundup.
My roundup this week begins in China, where reportedly two million people have been evacuated due to floods that covered an area the size of France. The floods occurred last weekend after Typhoon Bavi made landfall at Yuhan Province]. That was Saturday night after battering Taiwan and Japan. Bavi’s arrival in China followed tropical storm Maysak which had brought record rainfall to Guangxi, breaching reservoirs and stranding people in their homes and other buildings.
26 people died in Hengzhou, where partial collapse of a reservoir dam sent torrents of water into the city. Hangzhou was where a number of venomous snakes escaped from a flooded farm into the floodwater, prompting authorities to send in stocks of anti venom.
The Chinese army, which is coordinating rescue efforts, used drones and some five thousand seven hundred boats in a series of massive relief and rescue operations to reach people trapped by the waters. Needless to say, both Typhoon Bavi and Tropical Storm Maysak were attributed by world scientists to man made global warming.
As were the heat waves and fires in Europe, which have been linked to thousands of deaths, while a separate bout of extreme heat in the US caused dozens of bushfires and at least twenty five deaths. In Western Europe, intense fires in France, Spain, and Portugal caused at least twelve deaths, while the heat wave has been one of the severest on record.
In France, authorities said that the heat was responsible for two thousand and twenty five excess deaths in a heat wave that began during the last week in June. The country recorded its hottest ever day in June as temperatures in Paris reached forty one degrees. Hottest days on record were also reported in Britain, Germany, Denmark and the Czech Republic.
According to the European Union’s Copernicus website, Europe’s accelerated warming is due to global warming, causing shifts in atmosphere circulation that reduced aerosol population that have provided a shield to for Europe from solar radiation.
Now to the U.S. where if you remember, President Donald Trump used the term ‘drill baby drill’ in his reelection speech. Then in the last week of June, he brought in wartime powers to grant seven hundred million US dollars to coal fired electricity generation plants while reducing or shutting down global warming efforts. That was when a White House spokes source told reporters that you’re not allowed to say ‘coal’ within the Trump administration unless it’s preceded by the words ‘clean beautiful’ – which is ridiculous!
Well, last week, in the wake of all that, Donald Trump was the first American president in all of its 250 years existence to have his Independence Day parade in Washington cancelled due to the intense heat. And American scientists delighted in saying that this was due to global warming.
Now here in Australia, the world’s largest geo-engineering project is being planned for the Great Barrier Reef. It’s going to be run by Southern Cross University. The university’s Daniel Harrison explained it thus It might sound like science fiction, but marine cloud brightening is being seriously considered as a way to shield parts of the ocean from extreme heat, he said. By spraying seawater from a ship mounted water cannon, researchers form clouds and that reflects back into the sky. We know this works. Now our focus is on how to get the maximum effectiveness.
Elsewhere in Australia, one of the biggest reasons why Australians have been slow to buy electric cars, which is often repeated in the media, is the fear that an ageing battery would fail and cost a fortune to replace.
Disproved last week by a new raft of scientific evidence. Dr Hussein Dia, who is professor of future urban mobility at Swinbourne University, said in a paper last week that the experience of Australian owners lined up with international evidence that modern batteries were proving much more durable than many expected a decade ago.
Advances in battery chemistry, thermal management and battery management systems mean most owners are experiencing only modest battery degradation over many years of driving, he said. And he added that batteries were likely to last well beyond the typical ownership period of each car. Your battery will outlast your car.
He pointed to Stanford University research which showed data from 10,000 vehicles in a 2024 study which found newer EVs lose about 1.8 per cent of their capacity a year, down from 2.3 per cent in 2019, while a separate analysis of 7,000 heavily driven EVs found most held more than 80 per cent of their capacity beyond 200,000 kilometers. And that small piece of good environmental news ends my roundup for the week.
. . .
Jingle: (11:31)
Listen to our Sustainable Hour for the future.
Tony: (11:39)
Our guest today is Polly Cutmore. Polly has many ancestral connections with the Gamilaaray, the Wiriyaay and Anaiwan and Ngarabal peoples in of northern New South Wales. And it’s very fitting as the last couple of weeks have had lots of themes around NAIDOC Week which seems to be getting longer each year to fit all the events in. So, Polly, happy NAIDOC week for you, and I hope the preceding two weeks have been the same for you! Welcome to The Sustainable Hour! Thanks for coming on! Tell us your story, and why… You’ve got a very interesting background, so maybe if we can learn a little bit about about that?
