I certainly agree with your third point, but I doubt we’d be looking in the same places.

Part of my frustration has been a seeming lack of appreciation of the power relations as they currently exist. The paper by Whelan and Lyons.

Take Imogen Zethoven, QCC coordinator from 1995 to 2000 who believed “there shouldn’t be any landclearing at all.” In areas where there is strong regrowth that could mean almost the entire loss of productive capacity of a grazing property over time. In a recent stoush between Aborigines and the TWS a representative of the latter said that trees were more important than people.

Whelan and Lyons see the Beattie legislation of 1999 as marking a signal change in vegetation management.

This heralded a shift in the regulation of land use by allowing the state to intervene in private land use decisions.

So then:

The introduction of this legislation sparked a furious backlash from rural communities, manifest in rates of ‘panic clearing’ that were previously unseen in Queensland’s history. This devastating response reflected a failure in the legislation to engender strong community support. As such, this marked an important turning point in the campaign.

In that context apparently the old notion of cooperation between stakeholders was still meant to work. In fact in local committees we are told by Zethoven there was “open conflict between committee members, noncooperation, screaming matches and intimidation” while “there was an environmental holocaust going on”.

It is no wonder then that the environmental groups withdrew from Beattie’s ‘cooperative’ model and decided on a combined strategy to influence power at the very top. In this they were successful. Subsequent iterations of the vegetation management act were directed at even more precise controls over what can be done on privately owned property with very direct penalties which were designed, so I have read from jurists, to be non-appellable.

So from the perspective of the farmers we have moved from a cooperative model where there is emphasis on “consensus building, participation and social capital” but where nevertheless the final decision effectively rested with the farmer, to one which is coercive and punitive and as Whelan and Lyons say “the conservation movement … hold government accountable for responsible natural resource management”.

At the same time you have wild rivers legislation in the far north and applications for World Heritage listing. The ultimate intent here (and I know very little about this aspect) may well be to turn the north into a huge nature park. There is an existing grazing industry already there.

In view of the unstated nature of the conservation groups ultimate aims, their undoubted political success in recent times, and as I’ve said earlier the capacity of the state to use compliance orders to lock up areas of vegetation for 40 years to be fenced and maintained free of weeds and ferals at the expense of the farmer, leads to uncertainty and I should imagine difficulty in putting up a decent business plan to a bank.

Right now the legislative follow-on from the regrowth clearing moratorium and the election promises is unknown, but why wouldn’t farmers be worried?

Now all of that I can get from reading literature available to me, though some of it not on the net. No need to listen to any war stories.

So mutual stereotyping and name-calling especially at this time is not going to help peace and goodwill break out all over the land.

But to some the threat is perceived as existential in terms of their role on the land which makes any discomfort suffered by you and I (yes, me too) on a blog thread pale into insignificance.

Anyway, with that I think I’ve got to move on.

In Queensland, unfortunately, I think things are going to get worse before they get better.

BTW, I’ve been voting Green in the senate since the days of Michael Macklin. Drew Hutton lives hereabouts and I think I’ve had the opportunity to vote for him 11 times as a candidate for three levels of government. I’ve never been tempted in the slightest.

I’d much prefer a voting system like they have in NZ, Germany and some of the other European countries, where significant minority positions can have representation in the parliament. In an effective two party system you are often faced with unpalatable choices.

For a mob who reckons you like plain talking, it’s pretty plain to me you, you like to dish it – but can’t even take the truth when it’s put before you.

The hissy fits thrown, with all their false assumptions, strawmen, and “advice” (offered from a position of ignorance) at me (rather than the arguments I made) are pretty instructive to those who don’t realise the colossal chips you’ve got on your shoulders.

Not to say that you don’t sometimes speak and argue your points reasonably, but it’s a bit rich of you to carry on about the idea of a few “greenies” “rooning everything”, when you’re acting in the very ways you reckon they are.

Of course there’s idiots among the greenies, just like everywhere else – just like among the “rurals” for want of a better term ? Reckon you’re in a position to judge all on the actions of a few ?

Oh, and wrt to the crap suggestions about what I should do, or think so freely offered, 3 things.

1. Not that it should matter, but I’m into my 60’s, have lived and worked in the bush all my life except when studying, and derive my sole income from my bush block.

2. I reckon a good hard look at yourselves wouldn’t be such a bad idea

3. First step in fixing a problem is admitting it exists

CYA

I recently saw a news film clip of an American politician stating that the US farm sector is the best and most efficient in the world largely the cornerstone responsible for the strength of the US as a nation. And further in no uncertain terms said “We do not want the conservation or Green movements any where near our farms as they are the food source of the nation”.

