Opinion

Anyone tracking the media will see the Albanese government is in trouble, from the failed referendum through to promises to reduce power bills by $275 by 2025, to get wages growing faster than inflation and not to raid peoples super, it has a growing list of failed and broken promises ... You can see why the hard heads in government are quietly looking for a way to kick the live sheep trade issue down the road just as they have done with the Murray Darling promise.

Vic Jurskis comments on a research article on the causes of morbidity and mortality in rescued koala joeys ... "academics don't see the big picture of forest ecology and management ... the scientific solution would be to restore frequent mild burning in the bush ... "

Basin states and the Murray–Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) are jointly celebrating 20 years since the historic ‘first step’ decision to establish The Living Murray program. A forerunner of the 2012 Basin Plan, The Living Murray (TLM) program was initiated in response to compelling evidence of severe and long-term decline in the health of the Murray River system.

Communities who carried the burden of a Basin Plan corrupted by politics are once again looking down the barrel of mass buybacks. The impacts of water buybacks cannot be understated as communities were ripped apart, football clubs closed, huge areas of food production and habitat provision were dried out, industries retracted, driving increased costs and undermining sustainability, and the price of water was sent out of reach of many young farmers.

John Hassell. The ban on live sheep is inherently unfair and Australians can see it. Roger Cook can see it. Let’s hope for the Albanese Government’s sake they recognise it too before the next election. Underestimate Australia’s farmers at your peril.

In this article Robert Onfray details the lack of environmental scrutiny of the wind factories and pumped hydro projects built or planned in Queensland as the state sanctions the wholesale clearing of remnant native forest on the coastal ranges straddling the Great Dividing Range ... 10,178 hectares of koala and 6,744 hectares of greater glider habitats are set to disappear if all the renewable proposals in Queensland are approved ... "blunt force trauma" is to be used to euthanise injured animals or those that cannot be relocated, particularly koalas.

The environmental, economic and social value of water to our floodplain communities is once again washed away under a tide of political games ... Once again, South Australia leads the Feds around by the nose while glossing over the impacts of the barrages, the south east drainage scheme, the topography and even the estuarine nature of the area.  

The WA State government is due to introduce its new firearms laws next year with the explicit aim of driving down the number of recreational shooters (approximately 60,000) along with the number of licensed firearms (360,000) in the State ... While there is a correlation between the number of licensed gun owners in the community and firearms related deaths - think the United States (high) vs Japan (low) - no evidence has been provided that reducing and capping the number of guns held by each recreational shooter makes any difference at all.

Here we go again, yet another example of a live export case in the courts that has fallen over because the emotional rhetoric does not match up to the facts.This is what happens when animal activists and activist ministers come together and attempt to use the legal system to end a legitimate trade.

Occasionally I come across a speech in parliament by one of our elected representatives that needs to be shared loud and wide.   The following was made by Western Australian Liberal Senator Slade Brockman, President of the Senate, ex farmer, lawyer, PGA staffer and tireless defender of the people who make their income from primary industries. All those who oppose the live export trade should take the time to read what he has to say.

Promoting a political agenda that costs jobs and ruins the livelihoods of people in rural communities has been described as "a sad reflection on the priorities of our city-based political elite." ... Mr Lolicato said the MDBA’s own socio-economic community profiles show job losses, again primarily from water buybacks, at more than 3,200.

John O'Donnell believes that many of the forested fire grounds across south eastern Australia are way too dangerous to fight bushfires and for firefighter safety and that, as a society, we have learnt very little following 2019/20 bushfires and bushfires before that, especially in regards to bushfire mitigation and safety. John has identified 21 main areas of concern in relation to bushfire firefighter safety in forested areas.

With the Senate set to decide the fate of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, an alliance of First Nation leaders, irrigators, farmers, ecologists and environmental organisations today travelled to federal parliament to urge politicians from across the political spectrum to deliver for inland rivers and communities.    

I recently received a copy of a letter sent from the Federal Department of Agriculture to a farming family in Beverley in response to their letter to the Minister for Agriculture, Murray Watt, asking him to explain the basis of the government’s policy to phase out live exports. Unfortunately, the Minister was too busy searching for the magical new markets for mutton that he promises exist, which will replace live export sheep, to have the time to put his own name to a reply, so he delegated the response to his loyal department.

We all know that the federal Labor government has set itself the impossible task of reducing carbon emissions by 43 per cent by 2030, plus setting itself a target of achieving 82 per cent renewables across the power grid ... Hence the recent announcement by federal anti-agriculture Minister, Murray Watt, offering up the livestock sector as one industry which could be made into an unwilling sacrificial lamb to the climate change gods by imposing rather than hoping for emissions cuts.

Over the past 45 years, Australia has lost over 15 per cent of its pastoral and farming estate ... The data shows a consistent trend of diminishing agricultural land since 1976 when Australia boasted nearly 490 million hectares that was either arable, dedicated to permanent crops or suitable for grazing. So where did the "agricultural" land go?

Imagine filling up the farm fuel tanks for harvest if the price hit, say, $3 or $4 a litre, or worse, you were rationed to half the fuel you brought last November/December as a result of a supply shock. It’s a real risk, something I wrote about three years ago when I suggested the solution was to increase the level of domestic reserve storage of refined diesel and petrol by encouraging farmers and miners to keep 12 months of storage on their properties.