Polly Cutmore: (12:31)
Yeah, yeah, everyone. My name is Polly Cutmore. I come from Moree. I have connections with the… I am a Gamilleraay person from Moree, but I have connections to the Ngarabal and the Anaiwan people and that’s on the Tablelands. But I’ve got connections to the Wiriyaraay people, that’s to the north of Moree. Out as far as Mungindi. So I come from Mangado, Moree, Glen Innes and Narrabri. They’re my family-owned connections.
Colin: (13:07)
That’s lovely, Polly. Welcome. You’re more than welcome! I noticed that you are standing in your shop. What do you sell in your shop, please?
Polly: (13:17)
I have a number of Aboriginal different products. I have stuff that’s been made…. as you can see, I have a belt here that’s been made by one of the women from Nagarabal, my tribe up in Glen Ennis, and different red, black and yellow with pictures and posters and everything that I can possibly bring into my shop that mob might want.
Even as far as our handbags, we have handbags, we have shoes, we have all different products, but we also do aboriginal projects. And one of the projects that we just did was an Aboriginal women’s water gathering. And that was to bring our elders together to talk about the past and how they lived with the water, the river systems, and how we were living with and prior to first contact, you know, and now we live with contact, plannial contact.
Colin: (14:25)
So how many people did you have and how long did your event go for?
Polly: (14:30)
I had… There was 40 people in the room and it went for two-three days. Two days was workshops, listening to the elders and their stories from as far as Saint George, Moree, Glen Ennis, down as far as Ashford and as far as South Australia. I had someone that came from South Australia to come up and tell me about the the river systems ’cause she’s got connections down there and as far as the Lachlan River in New South Wales. So I had women from all different areas within the Murray-Darling Basin and they were telling us telling their stories and what was going down in their countries. It was very, very informal.
Tony: (15:19)
And Polly, that was a women’s only?
Polly: (15:24)
Yes, a women’s only event, the first one that’s been in Moree. And we look like are having more events. The other women would like to take this event to their communities. So we’re going to be looking at doing one in the border range border rivers, and that’s the Macintyre River, as far as going up St Georgetown
Tony:
That’s in the bottom half of Queensland?
Polly:
Yes. Yeah. It’s probably where the Cubbie farm is. That big water stuff is. That’s been taken. The theft of water.
Colin: (16:03)
What result came from your events, from your days of talking and storytelling that would help sustainability?
Polly: (16:15)
One was listening to our to the traditional women, how they lived. They had to cart water on their backs, you know, with with oak, to even pushing it pushing water in their prams, leaving you know, leaving their family home and taking the prams to bring the water to to them. But you know, they had to make sure that water was sustainable for that day.
So, you know, it was feeding them, washing them, cleaning their house, you know. It was doing everything that possibly that happens today with us with water in here. You know, drinking water. So they talked about that and how they lived with it, and how they was very cautious about the wastage of it because you had to carry it. And they were carrying it for probably over a hundred meters through the bush to their camp on their backs.
Colin: (17:23)
That was woman’s work, was it?
Polly: (17:24)
Yes, yes. The men were out doing other stuff. You know, the women take care of the camp. The women look after the children. They teach the children children what to do. And the reason why it’s women’s business? Because we are the nurturing of the community. We take care. We set the rules down with our children and we make sure that goes down that on a day-to-day basis we have to make sure that the community is fed. And, you know, fed properly.
Tony: (17:57)
Polly, you mentioned we’ve talked about it being a women’s only event. Is there… like, where do we fit into that? Does it mean that women are the only ones who can actually go, but it’s okay to talk to males about what happened?
Polly: (18:14)
Yeah, well, the men have been in this situation for a very long time, taking care of this here, and also destroying our riverways and that. And it hasn’t been our Aboriginal men that’s been in charge of this, you know, that has destroyed our riverway and our system. It’s been white men.
So it’s, you know… We haven’t even heard from our own men of what’s gone down, you know. But then we’ve had white men that as spoken to a couple of our men and has manipulated the situation of what they were bringing here into our Country and what they wanted to use. You know? It’s all been a big manipulation of uses of our resources in here for their own benefit and not ours. And we and it’s come at our cost.
