Killarney and Poirot

Your posts are bizarre.. Australia had an extensive system of protecting agriculture, called agarian socialism.. it was part of a vast system of political back scratching, crony capitalism and deals in the Melbourne club that ruled until well into the 1980s. The bulk of it including most of the agricultural protection has been swept away for the very good reason that it was just too expensive to maintain, not to mention counter productive.

While you may romaticise the small farmer we were basically paying to keep him or her in operation. A point you should remember..

The most recent invaders are the foreigners buying up our land.

I don't care who they are: Chinese, US, UK, New Zealand.......

I hear about more and more countries in which foreigners can buy NO land. Samoa, Indonesia, Switzerland, etc etc.

How would we go buying a large farm in China? Or the US?

Let's keep our land for our children and grandchildren.
Tony Abbott was right. Foreign investment is welcome- as long as there are stricter controls. This Foreign Investment Review Board is a joke.

Australia for the Australians.

Curmudgeon,

Killarney has offered a valuable and valid observation (though I'm not keen on the 'merc' shot) - our farmers are increasingly under threat from the impacts of globalisation, free trade, level playing field and a host of vested-interest lobby groups, as well as a continuation of governments focused myopically on GNP, balance of trade and international back-scratching. Just as in the mining sector, our principal agricultural interests are heading down the path of multinational domination.

As for your shot about farming subsidies, you forget that, prior to the rise and rise of the mining boom, Oz did ride on the sheep's back - heavily dependent on our agricultural exports, and hence some subsidisation was indeed highly productive. You also forget that both the US and Europe have been, and remain, far more involved in agricultural subsidisation than Oz has ever been. Go figure?

The author's piece may be imperfect as to historical fact, and even in the failure to recognise the value of trees of the right kind and in the right place, but our farming sector is under threat - from mining, from potential damage to water sources from 'fracking', from pests and hazard emanating from poorly managed national parks, and from some segments of native vegetation conservation regulations. (Inability to hazard-reduce roadside verges without a permit - who would figure?)

Do our bureaucrats and politicians pay sufficient attention to the needs and best interests of our farming sector, and to the contribution of this sector to our present and future food security interests? It would seem not. Orange groves bulldozed because of concentrate imports; $3/kilo beef on the hook and $8-$36/Kg in Coles; milk and other fresh produce on sale at near production cost - the farmer forced into a near loss on every Kg/Litre. Mercs? In your dreams.

City jobs and wages pull the young off the land, away from the slave labour farming reality; independent farmers an endangered species; tax lurks convert farms to scrub; private equity and capital markets reign supreme, and overseas auto manufacturers gain short-term subsidies. Welcome to the 'future bus'.

This article is the most upside down thinking!

Graziers and farmers et al are the FERALS. Ferals with GUNS.

That means if you demand justice, whether you are a tree, a species, a freeman , a slave or most of all a native Australian you will be cut down or shot.

Good riddance to Australian farmers. As prime minister I would give aboriginals the right to walkabout North to South to follow the Sun and THEIR timeless and culture sustaining Thermodynamic Entropy gradients. I would nationalise farming with the best Chinese and European farmers as managers and workers. Further, schoolchildren will be rotated on and off these farms & indeed Australia's mines and great assets like Lake Eyre for biodiversity remediation & educational experience & instruction at regular intervals for coursework. And in drought or plenty all our farm workers will get full pay and benefits but not the mercedes.

Additionally, high water use options like cotton and rice will be fully removed from vulnerable water tables to Nth Australian river schemes along with employment opportunities.

The tide of biased & unnecessary immigration is undermining Australia's precious historical Anglo history. If we are to lose it to attrition and multi uncultural invason as time and foolish Government decisions destine, then it would be wiser to make drastic moves ourselves & now. Either way farmers are redundant, outmoded and obstructive. Every other Caltex and Ford worker get stuff all and the boot. Why farmers aren't treated the same way is just ludicrous. If they fit in with the new paradigm they would be a national asset but currently they are leaden weights in our Economic, Environmental, Indigenous and Justice and Sustainability objectives.

This will be competitive with Chinese communism, but every bit as capitalist as a Caltex mass redundancy decision or NSW Govt.
Barangaroo or M7 jobs boondoggles.

IE we'll still be Australian.

But change must come at our hands.

Its TIME!

...I stand as one to applaud this article; and with pride now, (as never before), see my long and continuous (at times un-illustrious) role in society as a feral, finally acknowledged and legitimised by science. I can also attest to negative effect of any stand against the bureaucrats, as often confining and constraining; and I don’t profess to be a farmer!

...Be assured the authors’ is a more universal complaint against official interference, proven over and over in all walks of life, by those surviving determinists unable to co-exist in a world overruled and overregulated.

Well tonight I am going home to kiss the wife and dog, have a feed, turn the heater on and thank God I live now on this 'devastated' British ruined country. I will be thankful I am not sitting by a fire in nakedness wondering if I can sharpen my spear enough to feed the family tomorrow. On the way home I might drop into one of the 'évil ' corporations where I can buy some nice meat and milk. I might even thank God that it was the British who came here and despite their imperfections have built along with other immigrants a land that most of the world want to come to.