There was a boatyard near the Southport Yacht club. Like hundreds of boatyards around the nation, it served as a storage area on either side of an ancient railed slipway and cradle. Inside the slipway shed were lots of used maritime accessories. Old propeller shafts, rudders, engines, and gearboxes – all spread in an untidy mess among paint tins, rollers, and assorted junk, which appealed to yachties such as myself.

Living on a boat near this slipway in the late 1970s, I got to know the owner quite well. Being involved in marine surveying, I knew many of the boatyard and slipway operators on the northern New South Wales and Queensland coasts.

So it came as a surprise that during the 1980s, the national environmental authorities decided to check the levels of ‘environmental vandalism’ by doing core soil samples around old boat slipways and boat storage yards in search of trace elements of copper and later tributyltin (TBT) based antifouling.

Antifouling paint was in those days, as is today, very expensive and so it was that low-budget yachties like myself, used the paint very sparingly.

What was mischievous about these investigations is that the core samples were quite deep. People had already moved on to more environmentally acceptable antifouls and the old ones were not available any more.

All these old boatyards were found to have ‘minute trace elements’ of copper antifouling at depths of two metres and certainly no threat to the environment. A contamination order was then issued, not just to the owner of the boatyard, but to the holder of the mortgage.

This, of course, encouraged these miserable, scrooge-like bankers to behave more miserably and withdraw the loan facility and I watched in dismay as many of these boatyards, mainly family-run, closed down forever.

The emergence of the Greens Party from its roots in the early 1980s in Tasmania saw the creation of a plethora of rules, regulations, and environmental science courses everywhere.

While the persuasive narrative of saving the environment was spruiked by the Greens, I watched the nation’s coastline become imprisoned in national parks, sensitive fish habitats, mangrove no-go areas, no-go anchoring areas, and no-go fishing areas. The amount of these no-go areas has risen proportionally with environmental bureaucrats in federal, state, and local councils and are inversely proportional to the industrial waterfront investment around the country.

1996 saw the Greens flexing their jaw muscles without engaging their brains by demonising dredging on the Brisbane River. They convinced the mayor that if he stopped the one hundred years of dredging – which provided most of the sand and aggregate to make concrete, bricks, and paving and thus providing the cheapest house building in the country – that this would turn the colour of the Brisbane River from a tea-brown to blue. Twenty-nine years, like every other river, it still tea-brown.

The Great Australian Bight Protection Bill 2016 was introduced by the Greens to prevent offshore oil and gas research. In 2017, the Greens were a key motivator in placing South Australia as the world’s renewable crash test dummy and wasted no time in demolishing their last viable coal power station, the 520mW Port Augusta unit, to lock in their ideological pursuit of an energy future free of fossil fuels.

The following brown-outs in the state and hugely escalating electricity prices, proved that South Australia should have actually thought the matter through, but the Greens were jubilant in ‘their victories’. The population growth of South Australia has lagged behind other states due to its green focus on burgeoning bureaucracies and obstruction to existing and potential investors in the state.

Up in Queensland, the 2015 election saw Greens preferences ensure an ALP victory. Within six weeks of being elected, Labor introduced the Sustainable Ports Act. This 630-page document ensured that no other port facility, not even tiny load-out ramp facilities in Queensland’s 7,000 kilometres of coastline, would be permitted in the state, ensuring the 10 ports owned by the state government would remain competition-free and with exorbitant charges, well above national averages.

Interesting that David Crisafulli, in his first seven months as Premier, despite being encouraged by experienced maritime advocates to repeal this Sustainable Ports Act and allow Far North Queensland to flourish, has not done so. Limp LNP leadership indeed, in keeping with the pathetically poor performance standard of Morrison, Turnbull, and Dutton. Where are you Pauline? Malcolm? Bob? Robbie?

Emboldened by the election of the incredibly weak Albanese Labor government three years ago, the Greens increased the volume, venom, and veracity of their rhetoric, blatantly exposing their real agenda of anti-Australian and anti-mining policies. Their ‘saving the environment’ mask was finally cast aside for all the nation to see.

Thanks to excellent lobbying by groups such as Advance, most Australians have finally woken up to their crippling effect on the country.

Thank you, Advance!

But now we urgently have to find a Braveheart of bold leadership that will repeal at least 75 per cent of the EPA/EDO/green madness that has our nation financially weak, dispirited, and unable to defend itself – lying like a regional comatose drunk, for all the neighbours to see, and for some to hatch their plots against us.