Tony: (19:05)
Sure. And so that’s that’s a typical thing for colonisers to treat the the people that live where they come in and colonise and take all the resources and exactly the way you just mentioned it.
Polly: (19:20)
Yes, yes, it’s… you know, we can’t even get… We’ve been fenced off, locked out, there’s been locks put on our river system, you know, that we didn’t even know. With dams and weirs… And you know, when you fly over now you don’t see the glistering of little fires. You see the glistering of dams. And dams are from, you know, the top of Queensland all the way down.
I start wondering about this drought that they talk about. Is it the drought? Or is it the farmers taking the water out of the river and making sure that there’s no water on Country, and it’s all within their dams?
Because I can tell you, here in Moree, you know, we have dams here that are sometimes wider than the rivers. We have the white community here, they have ski boats that they use on those dams. You know, they’ve created their own systems within our Country.
We had one gentleman here, or I wouldn’t even call him a gentleman, all he is is a thief, a common thief. He stole a flood that went from Moree, you know, 150 kilometres down the road. And he stole the flood. How do you do that? That’s very, very cunning, you know? And government supports all this. Government departments support the lot.
Colin: (20:44)
Right. Now I’m assuming that he would be a landowner who would have taken all that water and stored it in his own dam, is that right?
Polly: (20:53)
Yes it is. Yes it is. And he didn’t get fined. He stole more water than what he got fined. You know? It just doesn’t stop up here. And I’ve got a special lot of irrigators up here in this area in the Gwydir Valley. As they just… the rivers are dying. Our river systems in this northern basin are dying from the cotton and the irrigation system. It is very, very disgusting.
And aren’t breaking to see what’s going down. As you probably see that we… we’ve lost a lot of our fish, old fish, and now our turtles are another thing that’s under siege, besides the other 47 endangered animals, you know, that live in that aquatic system out there.
They have been farming on our wetlands where it shouldn’t be. They’re nurseries, not only for us and our children, but also for the animals of our area.
Colin: (21:56.632)
Polly, are there any First Nations people on the Water Authority? Are there any advisors?
Polly: (22:00)
No. There’s lots of advisors, but we’re only advisors. That information that they get from us, they’ll either use it for their own purpose or use it against us. And we have to be very careful about what we tell because, yeah, that’s why we’re in this problem in the first place, because we allowed them to drink water to save their lives and show… I have my people that steal for a thirsty little can of coke, get bigger fines and go in jail and have everything stripped. This is what needs to happen. These farmers need to be stripped of their property, stripped of everything that they have and be put back in the towns where they come from. Because they’ve never, ever, ever had so much land, water and clean air in their lives. And it’s sending them mad with greed.
Colin: (23:00)
Well, we are aware that cotton is a very water-hungry crop and it has no place in Australia, really, when you think about the the logics of Australia being the driest continent on the planet. Why are we growing such a water ness necessity crop? So going back to the very beginning, we shouldn’t be even growing cotton.
Polly: (23:28)
You tell me! You tell me why these fellows are bringing in all this stuff. Because it’s money. It’s money. And it’s colonisation, theft of land. That’s what it is. Now they come in with this dryland cotton, but it’s still theft of land and water. And they don’t know how to sustain our Country. They’ve got no idea. Come to Moree, walk around and you’ll see. They got no idea how to sustain our Country. They couldn’t even learn from us, you know?
. . .
SONG (24:16)
‘Becoming Earth’
Verse 1:
Tall grass between my fingers
Dirt beneath my skin
Something pulling me down
Into where you begin
Can you feel me here?
Just letting go
Pre-chorus:
The weight of me
Sinking slow
Your soil and my bones
Starting to flow
Chorus:
Am I becoming earth
Or is earth becoming me?
When I lay here so still
Where do I end, where do you be?
(Where do I end, where do you be?)
Verse 2:
Root tips touch my shoulders
Time moves like rain
Your breath in the breeze now
Teaching me your name
Every blade of grass
A finger reaching up
Bridge:
(La-di-da-da, mm-ba-da)
(Earth-a-mama-soul-a)
Roots and leaves and soil speak
(Di-da-la, so-ma-be)
Chorus:
Am I becoming earth
Or is earth becoming me?
