I sometimes have to double check myself for irony coming off the page but the sentences such as the original Aborigines 'sailed' to Australia and casting them as 'graziers' seems not so much ironic as bizarre.

Viv, I'm with you 100 per cent on bureaucrats and Brunswick Street Greenies but, alas, the Aborigines were hunters and gatherers.

I sense Viv's frustration. I remember eons ago attending a private school and the children of graziers arrived each term in new mercedes benz and rolls royces. Strangely, we didn't see many of the 'original graziers'.

Wow! It's quite a feat of selective myopia to write an entire article about Australia's screwed-up farming sector without once mentioning globalisation. Unlimited tree clearing and grass growing and water rights and greenie bashing are never going to bring back all those farmers' mercs.

Farmers are caught in a bind. They vote for the ultra-conservative political parties who are ideologically committed to global free trade, deregulation, privatisation and big business. These in turn are committed to driving down the value of farm labour and productivity, so that small agricultural players can no longer compete in a global market - thus paving the way for global agribusiness to step in and buy up farms at bargain basement prices. Their mates in the corporate media have the job of demonising the very political parties and movements that are fighting and challenging this process every step of the way.

Killarney,

Spot on!

So….. is this article written with tongue firmly planted in cheek or does the author have some very serious hangups??

I don’t think it is a TIC article. (:>?

One of the great faults with the way that many people think about stuff like this is their highly polarised thought processes. In their minds, it has to be all or nothing.

All greenies are bad, all bureaucrats are bad, all urbanised people are fools!

Viv, I think that you immediately destroy your credibility with this sort of expression.

The author betrays a tremandous ignorance by the following statement:

"Every species in Australia arrived here as a "feral" invader, colonized vacant territory and pushed aside weaker occupants."

Every species in Australia did not arrive here as a "feral" invader. Australia is a large land mass surrounded by ocean, and many of the species that exist in Australia evolved here. Most of the Greenies he is so vehement against have enough knowledge of biological science to be aware of that. They understand the relation between species and habitat. Indigenous Australian species evolved to adapt to the habitat, and the habitat was changed by the species. Of course it never is a static situation as Greenies and others interested in conservation are aware of. It is easy for the ignorant to maintain that others are just as ignorant.

There was no vacant territory to colonize [sic] as life exists everywhere on the Australian landmass. Some Australian species such as the various species of kangaroo have done quite well and have held there own against species that have arrived more recently.

The author might do well to learn some basic biology.

Viv perhaps you should remember that attempting to undertake traditional European farming practices in Australia was always going to be a difficult task.

Western Australia is a great case in point. Great swathes of former woodland have been cleared since European settlement, now tenuously supporting wheat and sheep farming. Yields are becoming more and more difficult to maintain without greater and greater inputs of fossil fuelled derived herbicides, pesticides and fertiliser.

Historical rainfall has dropped in correlation with land clearing and most of the natural micro-climates have been disrupted, not to mention the problem of increasing salt in the landscape from tree clearing.

To blame greenies, bureaucrats and those urban dwellers is a naive approach to a much bigger problem.

Back to school for you Viv.