First of all I’m concerned for your faculties if you listen to anything a ‘pro-farmer’ US politician has to say about farming, given that the industry is as described by others above, relies on massive politically driven subsidies and is dominated by massive corporate style farms that are merrily trashing the landscape while claiming said subsidies. In fact a more nuanced reading of the history of small farm and sustainable farm activism in the USA would find that the most successful and in terms of perception, unlikely, alliances have been forged between green groups who’ve gotten over their farmer prejudices and farmers likewise. Pertinent to this thread, battles over groundwater control in Montana (in this instance againt property developers rather than miners) come to mind.

Looking at the involvement the green movement has had to date in the Australian farm sector I am of the conclusion that the sooner we get them to the hell out and away from our farms sector the better. I say this because while the greens my be well meaning all they have done to date is show a complete lack of understanding of farming, practice systems and lobby Governments to pass laws that are unjustly restrictive to the farmers management and damaging to the environment. I know this may be hard for some people to recon with but unfortunately it is true.

and if the world was a static place where we are locked into a temporally-stapled understanding of an issue and stuck with certain attitudes forever, that might be true. But hooray it’s not, and having been involved in green politics for over 10 years and the agricultural sector for similar, I’ve seen huge shifts, but of course that isn’t uniform across the electorates, and by the sounds of it there’s a lot of work to be done in Qld.

I personally as a green don’t have a lot of truck with much of the QLD Greens politics (like Danny, not a Hutton fan) and thought the recent preference deal with the ALP was a terrible decision. Again personally, one of the reasons I’m in the Green party is that while there are a lot of inner city types present who don’t understand farming and conservation management, the general principles of the party are right, and it’s going to take people who do have an understanding and empathy with the rural agricultural sector to get involved and help us find the common ground – which to my eye is screamingly obvious. That won’t happen if we adhere to dogmatic postures on either ’side’.

I’ll end by saying you’d be surprised at the number of green voting and green party member farmers are out there. Of course in many instances they have to keep it deathly quiet because voting green has been so successfully demonised by certain powerful lobbying sectors of the agricultural industry. Fortunately there are an increasing number of individuals seeing through that, and for my part and I know of many others, we’ll keep working internally on the party. I would point to Christine Milne and Rachel Siewart as obvious rebuttals of the ‘greens are a disaster for farmers’ argument. Funny how many of the NFF press statements in recent times have been in accord with the portfolio statements of those two Senators.

I’ve actually been trying to foreshadow to some extent what I’ll say then as a sort of advance organiser, and to get some feedback, for which I’m grateful.

When I come to the post I think I’ll try to step back a bit.

Having worked in government I can understand the frustrations of everyone being tarred with the same brush through the actions of a few.

To clarify, your post @ 232 stated the sentence you’ve reposted @ 249, as well as

“Noel Pearson tells of going to see a minister (DNR?) to find an old sparring partner from TWS now sitting at his right hand. I. It’s well understood that the DNR has been shall we say infested with greenies.

So your compliance officer who decides whether you have committed a crime in landclearing may well be a vegetarian with attitude.”

What you have conveyed there is that at least some landholders are claiming that they won’t get a fair deal because they believe their application will be processed by someone who elects to not consume meat.

This is what I meant @ 247 by the coupling of difference with supposed behaviour.

Its odd that such notions should gain significant traction in landholder communities. As I intimated upthread, anything remotely resembling radical veganism is a very long way from NRM culture as I knew it. I don’t see how inadequate consultation could give rise to such notions; seems to me more likely that right-wing political opportunists have been exploiting landholder dissatisfaction over the imposition of controls on water use.

I’m told that if a grazier wants to put in an application for land clearing his/her assumption is that it will go to an officer in the DNR who is in fact a vegetarian if not vegan.

On reflection that is over-stated, it’s not what every grazier would assume every time, but it has been put to me in those terms. I think the problem is that the ultimate aims of the green groups are not clear to the farmers and many of them feel very threatened by what has happened without any consultation in recent times, or, where there has been consultation there is a feeling that it’s a PR exercise and there is no real listening.

I’m quite happy to accept that is the case for you and for Brian, but the fact remains that someone somewhere made the link and that is has stuck. Not to mention that Brian – who I reckon is one of the most fair-minded & reasonable people in the Australian blogosphere – uncritically repeated the phrase here.

It seems to me that this sort of coupling of trivial social differences with the attribution of unacceptable personal behaviour resonates in the QLD psyche in a way that I’ve not observed elsewhere.

do the best we can with the scraps of resources the government deigns to fling in our general direction. We’re consistently ignored by policy and ministerial staff whenever its convenient, but we’re still plugging away. Can’t speak for the compliance mob, since they almost never consult us technical staff on anything
You want to make things better? Stick to needling the folk in the big ugly tower next to QUT.