When I rest in your arms
Where do I end, where do you be?
(Where do I end, where do you be?)
Outro:
Nature sounds growing stronger:
Let me sink deeper
Let me flow free
Ahhh-ooo-ahhhh
(Earth-a-mama-soul-a)
Fading wind sounds:
Audio clip at the end:
Charles Eisenstein in a podcast interview with Russell Brand:
“Earth is alive. Its health depends on the health of its organs and tissues. And what are those? Those are the forests, the wetlands, the seagrass meadows, the mangroves, the elephants, the whales, the fish, the corals. Everything that is destroyed by development is necessary.
If you are in the carbon mind-frame, then even if you value a forest for its carbon storage and sequestration, once you’ve reduced it to that number, you could cut it down if there is, say, gold to mine underneath it or oil, and plant another forest somewhere else to make up for it. We’re not treating Earth as alive and precious and sacred.”
. . .
Mik: (27:30)
Polly, can I take you one step back in history, in a way? Because there’s something happening at the moment that really worries me. We know that for centuries it’s been men behind all the formal power institutions that shaped the modern world – the governments, corporations, the military, the financial system and so on, all men in their suits and ties creating these institutions that still influence this world we live in.
But something new is happening now because now that attitude that you talk about – the greed and the domination, the extraction, the wanting to have profit and so on – is moving into social media, and it’s being amplified in there. We now have something called the ‘manosphere’, where men are celebrating the masculinity, and so on. And as a new even more serious element here, we have AI coming in – artificial intelligence – which can amplify that attitude, that tendency, even worse.
Because AI, as I can see it, is going to become more powerful than anything we have ever seen. So there’s a reason to be worried about this. And if we don’t get somehow a mindset-change in society, we’re just going to put that same domination attitude into our robots and our AI-powered machines. You can imagine where that’s going to end.
Polly: (29:10)
All I can say is white man hasn’t learnt off theirselves because they keep getting stuff that’s gonna kill them. That’s what I reckon. They haven’t learnt. They keep doing stuff that destroys themselves. They won’t learn. They don’t know how to sit still and just breathe. They have to destroy that, even their breath. You know, that’s coming. No, let’s move over this way. Let’s knock the trees down so we can get the full breadth. Just move aside and and and enjoy the shade of the tree with the breeze coming, you know? But they haven’t learned. They haven’t learnt. And they’re gonna destroy themselves.
Mik: (30:00)
Don’t you think, Polly, when when we begin to see robots and AI coming in that a lot of people will be unemployed and this is gonna hit hard on the men who used to have this sort of you know their worth was their work.
Polly: (30:15)
Well, you know, it’ll probably just make them what’s happening now? More time to kill us women in Australia, as you can see what’s going on. The men out there in the regions, they’ve got a lot more time on their hands to feel as though that they have to still put us down and kill women off in Australia. And they’re leading that, aren’t they? In Australia at the moment. You don’t need AI for that.
Mik: (30:41)
It could become a lot worse, Polly, because when people men, you know, are just getting like social security because there’s no more work for them they are going to have a rage inside them. And as you say, that rage is gonna go somewhere.
Polly: (30:57)
I know, I know, it’s very frightening and I could see it here myself. I see it every day. You know, going around in different communities. Everyone’s feeling and this is what they didn’t do. They forgot about the human touch feelings and everything. They forgot about looking after each other, sort of worried about that piece of machinery. They forgot that. Taking care of each other. We have become so centric on ourselves, we don’t even worry about our you know, I have seen they don’t worry about what’s going on around And that’s the human cost, what’s going on in the world, as we can see.
Mik: (31:40)
It sounds to me, Polly, that you’re angry about this?
Polly: (31:44)
Because I thought people were smart, you know? I thought they were smart enough to realise what was going on. But you know, we have the people like Pauline Hanson and them, they don’t want to be smart. You know, and living amongst Country, people and life, you know, full on life. It’s just about this money, money, money. Money, money, money. And I don’t know why that society has taught their kids that that’s the most important thing. I thought the most important thing is to make sure that you become a better human being and give back to your community, and you’re a part of a community.
Tony: (32:29)
Are they the sorts of sentiments that that came up in the the women’s event that was held at at Moree last week?
