Residents of Buderim Springs are fighting a battle they should never have been required to engage in.

Why do 360 people have to petition their council not to bulldoze a road, from Stringybark Road to Power Road, through about four hectares of rainforest?

And why would Maroochy council even consider such an option through land it established was of such environmental significance it was prepared to pay $450,000 in conservation levy funds only three years ago to secure it for future generations?

Maroochy shire ratepayers, who have been levied first $25 then $50 annually to establish the conservation fund, have already been made cynical by the shift in the fund’s purpose from land purchase to just about any use councillors care to justify.

But is there really a far greater cynicism at play?

Is what we are witnessing in this stupidity – and I call it stupid because we are seeing the wonderfully diverse ecosystem of this region stripped bare through an imperative informed only by the desire of some to make as much money for as little output as possible – really just more of what we have witnessed in the past and can expect of the future?

If you can drive a bulldozer through a rainforest three years after its values so impressed you that you would use an environmental fund to purchase it, how much time does the rest of our once rich biodiversity have left?
It can’t be much.

What should we expect though of a council that has repeatedly allowed the best advice of its officers to be whittled away by the lobbying of development interests who have the capacity, as demonstrated at Twin Waters, to argue down a 100-metre environmental corridor to a scrawny 10 metres of vegetation half of which exists inside the fence line?

In denial about abuse

No one could doubt the sincerity Aboriginal affairs minister Mal Brough brings to the job. He clearly has a very real concern for conditions in Aboriginal communities across Australia.

But while his attentions are naturally directed at the portfolio for which he is responsible, there should also be no doubt that the problems he is attempting to address are endemic in the broader community.

Our continued denial of the evidence presented in our own courts each week is a guarantee that the abuse inflicted daily on children in our community will remain unchecked.

Reality of life in Iraq

Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer does seem to go out of his way to court comparisons with a buffoon.

Was it arrogance or stupidity that had him suggest last week that Labor leader Kevin Rudd should get his feet on the ground in Iraq to gain an appreciation of the issues?

Repeated flak-jacketed photo opportunities in the Green Zone appear to have done little to improve either Mr Downer’s or his prime minister’s understanding of the situation. Mr Downer’s claims that the Coalition of the Willing is making progress would be laughable if not for the tragic nature of all evidence to the contrary.

Independent News and Media journalist Patrick Cockburn has been stationed in Iraq since before the invasion and continues to report from the chaos into which Iraq has descended.

Writing from Arbil this week, Cockburn offered the following in his assessment of US general David Petraeus’s report to US president George Bush.

“Some 4.2 million people in Iraq are now refugees, of whom about half have fled the country,” he wrote.

“Overall the ‘surge’ has already failed. It was never necessary to wait for yesterday’s report. The reason for the failure is the same as that for American failures since 2003.

"They have very few sincere allies in Iraq outside Kurdistan. The occupation is unpopular and always has been.

"The real and appalling situation on the ground in Iraq has been all too evident this week. Thirty bodies, the harvest of the death squads, were found in the streets of Baghdad on Wednesday.

"The figure for Tuesday was 26 and in addition 20 rockets and mortar bombs were fired into the Green Zone, killing three people. This was significant because they were fired by the Shia Mehdi Army, who had been upset by criticism made of them by the Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki.

"By way of gentle reproof, they shelled his offices in the Green Zone.

"Gasoline is brought to Baghdad by truck but these are not allowed on the bridges because they might be vehicle-borne suicide bombs.

"In a further sign of how life is really lived in Baghdad, clerics have issued a fatwa against eating river fish – previously a favourite food in the capital – because the fish gorge on dead bodies floating in the Tigris River.”

Some progress. Enough said.