Paul Sheehan, kangaroos, hypocrisy, and forget about the boat people when you can croon about Myrtle

(Above: meat you can get from a kangaroo, an animal for some strange reason much better suited to the Australian environment than imported sources of meat).

It might have escaped the chattering class cognoscenti - unless of course they happen to be content kleptomaniacs - that Paul Sheehan has been rabbiting on in recent weeks, in a fear mongering way, about the hordes about to sweep down by boat from Asia, and imperil everything dear to western civilization.

Whether it was Rudd's policies make us a soft target, or Refugee lobby's 10 commandments, he was determined to establish that these wretches should get back to where they came from, and anybody who thought otherwise was just a do gooder interested in humane asylum policies (as opposed to the inhumane asylum policies Sheehan seemed to be supporting).

Well this week, after a couple of weeks of 'bugger the boat people', we're now treated to lamentations and wailing about the kangaroo, in the guise of a vent about hypocrisy, under the header A bloody mob of hypocrites:

Young kangaroos have always died in large numbers, long before Europeans turned up. The point here is about hypocrisy. While eastern greys were being shot on Mount Panorama this month to make way for a car race, my thoughts turned to the one eastern grey I got to know. She was named Myrtle. I wrote about her last Australia Day.

An orphan, she was adopted by David Macfarlane. ''In the morning she'd stand at the breakfast table and expect a bowl of cereal like the rest of us. She didn't like being left out.'' Myrtle identified David as the dominant male in her world, and rarely drifted far from him. She would go into a jealous rage when young women came to visit. When he took us out in his boat, she would swim after it.

You don't want to think too much about what happens to thousands of potential Myrtles every year. As the Japanese official Umezaki said, it is ''sad and unbearable''.

But we bear it. In fact, most Australians don't appear to think about it much. It's easier to condemn the Japanese.

Funny, I would have thought it much easier to condemn the boat people, but what would I know, I'm just an average omnivore getting by in a tough world.

Never mind, somehow the wires of logic in Sheehan's brain melted down a little while ago, and the point he's trying to make never becomes quite clear.

Is he saying that we shouldn't eat meat, especially meat slaughtered in abattoirs? Well I've been inside abattoirs, and seen the conditions, and still eat meat. Come to think of it, I've shot and skinned and degutted and eaten rabbits, and joined in the slaughter of sheep, as enjoined in the bible, and I don't mind a bit of beef or pork or even the flesh of the headless chickens that used to tear around our back yard after their heads had been chopped off.

And I also happen to think - along with a lot of indigenous people - that the kangaroo makes an exceptionally tasty meal, and I regret we focussed on sheep when we should have been farming the lean meat of 'roos (and yes if you think of Australia as one giant farm, we can farm 'roos).

But Sheehan doesn't ever quite say what he means. He takes umbrage at the way some Australians take umbrage at the Japanese slaughter of whales and dolphins, and the butchering of baby harp seals in Canada, and accuses Australians of hypocrisy:

Australians (including me) express outrage about the whales and the dolphins, but when it comes to hypocrisy about animal cruelty, we are world class. We hunt, slaughter and brutalise our national symbol while lauding, exploiting and symbolising it at the same time. Similarly, we don't expend much curiosity about the abject conditions in the factory farms that produce our pork and poultry.

But what does he propose? That we give up eating meat? Or just kangaroos?

Well that's okay for Brian Sherman, and animal rights groups and vegetarians, but I happen to think I'll be an omnivore for the foreseeable future. And I like kangaroo meat.

Do I think that kangaroos should be culled/harvested humanely? Do I think it's a waste of a valuable resource to see a lot of the meat end up as pet food? Do I think that chickens should be given a free range lifestyle? Should livestock be treated humanely before being carted off to the killing fields? Should the killing be as humane and quick as possible? Is the live sheep trade with the middle east problematic? Is unnecessary cruelty disturbing?

Well yes, and the only animal I don't have much time for - it's the rural training - is the rabbit. But you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs, and unless you're into mano mano eating wriggling live creatures Japanese style, you have to face up to the reality that you're going to indulge in the mass slaughter of animals, and however efficient you make it, it's never going to be a pretty sight.

So why all the mock rage and frothing and foaming about the fate of the kangaroo, as if somehow it being on the national emblem made it special or sacrosanct? Well it seems to have something to do with petrol heads killing the 'roos.

The perfect example of Australia's cultural amnesia about the kangaroo was evident this month when about 140 eastern grey kangaroos were shot on Mount Panorama, the site of the Bathurst 1000, ''to ensure the safety of drivers and visitors''.

