PROPERTY RIGHTS AUSTRALIA
Members’ Newsletter
2nd April 2015
Dear Members
AGM
The AGM will be held during Beef Week at Rockhampton on Thursday 7th May, 5pm at the CQ Leagues Club, Lion Creek Road.
The CQ Leagues Club is very close to the Beef Week site and if you park in the High School car park there will be no need to drive from one venue to the other. Please be there by 4.45pm as the meeting will start on the dot at 5pm.
New Board Members
There are a few board members who have served on the board for many years. In the interests of good succession planning it is good to have someone new coming onto the board each year and learn from the experience of those who have been there for a while. It also avoids the problem of an unforseen circumstance when a few of the longer serving board members may have to leave at once leaving behind a vacuum of knowledge. Currently there is room for a couple extra people to come onto the board. Please consider putting up your hand.
Membership and member profiles
There are some memberships still outstanding but even more who have paid membership but not returned the Member Profile form. Filling out this form is a one off. There will be no increase in membership due by filling it out, you will continue to pay by enterprise but it will allow PRA to know exactly how many members we do have. The board is not interested in unnecessary paper work; we would not have asked you to fill this out unless it would serve the purpose of improving representing your interests.
The AGM will be a member’s only meeting, so you will need to pay your membership before then. Remember if you have been badly affected by drought we can make arrangements for you if you wish to remain a member. Give Tricia Agar or the office a call.
PRA relies exclusively on membership subscriptions and donations from our members to operate.
Tree Clearing
Sometimes the PRA’s work is in the background and not credited. The information in the editorial of the March 26 Queensland Country Life was from information the board had supplied. I had also submitted the following letter which wasn’t printed. The board has to acknowledge that we have had a very good run with having material published in the QCL.
The Queensland Country Life article published late February, ‘Drought drives mulga hunger’, warned of extremist environmental groups using the increased tree clearing rates in the SLATS report due in August to pressure the Palaszczuk Government to introduce new restrictions on vegetation management. We didn’t have to wait that long as last week a group of “concerned scientists” had the opinion article published, ‘Land clearing in Queensland triples after policy ping pong’ that used the QCL article dishonestly as they omitted the reasons given for the increased rates.
No mention was made of the largest contributor because of drought, the feeding of the regenerating acacia, mulga, as invaluable fodder to livestock and also other contributing factors such as CSG pipelines and extensive infrastructure, mine sites and urban encroachment. This did not fit the environmental paradigm as the article falsely claimed that the Vegetation Management Act had been rapidly watered down by the Newman government bringing back broadacre land clearing for agriculture.
To the contrary the Newman government amendments were modest including the restoration of basic tenets of our legal system, civil rights that the wider community take for granted but were denied to landowners under the Vegetation management Act. The “concerned scientists” berate the removal of high value regrowth from the Act which is a nonsense invented by environmentalists and ignores that their high value regrowth is encroaching on high value pastures.
The “concerned scientists” article is no less than a beat up and points to what we can expect in the future – no scientific discernment of the facts; activist intent of influencing government; alarmist statements; very broad associations to pull at the heart strings and the favourite trump card of the environmentalist of a calamity about to fall upon cute and cuddly animal.
The article recites the so-called “litany” of perceived problems of land clearing as if they are automatic in every instance and without background which points out instances where improved grass cover from clearing actually decreases erosion and improves water quality but that does not fit within the environmental paradigm.
Most agricultural land clearing is undertaken on land that had been cleared once before. The fact is that most agricultural production essential to feed our population by necessity occurs off land that is thinned of its vegetation or a large percentage cleared. Land has been set aside for different purposes and its time environmentalists reserve full conservation management to National Parks only and don’t transfer these expectations to agricultural production systems.
http://theconversation.com/land-clearing-in-queensland-triples-after-policy-ping-pong-38279
State Forests
In the March 19 QCL there was a small article about no mention of Forestry in the new ministerial portfolios of the Palaszczuk Government. Again this arose from inquiries initiated by PRA. People with forest grazing leases have expressed concern to PRA about shortened lease periods and unreasonable conditions being applied.
Conference Date Claimer
2015 PRA Conference will be held August 22 at Mayfair Ridge Tavern, 11 Mayfair Drive, EMERALD,
Regards
Dale Stiller
Dale Stiller, Chairman
Property Rights Australia
Phone: 07 49213430
Fax: 07 49213870
Email: pra1@bigpond.net.au
www.propertyrightsaustralia.org
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