Polly: (32:39)
That was that was one of the things that they continuous, you know, trying to dominate what’s going on in our Country and then that includes, you know, even where we are living and where we where we live and how we live. You know? We have our law and they have theirs. And they should start taking notice of us, you know? ‘Cause as they can see, they try to kill us off and we sustained that and we’re still here. So there must be we must be doing something right, because we beat all their stuff.
Tony: (33:15)
Yeah. We start each each program with acknowledgement of the acquired ancient wisdom. Well the ancient wisdom they’ve acquired First Nations people have acquired from nurturing both their land and their communities for millennia before their land was stolen. So that hits it. that’s exactly what we try to emphasise each week. Just that ancient wisdom.
Polly: (33:43)
Yes, the ancient wisdom that has been stolen not just from us, but it’s also been stolen from your own community. Hundreds of years ago. What the women learnt then. We know we know that we you know, women have been twirling this world for thousands and thousands of years. They’re the ones that are giving birth, that continues to give birth to the new people of the earth. You know? When are they gonna wake up that we are the mothers of this and they gotta start looking start going back looking after us. Start going back looking after us and making us strong. You know?
Colin: (34:25)
Polly, can I condense down what you’ve been saying here? On the topic of artificial intelligence, AI – that what you’re really saying is that we’ve lost the knack of human intelligence. We’ve allowed chasing the dollar to be the main course of our actions when in fact we should be looking at our lifestyles.
Polly: (34:48)
That’s right. Our lifestyle and the culture that we come from. Each and every one of us. We know our backgrounds and where we come from and who we are as people. And if you don’t, it’s only over the hill for you to go and find out. It’s not that far away out of there. But, you know, you know in the morning what you want to do. You know that you want to be. Wake up and just live! Live peacefully. Live amongst nature. Well, I know that’s what we want to do, you know, and we’ve learnt that. We learnt to become one with it. We didn’t learn to destroy it.
Colin: (35:31)
As a pure matter of interest, Polly, you had 40 people, 40 women come to your event, and you found it a very positive experience. You are in a shop which sells aboriginal artifacts to Aboriginal people. Do you ever get white people coming in?
Polly: (35:52)
Yeah! They come in and buy everything too. They come in for a yarn, they come in for, you know… to sit down and to breathe. Just to get away from that main street out there, you know, and what’s going out there. They come in here and sit down and have a yarn with me too and tell me what’s going on and they’re not happy with all the racism that’s going down in this country at the moment, you know? No, of course. It’s shocking. It is very shocking. And while we’re worried about that, women are getting killed. You know? Kids are getting killed with machetes.
Why aren’t we adopting each other and looking after each other? That’s what we need to do. For us to be a proper multicultural country and look after each other, we need to start looking after and adopting each other and building each other up, especially in this country, because we’ve had too many knocks and too many in interference from outside of the country.
What unites us is our cultural beliefs in ourselves and each other. We believe in other people and their cultural beliefs. They may do something different to us that we… and I’m sure every person everywhere around the world has got a little bit of culture from someone else that they do in their household do with their living every day but they don’t recognise it – and they should, because we do. We do.
Mik: (37:27)
Polly, can we get a bit of your wisdom and your advice in terms of solutions? Let’s talk about what can we do about this and what would your advice be? I mean, where I’m coming from, I see men have become like the the dominant global cultural force hindering that we can move towards a more sustainable, a more life affirming and more beautiful world. It’s men who stand in the way primarily. When I go to a meeting like a climate activist meeting, there are, you know… Out of ten there would be eight women and two men. The women are doing the job of trying to make a better world. The men? Where are they? They don’t engage, they’re not volunteering in organisations. They are actually not very well off – if you look at the suicide statistics. Lots of more men are killing themselves than women, and so on. They’re not happy. They’re hurting. So what’s your advice? Let’s talk about solutions now. How do you, for instance, as a woman, as a mother, bring up your boys to become better men?
Polly: (38:28)
Yeah. Well, it was about women’s law. It’s about women’s law and men have got to start respecting women’s law and how we how we do stuff. We may not knock things down and break things up to get to that solution. You may have to go around so that a flow of water can continue to flow through that path, you know? But we need we need the mummies and the aunties and the nannies to come back.
