27th January 2015
Anastacia Palaszczuk’s campaign launch speech undertook to bring back in full force tree clearing tyranny. In their respective debates agriculture spokesman Anthony Lynham vacillated on the subject and treasury spokesperson, Curtis Pitt made unsubstantiated, scurrilous claims of its production value when the previous Labor government inflicted these laws on Queensland.
These Opposition words are a mixture of blatant errors, misleading quotes and total disregard for the distress, destruction and despair that the ALP has enforced on landholders during their last term in office.
The current State Government did not rescind the Vegetation Management Act as claimed. They have amended some sections of it, notably to give landholders the same legal rights that are enjoyed by murderers, thieves and rapists, rights which the former ALP Government had denied us. They have amended the section to allow us to control regrowth on land that we have already made capital improvements on so we can continue to produce food for your table. They have amended the section that allows a quick response for clearing to feed starving stock in drought times.
Curtis Pitt should refer to the 2005 ABARE study on the impacts of the Labor Government’s Vegetation Management Act (VMA) on Local Communities. That Study found that the VMA had cost Murweh Shire $180M. So please commit that ALP in Government will return that $180M to Murweh Shire and every other Queensland landholder who was robbed.
Also a Departmental Report, that Premier Beattie ordered to be shredded, found the VMA cost the Queensland Community $900M and that excluded the cost of foregone clearing.
The ALP want us all to forget their callous destruction and see them as reasonable people in spite of promising to strengthen or reintroduce laws which have been oppressively applied in the past.
The interests, who support these laws, gladly eat, drink and wear the produce of farmers every day. That the majority of those products by necessity are produced on cleared land does not even register on the minds of those who demand environmental protection over food production, even when their mouths are full of food.
Ashley McKay
Vice-Chairman
Property Rights Australia Inc
For further information contact:
Dale Stiller, 956 Upper Downfall Creek Road GULUGUBA QLD 4418
Ph: (07) 46 282 173 Email: dstil@bigpond.com
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PRA is a non-profit organisation of primary producers and business people from rural
areas defending the rights of property owners
www.propertyrightsaustralia.org