Sophie Mirabella, and the lessons of history there to be learned unless you nod off in a stupor ...

There's no way around it.

Either Sophie Mirabella suffers from short term memory loss, or she's as thick as two bricks. Perhaps three.

Here she is in The Punch rabbiting on about how History tells us floods are natural, seemingly forgetting that the mother of all floods was in fact an unholy, unnatural holocaust style act - of god - inflicted on long suffering humanity way back in Noah's day.

Never mind, on we go:

Yes, the Wivenhoe Dam was built as part of a flood mitigation strategy after 1974. But in recent times it wasn’t managed as part of that strategy. Water was kept in storage rather than released ahead of the big wet – almost in denial of the Dam’s original purpose.

Maybe those in charge too readily believed the hype of Flannery and his alarmist friends that the human race had become all-powerful “weather makers” scorching the earth. Certainly in 2007 former Queensland Premier Peter Beattie argued that it would never rain to such an extent again due to mankind’s impact on the planet.

Beattie in 2007? Let's flash forward to March 2010 and Jeff Seeney, Member for Callide getting his deeper thoughts recorded by Hansard:

I believe it would be absurd to release water from Wivenhoe Dam at the current time. It would be absurd to allow any releases until this option is thoroughly investigated. I call on the minister today to ensure that no water is released from Wivenhoe Dam and that serious commitments are made to developing this proposal to increase the storage levels in Wivenhoe Dam. The water that is running into the dam at the moment may well be sorely needed in the future to avert another water crisis.

A quick look at the dam record shows that, under the current rules of operation, an amount of water equal to 30 per cent of the dam's capacity was released in 1999 and then further smaller amounts were released in 2001 and 2002. Even if some of that water had been retained it would have made a huge difference in 2005 and 2006, when the people of Brisbane were facing the worst of the water crisis.

And so on and so forth, and how it's only conservative governments that provide decent infrastructure for water storage, and happily Jeff Seeney - leader of the Nationals and the opposition until he was run over by a party room truck in 2008 - has thoughtfully put it up for your reading pleasure here in pdf form.

At the time, hapless Dan Spiller responded as best he could:

Queensland Water Commission acting executive director Dan Spiller responded by saying that more research would be needed and that authorities were preparing for “events much worse than anything on record”. ”Flooding and rainfall remain very unpredictable and that is the reason why the dam sensibly contains a buffer for flood mitigation,” he said. (here)

Naturally, in the manner of a little miss echo to Gerard Henderson (talk about a cut and paste column rip), Mirabella is keen to remind us that we all need a history lesson about floods - but only leftists and socialists and pinko perverts, mind you - as if anyone in Australia who lives or has lived near a river needs a reminder of either the dry times, and the fish dead and bloated in the water and the cracked mud cakes, or the flood times, with the paddy melons bobbing in the muddy whirling water alongside the tree trunks ripped from the soil.

Jeez, the condescension and sheer stupidity of Australian politicians sometimes verges on the insufferable. It seems, according to the arch Mirabella, that Australians indulge in a kind of denialism:

Yet for some reason, prior to this month, many people seemed to adopt an “it couldn’t happen again” approach and turned a blind eye to the lessons of history.

Instead of actively planning for the inevitable reoccurrence of a devastating flood, it appears that many town planners, engineers and above all their political masters, have simply denied the past.

Uh huh. Could someone spare us the lessons of history routine? Or else we'll have to wonder who was paying attention to the lessons of history when the Howard government decided invading Iraq was a jolly good idea.

Perhaps Mirabella can go tell Jeff Seeney the lessons of history, and leave off with the bemusing attempt to pin all the blame on one side.

But of course, and again in the little miss echo style reflecting her devotion that deep thinking master of history Gerard Henderson, all this is by way of a preliminary to Mirabella's own brand of denialism:

Conveniently, the “big wet” is now being blamed on climate change, just as the drought before it was.

But these cyclical weather patterns, with random extreme events, have always been part of our nation’s and indeed our planet’s history. They are not new. They are not more ferocious. They are not “payback” for the Queensland Coal Industry (thanks for that inane contribution Bob Brown).

The link she provides, if you can bear the existential tedium, is to David Penberthy berating Bob Brown and discovering that he's kissing cousin to Pauline Hanson.

You might, by way of an alternative, take a look at News verbals Bob Brown (those dreaded inverted commas, which strangely appear in News Corp stories with monotonous regularity, like a NSW cop with a telephone book to hand), noting how News had Brown saying 'Coal miners caused floods', when what he actually said can be found here in Coal barons should help pay for catastrophes - Brown.

That's journalism right up there with Mirabella's musings.

