The Fourth Season Read Online Free PDF

more of a grin this time, and so lacking in humour that it made my stomach turn.
    I asked Don if he’d mind going back to the beginning.
    â€˜There’s the short version and the long version.’
    â€˜Try the long one,’ I said.
    A student had phoned him needing help with an assignment. She told him she’d been put through to him by the department switchboard, and that her assignment was on biodiversity in Bass Strait’s underwater canyons.
    â€˜I was interested because we actually had very little information about them, the canyons I mean. If science students could help us by researching a few details, then that might be a help. “A free kick”, I said. I remember she laughed at that.’
    â€˜I told her I was doubtful we’d have anything that wasn’t in the scientific papers she could access through the ANU, but she was welcome to come over and have a look. And that’s what she did. I sat her down in front of my computer, and went off to a meeting. It was only supposed to go for twenty minutes, but it ended up lasting over an hour.’
    Don paused again, and I could see him framing the next point, choosing his words. ‘We’d chatted for a while on the phone, and she’d told me about the group she belonged to. She didn’t seem to have preconceived ideas about public servants, and I was conscious of the need to improve our relationship with the conservation movement. This was when negotiations over the proposed marine park were at a delicate point. We hadn’t exactly won over the environmental activists. I saw giving Laila a hand as an opportunity to build a bridge.’
    It was the first time he had actually said her name. He licked dry lips, then told me the rest in a frank, though solemn manner. Laila had got hold of his password somehow, and had used her hour at his computer well. The oil and gas companies wanted the freedom to explore promising sites in areas overlapping the park boundaries, and the commercial fishing industry was pushing its rights too. Huge unexplored canyons, lace coral, sponge beds and seamounts weren’t about to be sacrificed by conservation groups, or by Don and his team either. Having parks declared multi-use, the green groups argued, would hardly protect them at all. Worse, such a classification would fool the public into thinking that unique marine species and habitats were being preserved. Proposals and counter proposals had been flying back and forth, deals had been brokered, then undermined by one group or another.
    â€˜I could have papered the walls twice over if I’d printed out the emails.’
    The information Laila gave to the press painted a picture of the Environment Department bending over backwards to satisfy the oil and gas and fishing industries. I recalled that Gail Trembath had been at the forefront of the media accusers. It had put her in good odour with Brian Fitzpatrick and his office.
    â€˜Why wasn’t Laila named at the time?’ I asked.
    â€˜I’m coming to that. You see, some of these green groups refuse to enter into any kind of a debate with industry. They don’t seem to understand that if no consensus is reached, then there’ll be problems all the way along. There were always going to be some multi-use, and some total sanctuary zones. That was, and still is, the government’s position. The task is to get agreement in the negotiation stage, so that once the reserves have been declared there’s no immediate incentive to break the rules. And multi-use doesn’t mean open slather for fishing either.’
    Don spoke as though his opinion still mattered, as though he was still in the thick of things. When he’d got back from his meeting, Laila had greeted him with a grateful smile and promised that her group would give his team their full support.
    â€˜She leaked the negotiations, quotes and all. Well, you remember, don’t you? You remember what it