Spoiling for a Fight or Fighting over the Spoils? Resource and Environmental Politics and Policies in Australia towards 2000

Abstract

This chapter examines some issues in natural resources and environ ment politics and policies in Australia in the latter part of the twentieth century. The dominant pattern of the historical relationship between society and the environment in Australia has been summed up by the title of Geoffrey Bolton’s Spoils and Spoilers,¹ and recently the dominant political pattern has been characterised by conflict between development and environmental interests, most notably over wilderness areas in southwest Tasmania and North Queensland as the environmental movement has sought to limit the spread of despoliation.