And we need more people to put that in that the emphasise has got to come back to women, women’s law. Because that’s what’s gone down, you know. And well I I can tell you now, a lot of our problems up here is from white women. ‘Cause they don’t want to give up that little entitlement that they have in their homes. They don’t want to go out and suffer like we do.
They don’t want to have to struggle like we do because I do know, you know, and I have seen where white women are in farms and they they their animals get treated better than them. You know, it’s disgusting.
Colin: (39:40)
But look, I’m a historian, Polly, and right now I’m researching for a talk that I’m due to give on orphanages, the orphanages that we had in Geelong. We don’t have any orphanages now. But the one thing that’s come out from my research again and again is that orphanages were brought together by white women usually religious white women who looked to do real good. But they didn’t run the orphanages. They raised the money to set it up and the people that they chose, employed to run the orphanages, were almost always disciplinarians. And they saw their job to make people make the the orphans who were in their charge, get up at the same time, eat at the same time, always do exactly as they were told, which was the total opposite of what they really needed. What they really wanted and what they really needed was a mother’s love.
So you’ve got basically two different lots of women. You’ve, I would assume, you’ve got the same inside your community as we’ve got in ours. We’ve got women who are really quite harsh when it comes to discipline. And we’ve also got the the soft ones who are saying we should do something about this, but the two of them really work together. Now, having said that, give us your opinion on what I’ve just said.
Polly:
Within my community… and I do know that we do have some of them really hard old women. You know. But we balance it out. We balance it out. We make sure that it gets balanced out with the soft ones coming in. You know. Some of their hard approach can be good, but not all the time. When you need that strong hand, and we know how strong those old women hands are… They’ll come in. But they weren’t a straw they different different mob to what the mob were in that institution because they were you know, and we had a mirror, the nuns, covered up with all that stuff.
Making out that they were doing that, you know, we know that nuns weren’t doing that. We had one nunny that had a baby to an Aboriginal man in Morris. We know what they’re all like. There’s no such thing as all this Christianity shit. Come on! We know what a fake thing that all is to suit them.
Colin: (42:35)
Polly, you are a remarkable breath of fresh air. I have thoroughly enjoyed talking with you today, but unfortunately we’re coming towards the end of the time with you.
Polly: (42:50)
I’m sorry if I did insult any of you in any of that, but you know…
Colin: (42:57)
Just about every white person on the planet!
Polly: (43:00)
Good. I hope I did. There you go. And my partner is white, so don’t worry about it. Sitting here with me.
Tony: (43:03)
Well, we deserve it. We deserve it.
Colin: (43:18)
We usually wind up each programme with a little bit of advice to the listeners because we’re a radio show essentially. And we usu we used to always have ‘Be the difference’ as our motto at the end, but I suspect that you would come up with a better version of that. What would you like our listeners, which are 99.9 per cent white? How would you like us to behave in the future?
Polly: (43:48)
Get to know us. Really, get to know us, and know our communities, and know our culture, you know, because it hasn’t… People haven’t taken the time, really taken the time to get to know us, you know? How many Aboriginal people that you can say that are really your friends? And that you have had that full-on contact. Is really… People who are living in our country really should get to know who we are. Then they’ll find out who they are too – by getting to know, yeah.
Colin: (44:23)
You can be assured, Polly, that the next time I’m on my way up the highway and coming through Moree, I will be calling in for a yarn.
Polly: (44:34)
Good. You are all invited! Come up and see where Moree is. You’d be very surprised the way Moree is, and how it is. And you won’t find any sustainable stuff here. Maybe on the missions, but not out in the region, not out in the countries where the cotton is. So come up and have a really good look at it and see what that the destruction that they’ve done. Come up and have a look!
Tony: (45:00)
Do you find that you’re being listened to more than you were in the past?
Polly: (45:05)
Yes, I am. I am because I’m opening my mouth and letting people know what’s going on. Even though they don’t like hearing it, they’re gonna hear it. They don’t like seeing my voice, they don’t like hearing me, and don’t like seeing me. They better get used to it because that’s all they’re gonna see from me is my voice and I’ll be here. This isn’t a job, this is our cultural obligation, is that what we have to do. And that’s with every one of us. Every one of us, including my nieces and nephews that are coming through, they may not be with me every day, but they’re watching and they know they have to learn what I’m doing so they can take up that take their cultural obligation after to make sure that we live sustainable in our country and continue to live as the oldest continuous culture in the world.
