Letter to the Editor:
Politicians of the calibre in the Queensland Labor Party are without conscience or honesty in trying to reverse the onus-of-proof law. To single out Queensland landholders and custodians for future generations is beneath contempt. Nowhere else in this State or Australia is this the case – even if you are a murderer or drug dealer, you are innocent until proven guilty. To be left in a position where you have to fight a legal system publicly funded with limited personal funds while deemed to guilty is both intolerable and unjust.
It shows a profound sense of their vindictiveness toward a single section of society rather than representing all Queensland citizens fairly. For over a century the Australian Labor Party has regarded the agricultural sector and the people who work in it as their enemy and has acted accordingly.
The Labor party does not have a long view or strategy for the protection of Queensland’s environment. Their actions are those of desperation to be re-elected to government rather than environmental concerns.
I say this because they are hell bent on alienation of the one group of people who do their best to preserve soil and vegetation in this state. They want to crucify landholders because the majority do do not vote Labor and are seen as expendable politically. They would rather garner favour with the WWF and the Wilderness Society who are supposedly their allies in nature conservation. The green groups on the ground have to work with agricultures land owners and do achieve positive outcomes for land conservation.
In practical terms farmers and graziers do more for nature conservation than any other single group in this state, as they are on the spot to look after nature in this state. I have spent some 40 years in agriculture myself controlling weeds, erosion and animal pests and planting trees alongside my income making agricultural activities. It galls me no end to be preached to by politicians and others who do not do half what farmers do to preserve their environment and livelihoods.
Sure we clear trees but that is to produce an income and to feed our nation and export to feed a hungry world. But clearing trees is not the be-all-end-all of nature conservation or lack there-of. Sure we need trees but we need a lot more than just trees to prosper as humans in this world.
The ever increasing consumption of resources and the production of waste and pollution are a much bigger problem than tree clearing is for nature. Yet there is a lot less effort put into these problems by our political leaders.
Politicians approach all societies’ problems from the point of view of re-election and rarely from the point of fixing problems permanently. To bash your opponents is seen as a much better for chance of re-election than solving worldly problem.
Politicians by enlarge grandstand on important issues and demonise their social and political opponents to get elected and leave it to the community to fix the difficult problems.
- Richard Holme, Malanda.
