PEOPLE power will take to Cape York later this month has hundreds converge on Lakeland to send a message to the Palaszczuk Government for fair and equitable representation.
The Beating the Bush public meeting will be held at the Lakeland Sports Ground on June 18, from 11am.
The meeting is being hosted by Cape York Sustainable Futures, AgForce and the Lakeland Progress Association, and is expected to attract hundreds of people.
Property rights lawyer David Kempton, an advocate for the Cape and former Member for Cook, said the meeting would discuss four issues being tree clearing laws, water, agriculture and fair representation.
“Billy Gordon held meeting with (Deputy Premier) Jackie Trad and (Environment Minister) Steven Miles and a very select group of invited people from Cape York which numbered about ten and that was the response to the public consultation over the vegetation management, so there was a real outcry from people that hadn’t been given a forum to get information and get their views put forward other than the committee process,” Mr Kempton said.
“Its not a big protest rally; it really is a day of giving information and getting some messages back to government.
“Twenty years ago there was a big protest blockade of Cape York against the then Labour Government over the east coast wilderness zone and a whole lot of other environmental-based initiatives so 20 years down the track they are still fighting the same issues.”
Mr Kempton said the government’s agenda was about “locking up future opportunities in agriculture”.
“This is where the vegetation management is heading,” Mr Kempton said.
“People are getting really angry and I think its right across the board from what I am picking up from the city people, they think this is a really unjust law because of its retrospectivity and taking away of rights.”
Mr Kempton said last week’s announcement of funding for a feasibility study into a water supply in Lakeland and the progressive sealing of the Peninsula Developmental Road to Weipa represented real opportunities for Cape York communities to move out of the welfare cycle.
“If that happens and we have already secured the money to get the road sealed to Weipa, we could double productivity in Lakeland and all those properties that the Aboriginal people own they suddenly become really profitable,” Mr Kempton said.
“It opens up a whole opportunity for all of Cape York to get out of this welfare cycle that they have been stuck in for so long.
“It’s stuff they know.
“Growing cattle and selling them, Aboriginal people have been involved in that industry for years.”