Mik: (45:57)
It sounds to me like we can boil it down to a motto that I have been hearing again and again recently in the Sustainable Hour when we’re ending off, which is simply ‘Be curious’.
Polly: (46:09)
That’s it, that’s it! And learn from each other.
. . .
SONG: (46:18)
‘Learn to Listen’
Yaraan: “Country can speak to anyone. It’s just, yeah, if they know how to listen.”
Verse 1:
I stand on the Earth
I breathe with the land
The rhythm of its heartbeat
weaves in with my own
I give it all the time it needs
Yaraan: “Slow down to the pace of your heartbeat. Tomtumpa, your heartbeat.”
Chorus:
Listen…
The treaty begins when truth is spoken
Listen…
Healing begins when harm is named
Listen…
Water will guide, fire will teach
Listen…
The stars will sing, when we learn… to listen
[Instrumental section]
Bridge:
We sang the rain, and the rain came
We danced the land, and the land moved
Our sacred fire never dies
We’ll wait for you to slow down
Sit down and learn – to listen
Chorus:
Listen…
The treaty begins when truth is spoken
Yaraan: “This modern world is moving very fast.”
Listen…
Healing begins when harm is named
Listen…
Water will guide, fire will teach
Listen…
The stars will sing, when you learn… to listen
Verse 2:
We are the river
We are the land
The eagle watches
The whale sings
We don’t own these stories
They flow through us
Every rock is a page of a living law
Every tide a verse of an ancient truth
Outro:
Songlines have been drowned in pipelines
Kinship traded for control
But in a world that forgets, we remember
We carry the culture with us
And we are still here, walking
Yaraan: “We’re not waiting for the government.”
Still here, protecting
Protecting what protects us
Yaraan: “We are just doing it.”
So our future will be strong and safe
Learning takes time
Learn to listen
Yaraan: “Our country is our identity, it’s part of who we are and it should be at the root of all other decisions made.”
. . .
Daniel Markovits, Yale Law Professor, video on Instagram (50:11)
We have lived in a period in which on average everybody is getting massively materially richer all the time. That is going to end. There are lots of subtle and complicated reasons why we might think that that’s gonna end, but here’s a very simple one:
If the next 250 years look like the last 250 years, then by the year 2300, there will be a hundred billion people on this planet. Each of whom is 30 times as rich on average as you are today. And it doesn’t take a sophisticated person to realise that that’s not going to happen. The planet simply cannot sustain that mass of humanity, and it cannot sustain that extravagant production and consumption.
So in that sense, there are lots of, I think, inexorable reasons why the period that we are in now and are coming to the end of now, a period of radical economic growth and constant increase in material prosperity will prove to have been an aberration, a window of 300 years in human history, and civilisation will have to return to the state of sta of stagnation that it was in before.
That doesn’t mean we have to give up on things being better. Because while it’s true that over the 2,000 years leading up to 1800, people did not on average get richer than they were before. There were all sorts of other changes. There were aesthetic changes, religious changes, moral changes, cultural changes. And so there was a whole menu of forms of progress and improvement, just not economic or material, that was dominating our civilisation.
And my own view is that the economic and material explosion that we’ve seen, while it’s been magnificent, has also distracted us from a series of spiritual, ethical, and social transformations that we could very we could do very well to return to. So we should not give up on the future as being better than the past. But we should not expect to be richer than we were before and we should redirect our energies in other dimensions.
. . .
Costa Georgiadis, campaign video-reel on Instagram: (52:15)
Let’s face it, I look better with a full bush. And so does Australia. We’ve developed this obsession with a tidy patch. Clean edges, neat borders, trimmed and creamed and clipped. Out here, that doesn’t cut it. Size is what matters. You need density and diversity. If it’s not thick enough to get lost in not doing its job.
We’ve been giving the bush a short back and sides for decades. Clearing the understory, shaving the creeks, and what’s left, 2,320 Australian species officially threatened with extinction. As a continent, we’ve lost more mammals than anywhere else on the planet. Every year, the bush is thinner, barer and quieter. A bare floor might look clean to you, but we need growth. We need coverage. We need to embrace the wild.
Australia looks better with a full bush. It always has. We can’t say goodbye to that. Let’s bring back the bush. Together, head to bush.fnpw.org.au
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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