Opinion

Thousands of Northern Rivers residents have been waiting anxiously for 16 months to see whether or not they would receive assistance via home buy-backs, retrofitting or house raising. This week, hundreds are being told they will receive no help from Government ...Members of A Way Forward are calling on the NSW and Federal Governments to urgently provide additional funding to the NRRC to extend their Resilient Homes program.

It should not take 67 days for Biosecurity Queensland (the lead agency for biosecurity) to respond to a report of Fire ants near Toowoomba. “What is needed is a better resourced Biosecurity Queensland and an urgent overhaul of the existing Fire ant program,” Chairman of Property Rights Australia (PRA) Jim Willmott said.

The new WA Aboriginal Cultural Heritage laws will have far reaching consequences to the farming community, many of which are only just coming to light as the WA Department of Heritage workshops the changes across the State. This is how WAFarmers responded to one of the workshops in the central Wheatbelt.        

From 7th July 2017, a temporary ban on the importation of uncooked prawn products was lifted and replaced with import conditions which have consequently failed and once again threatened our great seafood industry. Recent detections of White Spot Disease (WSD) at three prawn farms on the NSW North Coast have the SFF calling on the Federal Government to slam the door shut and permanently ban the importation of raw, uncooked prawns and decapod crustaceans into Australia.

In the face of already numerous adversities, the Northern Rivers of NSW is grappling with yet another concern: food security. Floods, bushfires, and the ongoing impact of the Covid pandemic have exposed vulnerabilities in the region’s food system but also presented an opportunity to re-think how food is grown, distributed and consumed.

It’s not only the timber industry that’s in decline, the government’s forestry agency, the Forest Products Commission (FPC) is also sinking fast. The WA 2023-24 Budget Papers indicate that this commercial business is failing under the Labor Government. It is predicted to continue to make losses in coming years.

A diligent Minister who had applied himself to the detail would have recognised the risks of running with a system that was overly complex and open to abuse. A competent Minister would have delayed the start date when they recognised that neither his department, the IT system, the LACHS or the industry was ready. But Buti did neither.

Promotors of the Voice like to emphasise its benign nature: “We just want to be listened to. We have no veto rights.” A more robust approach has emerged at last week’s writers festival in Alice Springs ... Mr Mayo made it clear that the Voice not only expected to be heard, but that advice given would be carried out by the Parliament and the Executive.

This year, the State Government - as part of its Kangaroo Harvesting Program (KHP) - has set the quota for commercial shooting of kangaroos in the central region of Victoria at 65,100 grey kangaroos. The total 2023 KHP quota for the entire state is 166,750. This means that a significant percentage (around 40 per cent) of kangaroos culled in Victoria will be coming from the central region.

A renowned sustainable river ecologist has identified water management in the Murray–Darling Basin as a model for other countries seeking to support communities and healthy rivers into the future. Addressing the MDBA's annual  River reflections  regional water conference in Narrabri, Professor N LeRoy Poff from the University of Canberra and Colorado State University said the Murray–Darling Basin Plan was a beacon for other nations on how integrated water management at the Basin scale can work.

John O'Donnell reviews eucalypt decline and dieback in relation to the lack of low intensity fire management across Australia. John considers that exclusion of frequent low intensity mild fire is the primary cause of eucalypt decline in Australian native forests and woodlands and this has been inadequately recognised ... This lack of recognition is in itself a major environmental issue and ignores up to 60,000 years of Aboriginal burning practices across the landscape.

David Landini. The Federal Government Productivity Commission held one of a series of public consultation meetings at the Deniliquin RSL on 8/6/23 ... I took the opportunity to publicly describe the political problems associated with the Basin Plan.

John Hassell. The system of land title in Australia that currently proves and protects our right to property is called the Torrens system, which was first introduced in 1858 in South Australia ... one could argue that Native Title has failed to deliver for the simple reason that, unlike freehold title, it does not confer a real property right, a right that the banks place a value on.

The Voice will respect the tradition prohibiting people speaking for other people’s country, according to Thomas Mayo, one of the leading figures in the Yes campaign for the referendum this year. He and fellow campaigner Kerry O’Brien, a former prominent ABC journalist, appeared on the weekend in two well attended sessions at the NT Writers Festival in Alice Springs where they launched their  Voice to Parliament Handbook ... Mr Mayo spoke with Alice Springs News editor, Erwin Chlanda.

The devil’s in the detail of the federal budget’s announcement of a new 10 per cent Biosecurity Protection Levy ... Federal Agriculture Minister, Murray Watt, has proposed raising $47.5 million per year across all producers from the added 10 per cent levy, as part of a ‘sustainable’ funding model for biosecurity protections ... we don’t know what the value proposition is for grains and if it will actually deliver better protections.

Questioning by the WA Opposition’s Mia Davies has revealed that the Forest Products Commission is not planning on issuing any timber contracts from 1 January 2024 until an indeterminant time in the future ... “It is a clear tactic to force businesses out of the sector”, said David Utting, convenor of the Sustainable Forest Industries Roundtable.

A fresh study on the environmental impacts of lab-grown meat has led an internationally recognised expert on the future of cell-based protein, Professor Paul Wood, AO, to confirm the economics of producing lab-grown meat at scale “just won’t work” and will be less sustainable than traditional red meat production systems. The new study from the University of California, Davis, argues the global warming potential of cell-based meat production could be up to 25 times greater than the average for retail beef.