While modernisation is breeding a culture of disconnection across the world using technology, Mother Nature is showing her superiority, but if our leaders and public are becoming even more disconnected from their senses, will they understand her vital message?
It’s been weeks of terrible tragedy for our people on the land and the large regional towns the land encroaches. Fires fuelled by what I see as the Queensland government’s lack of land care and management in our national parks and state forests are said to have swept across a million hectares of Queensland.
The “advice” is accusing climate change, needing more resources and to be prepared. Isn’t this what our landholders have been in tune with for generations? Aware of the fire dangers, preparing for what could happen ahead, with no two seasons ever being the same?
There is no one methodology as environment minister Leeanne Enoch looks to, that comes with being in tune with the daily changes of the environment and the management of land that is required.
In the same breath, the Queensland government decided to remove agricultural programs out of schools and rural based agricultural colleges, removing more education for future land managers – aren’t these the type of resources that we need in the advice being spruiked?
Wouldn’t it be in our best interest to encourage the people who will be on the ground fighting the fires? And from the government’s budget perspective, you don’t even need to pay these people to go out and fight fires on their land.
No one is willing to fight a fire from their desk in Brisbane, but their policies continue to bog down the local bush fire brigade volunteers, who are disappearing as well.
At the very least the Prime Minister has started an independent inquiry into the new vegetation management laws being a cause and future fuel danger, but why does there need to be a catastrophic disaster before the voices that have been chanting for months are suddenly starting to make sense?
Will they ever realise they are not preparing for fire, are reducing their resources by diminishing landholder numbers and industry, and that their poorly motivated decisions pose much more of a detrimental effect on our environment than climate change itself?
– Sara Westaway, livestock and property marketing