14th January 2010
14th January 2010
I have had to defend the Property Rights position on the Agmates site and Peter Spencer Hunger Strike blog. This has been posted on the PRA group site in Agmates.
First, let me apologise for our website. It is a disgrace and we have been trying for six months to get it updated. Total frustration!
Our barrister has said there is nothing worse than bush lawyers waxing on about the legal system.
I’m not going to ask him for an opinion on the Brigalow Corporation. He is preoccupied. Two days ago we sought leave to appeal to the High Court after our first loss in fourteen appearances in court.
In law as in other things you tend to get what you pay for. In 2006, Property Rights Australia commissioned a leading law firm in Brisbane to get an opinion from Bob Gotteson QC on the chances of a successful challenge in the High Court to the Qld Government’s actions in disallowing a landowner’s rights to manage vegetation on their land. The verdict was “little or no hope”.
This has since been corroborated by an eminent retired Qld QC.
We paid the solicitors $15,000 and Gotteson $25,000.
You don’t pay good money and ignore the advice.
Property Rights Australia in Qld that year staged a protest truck rally in Charleville at a Beattie Government Cabinet meeting with a line of trucks bisecting the town. We held ten town meetings attended by 2000 people, including a monster rally at Gin Gin of 500.
We staged a street march of 500 angry farmers at Exhibition time through the Brisbane CDB in their lunch hour. We followed that with a march of 350 in Rockhampton at another Beattie country cabinet meeting.
These events were protesting exactly the same cause as the Tower of Hope Hunger Strike. We did this without any help from other organisations.
Property Rights Australia members are drilled in how to react to a visit from VM officers. The Qld vegetation Management Acts were designed specifically to make your position indefensible. That is their boast.
Your defence virtually has to rely on sloppy administration of the law.
This repressive regime has been in place for 10 years and with the help of green preferences, succeeding governments have been able to avoid any electoral retribution.
The success of the ETS campaign, the Tower of Hope and Noel Pearson’s onslaught in the Give Us a Go, Let Us Grow campaign to which Property Rights Australia has made a substantial financial contribution, leads to new hope after years of frustration.
Professor Suri Ratnapala is regarded by the extreme environmental opposition as a hopelessly compromised right winger and after supplying him with two lots of information on the Brigalow Corporation his answer is still the same – no foundation whatsoever. I repeat if you can come up with evidence from lawyers with equal standing I will suggest the board spend money to sort it out.
Otherwise we don’t need the Brigalow Corporation Red Herring.
Regards
Ron Bahnisch
Ron Bahnisch, Chairman
Property Rights Australia Inc
Phone: 07 49213430
Fax: 07 49213870
Email: pra1@bigpond.net.au
http://www.propertyrightsaustralia.org/
STAND YOUR GROUND