Fitting, it would have been, if there was a ferry sailing about on Sydney Harbour today, bearing the name of Ian Kiernan, the environmentalist and yachtsman whose love of the lapping waters helped inspire his greatest creation, the Clean Up Australia campaign.
Kiernan, who lost his battle with cancer this week, would no doubt love to be represented by one of Sydney’s favourite boats sliding around on the scenic waters where he started and ended his life.
But a gummnt knew better.
So last year first Ferry McFerryface, then May Gibbs, were chosen by the NSW Transport Minister to adorn the vessel.
And yesterday, fitting it was for the Prime Minister to lead tributes after Kiernan died.
Unfortunately, and somewhat sadly, the very same Prime Minister used Kiernan’s passing as an opportunity to rationalise the government’s non-interventionist role in reducing environmental pollution.
“The thing that I think Ian did more than anything else was tap us all on the shoulder and say, ‘hey, we've got to take care of this – this is our responsibility to do this, it's not the government’s, it’s ours, as Australians’,” the Prime Minister said.
Using the occasion of the death of a great Australian to push a political view that reducing our enormous litter and pollution problem is not the job of companies who produce plastics, and it’s not the job of governments to legislate?
And instead it’s the job of individuals to pick up someone else’s rubbish?
A bit cynical, if you ask me. And it’s a misrepresentation.
While Kiernan demonstrated the effectiveness of a community-driven event – Clean Up Sydney Harbour on Sunday, January 8, 1989 saw 40,000 volunteers turn out to help collect over 5000 tonnes – he didn’t believe it wasn’t up to governments.
In fact, he wanted Clean Up Australia Day to challenge governments to do more, using refuse collected as the irrefutable proof there’s a problem.
“We need to continue to challenge our governments to implement effective waste management and recycling programs to reduce the amount of wasted resource that ends up in our precious environment,” he said in April this year.
So, not so fast ScoMo. Learn the lesson from this great Australian and do whatever you can about environmental pollution.
If you’re in a gummnt, then do it from there.
Enough of that. Let’s sign Kiernan off with the words of broadcaster Philip Adams, who called him “The Greatest Garbo since Greta”.
Ben Langford is a Fairfax journalist