Maybe it would have been better if one of the 'roos had jumped in front of a car, and shown the world the fate of any number of road kill? Sorry, I still don't get the point. For a start, it's not Australia's cultural amnesia, it's city folks amnesia, disconnected as they are from the consequences of eating meat, which is that you have to kill animals to obtain meat.

So what metaphor and what bit of amnesia are we moaning about? I'm not quite sure:

It was a metaphor for a country that turns its national symbol into dog food, a country in which about 3 million kangaroos, on average, have been culled each year over the past decade. Animal rights groups put the slaughter of joeys on the same scale and cruelty as the slaughter of seal cubs in Canada. This is disputed by the kangaroo industry, and by many scientists.

So are they right? Should we be outraged? Has Sheehan discovered a scandal?

The head of the Kangaroo Industries Association of Australia, John Kelly, told me: ''There is no reliable estimate of the numbers of joeys killed as a result of the commercial harvest [but] the commercial take is about 25 per cent female and … only about 20 per cent of females are likely to have a joey at foot.''

Joeys are shot according to the Federal Government's Animal Welfare Code of Practice.

The balance of scientific opinion holds that the juvenile mortality rate is higher in unharvested kangaroo populations than in harvested populations.

''The simple reason for this,'' Kelly says, ''is that the harvest controls the population and reduces the boom-bust cycle, which leads to extremely high juvenile mortality during the 'bust' cycles.''

Uh huh. You shoot 'roos and they die. Just like we send our army abroad, they fire guns and people die. Next week the shocking news that professional soldiers are trained killers?

So how does it work elsewhere?

Unlike the whale and dolphin harvesting by the Japanese, which are compromising the long-term viability of some species and in whaling are hidden behind the absurd mask of ''scientific research'', the dominant view among scientists in this country is that the kangaroo cull does not threaten the viability of species and is not veiled in double-speak.

Ah, so the world has determined that they'd like us to stop eating whale or dolphin because of long-term viability issues, and some folk dress up the killing of whales to eat as "scientific research", as a kind of hypocrisy which allows them to step around prevailing international attitudes.

But the kangaroo cull doesn't threaten the viability of species and isn't veiled in double-speak?

Well that sounds like clear cut case of hypocrisy doesn't it? Memo to self: must write protest letter to MP demanding that kangaroo cull be veiled in double-speak and labelled scientific research into the long term viability of the species.

Am I missing something here? How does Sheehan end up saying that the point is not to dismiss either side, while somehow berating Australians for hypocrisy?

Well it's back to fifteen dollar loaves of bread washed down by magic water for him, and here's Dorothy's intuitive recipe for stir-fried 'roo with basel and ginger.

Make sure you have 'roo fillet sliced into thinnish strips, slice up an onion (or shallots), assemble some garlic (I like a half dozen or so cloves, but as you will), chop up some ginger, get a goodly bunch of basel leaves, and compile a decent set of sliced or chopped vegetables of a kind that you like (Asian in the manner of buk choy or the other choys, or snow peas or carrots, or a capsicum, sizes according to the number at table), then take a wok, add a dash of oil, fry up the meat and the spices, add a little soy, throw in the vegies, stir them around and serve with rice (though you can always add a dry noodle to the wok if that's your preference). Ten minutes and you're in 'roo heaven.

Serve with an Australian flag as a garnish, and make sure you drink a toast to Paul Sheehan with a nice NZ sav blanc in honor of his conversion to vegetarianism, the only way it seems that he might avoid his own charge of nonsensical logic, hysterical sentimentalism and blatant hypocrisy.

As a recovering foodie, what else can I say? Save the 'roo from being pet food. Don't allow the Russians to end the 'roo meat business. Eat some 'roo this week. More 'roo recipes here.

Finally a note that awhile ago - in response to Sheehan's rants about refugees - I wondered if an antipodean P. J. O'Rourke might step forward, and blow me down if Chris Berg didn't step up to the plate on the weekend.

If you want a healthy disinfectant to apply to topical areas of Sheehan hypocrisy, why not have a read of Being tough on refugees is pretty weak.

Who'd have thought it? A libertarian who understands the implications of being a libertarian. After the woolly headed fear mongering of Sheehan (or should that be the 'roo-headed?), it's nice to know someone is capable of rising above the dialectic of Godzilla v. Bambi.

Oh I know the video below is old and tired, and there are endless variants on YouTube - details on Marv Newland who did the original in 1969 here - but after reading Paul Sheehan, why do I always feel old, tired, confused and grumpy, like a cantankerous curdmudgeon determined to rant and rail? Unless I see a sweet little joey and then I go all marshmallow and gooey like a caramel, and soft and doe eyed .... Oh won't someone think of the joeys ...