Just when we thought that Tony Abbott was making a genuine, if belated, attempt to shed his identity as Dr No, the prophet of negativity, his old instincts have come roaring back.

Not content with promising to abolish the carbon and mining taxes, to dump the science ministry and the Climate Commission and remove the schoolkids’ bonus and the low income superannuation contribution (and that’s just for starters), our inventive Prime Minister has now discovered a new way to reverse history: he plans to undeclare a few national parks.

Not just any national parks, mind; the new World Heritage ones in Tasmania, painstakingly negotiated over months, even years, as part of an agreement between the forestry industry, the green movement and the state government which actually seems to be working. And he has made this exciting promise just a few days before a state election, which his Liberal allies were already a good bet to win.

To be precise, Abbott is going to strip World Heritage listing from some 74,000 hectares of the Tasmanian forest wilderness, and he has hinted that there could be more, much more, to come. As he put it in a philosophical discourse to the national Forest Works dinner in Canberra last week, “I’m all in favour of protecting wilderness in proportion, I am all in favour of that.”

Well, that’s nice. It would make you think that with less than four percent of Australia’s land mass returned to national parks, what has been conserved might be safe. But Abbott went on: “We have quite enough national parks, we have quite enough forest locked up already, in fact in an important respect we have too much locked up forest.”

Just what this important respect was, Abbott did not then make clear, but he explained precisely what he was going to do about it: “When I say Australia is going to be open for business, I mean open for business for the forestry industry.” So line up customers, sharpen your axes and fuel up your chain saws: World Heritage national parks available for sale and processing.

Abbott also revealed the underlying principle behind his vandalism, praising his anti-environment minister Greg Hunt for understanding that “the environment is meant for man and not just the other way around.” He explained: “Man and the environment are meant for each other. The last thing we do – or the last thing we should want – if we want to genuinely improve our environment is to want to ban men and women from enjoying it, is to ban men and women from making the most of it, and that’s what you do. You intelligently make the most of the good things God has given us.”

So there you have it, straight from the bible, and from the Old Testament at that: the earth and all the things in it are made for man, to use, exploit and ultimately destroy as he sees fit. So let’s get on with it. Captain Catholic is back.