Yes, I believe you & I believe that what you say holds true for all of the old DPI & a good proportion of the old DNR. It’s the folk in the big ugly tower next to the QUT who have stuffed it up for all of us. Go back & read my comment @ 236. Principly it is the ‘ugly tower’s’ but I also believe that there are some in the compliance mob who have propagated this climate of mistrust. The eating habbits thingo is a load of crap, it’s not revelant.

I have witnessed the under resourcing of DERM staff who are the “do-what-works school of environmental management” and I would add, are undermined by the political priorities of those in the ugly tower.

I’m DNR (by the way, we were NRW for the last several years and are now DERM, catch up folks). Not particularly green, and neither are pretty much any of my colleagues – we’re all very much of the hard-headed-cynic/do-what-works school of environmental management. We work off the best data we can assemble, and do the best we can with the scraps of resources the government deigns to fling in our general direction. We’re consistently ignored by policy and ministerial staff whenever its convenient, but we’re still plugging away. Can’t speak for the compliance mob, since they almost never consult us technical staff on anything, but I’m fairly insulted by the characterisation of DERM staff by some in this thread. I don’t even know where to start with the assertion that the eating habits of regional staff members are driving them to screw over rural landholders (presumably while sipping carrot juice, stroking a white bilby, and cackling madly). Really, where did that come from?

Environmental management legislation will always be a pain in the ass, no matter how well its written, but demonising those stuck with administering it won’t help. You want to make things better? Stick to needling the folk in the big ugly tower next to QUT.

Further to the comments upthread from #214 onwards about positive working relationships between farmers & the Qld DNR changing for the worst in recent times & research ignored for the sake of a political agenda I offer a further example.
The DNR sometime in the 90’s had officers research best practise of farmers who had good outcomes for production balanced with environmental values in the clearing regrowth. A booklet was published with a number of case studies. I have read this booklet but do not own a copy. Then after vegetation management legislation came in there was an incredible situation whereby one of these farmers who was one of the case studies in the publication I mentioned above was visited by the new vegetation compliance officers. The compliance officers had a hidden tape recorder & from the small talk they encouraged from the farmer,(entrapment?), a prosecution case was mounted. The farmer was overwhelmed emotionally, didn’t have enough funds financially & even though believing himself innocent pleaded guilty in front of a magistrate to get the whole sorry show out of the way. Please check out this link.
http://qcl.farmonline.com.au/news/state/agribusiness-and-general/general/disappointment-and-anger-at-guilty-plea/8025.aspx?storypage=0
The account in this link is a very similar situation & outcome experienced by another farmer.

Now rural people are very much the straight up & down, look you in the eye, your handshake is your bond; we’ll take what you say upfront until proven otherwise. Can you imagine what these type of tactics have done to the confidence & trust between Govt agencies & farmers in Qld. There must be some of the old hands in the Department who have now seen many years of good productive work go down the drain.

Thus, I continue my war on the english language. Apologies.

Over here the Mines Act overrides the Native Veg Act, and the Roxby Downs indenture Act pretty much overrides everything, including Freedom of Information. It’ll be a warm day in hell when the mining companies have to show the same amount of accountability as farmers do.

On the greenie v farmer stereotypes – I’m a [sub]urban greenie – I interact with landholders most days and I enjoy working with real farmers. They are quite dismissive of ‘desk-top conservationists’, but since we are there to do the practical, on-ground stuff, it’s usually easy to get a good working relationship going, which suggests to me that farmers simply relate to hard work. I might also have an advantage over other greenies in that I grew up in the country, I also feel quite strongly that conservation and farming can coexist and perhaps even be mutually beneficial.

I’m not that crazy about a lot of wine-growers, since they know the art of distorted truths and telling people what they think you want to hear, you never get that kind of bullshit from a dairy farmer or grazier. Some of the hardest people to work for are actually deep-green lifestylers, there is a sub-set amongst them that are simply control freaks – I think they believe that nature cannot survive without their intervention, and they worry themselves sick with their own self-importance, they are definitely the most inflexible thinkers I’ve met. Of course there are also some wonderful people amongst that crowd, they are just quite difficult as clients.

That the greens are treated as if they are a stakeholder, or are a credible party is stretching things enough.

Primary Producer perception of greens: Greens are no more interested in our natural ecology than is a cop parked with radar behind a bush at the bottom of a slope on a wide straight highway interested in helping the public.

To suggest in the bush, that a green (a) understands nature, and (b) cares about it, would result in people looking at you just a little bit strangely.