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Science and Immigration:
Please Explain!

Professor Ian Lowe, Hamish McCallum and Ken Warneke

Wednesday, September 2, 1998
Regatta Hotel, Brisbane.

To set the scene, Ian Lowe has provided some food for thought–

The racist goons who form One Nation

Want to cut back immigration,

Not folk who are white,

We know they're all right,

They only a problem if Asian

Migrants contribute to population,

But also important is copulation!

Our rate of new birth

Is straining the Earth

And the cause of much degradation

So don't be a simple racist grub,

Come out to Science in the Pub!

Hear talk ecological

Factual and logical

Instead of just thumping the tub!

Hear how many our country can carry

How young and how often we marry

And if we don't slip

The debate will equip

You the One Nation nonsense to parry!

See what theories the data will fit

Hear it argued with vigour and wit

You will cheer and you'll jeer

You will drink some more beer

And agree that Ms Hanson talks shit!

And now a poem from Hamish McCallum

(with apologies to Dorothea MacKellar)

We've stuffed our sunburnt country,

Overgrazed the sweeping plains,

We've logged the mountain ranges,

There's acid when it rains.

Suburbs to the horizons,

No fish left in the sea.

It's time to see our error-

And act sustainably!

Ian Lowe
Professor of Science, Technology and Society, Griffith University.

Ian was also formerly the Head of the School of Science at Griffith and a past president of the Australian Science Communicators. His research interests are in policy issues affecting science and technology, especially in relation to energy and the environment. He writes a regular column for New Scientist and chaired the advisory council which recently produced Australia's first independent national report on the state of the environment. Among his recent writings is a booklet on the population debate. As the accompanying doggerel shows, he writes prose more frequently and fluently than he writes poetry!

Hamish McCallum
Associate Professor, Zoology Department, University of Queensland.

Hamish has been at UQ since 1985. Before that, he worked briefly for CSIRO Fisheries, and did a PhD at Imperial College, University of London, and a BSc (Hons) from Monash. His academic interests are in population biology, particularly modelling of ecological systems, and host-parasite interactions (epidemiology). Like most academics, he spends the bulk of his time in front of a computer or class, or at interminable meetings, but the joy of the job is escaping to interesting places (Pantanal in Brazil, Western Queensland, Kakadu, Heron Island) to see what his students are getting up to.

 

Ken Warneke
Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service

Ken is an assistant airport quarantine manager with the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service (AQIS) at the Brisbane International Airport. He is a graduate in Agricultural Science and is responsible for the isolation of plant and animal material arriving from outside Australia.

SciPub is held the last Wednesday of the month in the Duke of Edinburgh pub in Sydney, 152 Harris Street, Pyrmont, 2009 from 7-9pm. Telephone (02) 9660 8146. UBD Map ref pg235 P10. Park at Star City if coming by car.

For further information on `Science in the Pub' please contact Robyn Stutchbury on rstutch@ozemail.com.au of Peripatus Productions Pty Limited, 1 Carisbrook Street, Lane Cove 2066, Tel: 02 9427 6747, Fax: 02 9418 9605

Next Science in the Pub session, 30 September 1998

Rocks - why on Earth should we care!
Professor Evan Leitch and Dr Armstrong Osborne

 

Science in the Pub™, © 2000. Stutchbury, R, Burton, M.