Meanwhile, Mirabella manages to go all mystical about nature and the natural cyclical rhythms of Gaia:

They are not nature’s way of punishing modern man for his sins. They are simply natural events.

Tragically, more people and property are affected in a modern event than in those of the past because we have so many more people living in flood prone areas.

And because we have, to some extent, either ignored the lessons of the past or somehow arrogantly assumed that we have the power to alter age-old weather phenomena.

Yes, over the aeons of time, mebbe a billion years an aeon, so and thus it has always been, as arrogant humanity challenges gaia and is humbled before her mighty wrath and power. Why even the dinosaur fell, perhaps to an alien asteroid, or perhaps to age-old weather phenomena.

But stay, this is all sounding a tad gloomy. Is there nothing we can do?

... the time will come when, instead of denying the predictability of such an event and feebly arguing that nothing could have been done or, at the other extreme, attributing it all to man’s impact on our planet, we should get out the history books and take a close look at what happened in the past – even before man started pumping CO2 into the atmosphere.

Yes, we can get out our history books, and study Great Floods of the Past.

But isn't there anything else we can do?

We should learn the lessons of the past, know that another extreme event is inevitable, and we should use all our technology and resources to ensure we are better prepared to mitigate the impact of such an event.

Uh huh, learn the lessons of the past? Would that include learning a few lessons about science? And might global warming be contributing a tad, just a teeny weeny bit to the extreme events, their regularity and their severity, just an itty bitty bit, a question we also asked of Sophies' inspiration, desiccated Gerard Henderson?

And here we must pause for a moment's silence, because Mirabella is of course a dog whistler of the first water when it comes to climate change, a denier who talks the talk and walks the walk with the likes of Prodos, and you can find her here trotting out the usual stuff in an interview available as an mp3 (or on the other hand why not listen to the soothing sound of fingernails scratching on a chalk board):

Topics covered included …

Why be a politician? To give a voice to the majority – who are under-represented and treated with contempt by the ruling left-wing elites.

Yes, you know, in the way that John Howard was a ruling left wing elitist for a decade. And he never treated anyone with contempt. Just turned his back on them ...

Journalists see themselves – and are significant players, influencing public debate. But overwhelmingly from a left-wing, collectivist position.

Yes, in the way that all the journalists for the some 70% dominant Murdoch press are just a gaggle of left wing collectivists, Penbo the socialist anti-christ, and The Daily Telegraph and the HUN worse than the Communist Manifesto.

Sophie has copped flak from the media, mainly because of ideological differences.
Press gallery in Canberra as an “in club” who consider themselves participants (activists), not just reporters.
Journalists bred by leftie/collectivist Universities.

Oh dear, collectivist breeding pens for the swine of the fourth estate. Or could it be just that she sounds like a paranoid delusionist with fantasist fear mongering leanings?

Lack of diversity of opinion across the media and academia. Media busily pushes left-wing barrows rather than examining facts.

Ah yes, that bloody Rupert Murdoch, always pushing his left wing barrow. Frightening.

Sophie comments on her boycotting of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s fraudulent Sorry Day event. Why didn’t more Liberal and National Party members join in?

Perhaps because some of them had the decency to be sorry? Even Peter Costello could afford the time out for an amble over the bridge ...

Predicts disastrous future effects on Australian Aborigines of the Rudd “Apology”.

As opposed to a decade of John Howard's rule?

And then finally:

Issues: Anthropogenic Global Warming? The science is NOT settled. AGW, as a hysteria that’s taken on a life of its own. There are politicians on both who actually do not accept AGW, but go along with it, anyway. Scientists with alternative views being ignored.

Uh huh. Well we could go on and on in company with Ms Mirabella, but the sense of a rising tide of paranoia brings a choking sense of not waving, but drowning ...

Oh and by the way here's her final thoughts on the lessons to be learned:

Man won’t stop flooding rains, droughts or bushfires – but we can manage our built environment and environmental assets in a way that ensures their effect is less devastating.

Yes, and climate change?

It would only compound the tragedy if, in our shock and grief, we deny the lessons of history and stumble forward with an “it couldn’t happen again” approach.

Yes, and climate change?

Well the one thing guaranteed by myopic politicians pushing ideological barrows is that they'll be certain to be wrong, in much the same way as Variety proposed that rock and roll would be gone by June in 1955.

Mirabella shows all the closed minded, knee jerk responsiveness and insight of Ken Olson proposing that no one would actually want a computer in their home (and for more of the top 87 bad predictions about the future, go here).

That's why risk analysis and risk management developed, and why it's truly unnerving to think of Mirabella in government and in charge of anything. I guess she could do no worse than Peter Garrett, but what a truly unnerving thought that is too ...