By LAWRENCE SPRINGBORG
WHY is it, in a country as well-resourced and privileged as Australia, do we undermine our advantages and opportunities out of complete ignorance, or just dumb politics?
We seem only too keen to export our conscience in some sort of perverse pursuit of a whacky green political agenda.
It was bought home to me recently, when I walked into a train subway supermarket in the sprawling city of Shanghai – a city with a population of 24 million people, greater than Australia’s. I did so to gain an appreciation of how other people live and even more critically, where and how the locals source their food. My attention was drawn to a large open meat display refrigerator. It contained solely Australian product, labelled “Aussie Beef, Natural and Safe”
The natural clean and green advantage of our Australian grown food products are appreciated beyond our own shores.
Why is it then, the current Qld Government and the so-called green movement, including the Greens party want to demonise the land management practices of the Queensland farmers and graziers who grow that very food? If you listened to their rhetoric, you would be forgiven for believing that vast tracts of Queensland farmland is little more than a brutalised and pillaged moonscape, drained of its very last vestiges of fertility and life.
In actual fact our land is well managed and regulated, hence our fine international reputation.
The dishonesty of those aforementioned groups knows no boundaries. In August, the Queensland Parliament will debate appalling legislation, designed to strip farmers of their ability to manage vegetation on their land in order to grow the high quality food and fibre we need to feed and clothe ourselves into the future.
As our population expands and the opportunities increase for us to capitalise on this positive image, these laws will strangle that opportunity. Consequently, demand will increase and supply will be restricted, affecting jobs and driving up prices.
Displaying the height of hypocrisy, when this fact is raised with them, the proponents of these laws say they don’t care. Because we can import the food we need. The following point seems to be lost on them. Import our food from countries where they clear-fell their forests and have limited if any control, over the chemicals used, not to mention land management practices far less environmentally friendly than our own? It’s unconscionable to export jobs and opportunities overseas, because we’re being blackmailed by a few inner city green activists, who deliberately bathe themselves in ignorance about the reality of where their food comes from and how it is produced. These people pull the strings of a minority Labor Government, lacking the courage to stand up for the jobs and food security of Queenslanders. I for one will not support these laws.
