Since 22 November, that is 31 days ago, farmer Peter Spencer has been on a hunger strike on a platform part way up 100 metre wind monitoring tower, designated the “Tower of Hope”, on his farm “Saarhnlee” at Shannon’s Flat near Cooma. Spencer claims that the Government has benefited in its carbon emissions account under the Kyoto Protocol to the extent of about 88 million tonnes pa, enough to reduce our emissions from 130% of 1990 levels to 108%. This has been accomplished through state vegetation management laws which have locked up carbon on 109 million hectares of farmland.
I’m not sure of his exact log of claims with the Prime Minister, but he appears to want a Royal Commission into farm regulations, retrospective payment of $10.8 billion for the stolen carbon, restitution of the productive capacity of the properties affected, plus repealing the relevant laws. Otherwise, he says, they can dig a hole and bury him.
A figure of $100 billion in total has been mentioned, but I have the impression that calling a royal commission may be sufficient to get him down from the tower.
This in brief is the history:
In the 1980s he [Peter Spencer] bought a lot of grazing land in Shannons Flat, just south of the ACT. More than 80 per cent of it became covered in regrowth and before he could clear it the government brought in native vegetation laws which made clearing illegal. There was no compensation for what was effectively the nationalisation of 80 per cent of Spencer’s property.He then invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in setting up ponds for trout fishing, but the introduction of new water laws ended the venture. There was no compensation.
Then Spencer set up a fine-wool breeding program, advised by scientists from the University of New England, in an attempt to make more profitable use of the small amount of cleared land on his property. The fires of 2003 in the national parks that ring the area pushed out hundreds of wild dogs, which have devastated farmers in the area. Spencer lost hundreds of sheep. His property is now home to thousands of kangaroos, which destroy pasture.
This invasion of his land happened because of gross underspending on park management in NSW and the ACT, specifically on fire prevention activities, the culling of kangaroo and wild dog populations, and fencing. There is no compensation for farmers unlucky enough to live near parks, which have increased in area by 50 per cent under Carr’s premiership.
Then in perhaps the unkindest cut the Federal Government refused to give him drought relief because his farm was considered economically unviable.
In 2005 he went to the courts, assisted pro bono by barrister Peter King, the guy Malcom Turnbull shafted to get preselection for parliament.
From an interview with Alan Jones it appears that after some 200 court hearings the matter has been listed to be heard by the High Court, but is reserved awaiting the determination of a case about water rights which has a bearing. But Spencer’s resources have been exhausted and the bank is foreclosing. He awaits the sheriff to take possession and sell the farm.
Already if you have been following the links you will have encountered a considerable ideological load. I have used these sources because the MSM has paid little attention to this story and others like it. I’m interested in whether decisions of government made in the presumed general interest of the many have adversely affected the few and whether fair compensation should be paid.
Also as I have said elsewhere we are having to make decisions over land use which affect three sets of interests which can be in conflict. One is the capacity for food production. The second is conservation of the ecological sustainability of the environment in the interests of plant and animal species. The third is the use of woody vegetation for carbon storage to mitigate global warming.
If carbon storage was given priority over conservation, for example, we might plant species giving maximum carbon storage rather than encourage regrowth of native species.
I grew up on the land and may be suspected of having sympathy for farmers. But I do have a commitment to the principles and values associated with each of the three interests identified above. The conflict between the three interests me.
To complete the disclosure I have two brothers associated with agriculture. One, now retired, was a university agronomist, with special expertise in pastures but also with strong interests in conservation, sustainability and invasive species. In our family, like me, he lines up with the socialists from the leafy suburbs.
My other brother is a beef producer, a strong supporter of National Party politics, especially the brand represented by Barnaby Joyce, and chairs the board of an outfit called Property Rights Australia the core business of which is to use a contributed fighting fund
to provide financial support to legal test cases and other strategic causes to protect and enhance property rights for the benefit of all property owners.
I think if you asked him he’d say they win most of the battles but are losing the war.
Spencer at times talks as though the sole or prime purpose of vegetation management laws is carbon storage. This is emphatically not the case. In Queensland after decades of exhorting farmers to clear the land for production, the Government started to legislate to restrict clearing from about 1990. I don’t know, but I’d be surprised if other states didn’t begin this trend earlier. It’s safe to say that at that time conservation was front of mind.
But Spencer refers to a study done by ABARE investigating the carbon storage angle in the light of Kyoto. The proposal was, it is claimed, that carbon could be stored in vegetation on marginal lands. This was said to be discussed at COAG and the agreement made that the states would legislate, presumably because land management is their responsibility. Whether there was a conscious manouvre to avoid compensation, which would follow under Commonwealth law but not under state law I have no way of telling. Peter King in the Alan Jones interview said the commonwealth “entered into intergovernmental agreements” to achieve its ends. Certainly around the turn of the century when Qld proposed clearing restrictions and sought a Commonwealth contribution to compensation, this was rejected and while the matter was being resolved there was a regrettable episode of panic clearing.
Certainly in a 2007 interview Peter Costello took full ownership of stopping land clearing:
Let me come back to the point that you made earlier, that because we stopped land clearing, somehow that shouldn’t be counted. Actually, stopping land clearing was a good thing.
…but this was all designed to stop land clearing and we stopped land clearing, and it’s helped us to meet our Kyoto target. If I may say so, Australia actually did something practical… Australia is actually one of those countries that is on track and is on track because it actually did something quite positive, that is, stopped land clearing.
Bob Carr was more than happy to take responsibility:
“we locked up these farms, as did Queensland and we will not pay them, we will not pay them we stopped them cutting their vegetation’ and Howard made a carbon for Kyoto.”
I’ve also seen a quote by Peter Campbell (sorry no link) referring to the issue being monitors by senior officers of COAG>
While some ecologies reach a point where no new carbon is being added in the balance of growth and dying there is little doubt that considerable amounts of carbon are being added through regrowth and vegetation thickening not just in marginal farming areas but in mainstream rangelands. The following photo which was sourced from Agforce in Qld illustrates:
The foreground supports one cow to every two hectares. The top right is 10-year regrowth and supports one cow to every four hectares. The area on the top left is 20-year regrowth and supports one cow to every 16 hectares, if you are lucky.
The following photo shows pasture with brigalow suckers and through the fence the same country with four years growth of the suckers.
A recent Qld Government study into the beef industry found the industry in Queensland near enough to carbon neutral even if you through the net around support industries. That was from vegetation regrowth and thickening, leaving aside soil carbon. (I have a draft of a separate post on this issue which I hope to finish next year.)
These policies, which have covered us generally in our increased appetite for carbon, have come with a cost of production foregone to the farmers. I guess it hurts even more if they believe that AGW is a fraud.
In Queensland I think its fair to say that conservation has been front of mind for the green groups. In establishing the 2004 legislation the green groups sought 80% vegetation coverage. Farmers considered they could live with 20% retention. The result was 30%. That’s not 30% on each farm, rather 30% of each vegetation type within an ecological subregion. If you have 50% of your property covered by a vegetation type that has largely been cleared out of the subregion it’s just bad luck.
So the burden does not fall equally and in some cases threatens viability. Peter Spencer’s experience appears to be one such case.
But wherever there is a cost incurred in the public interest, the public, as the beneficiary, should logically bear it. So said Ian Callinan in an article in January 2008.
Callinan points out that people may be rewarded financially for planting trees, but apparently not for being required by law to let them grow.
He also points out that “acquisition”, for which compensation may be due on just terms, has been narrowly defined in Australian case law.
Callinan sees the fair and equitable sharing of expense from environmental and planning law “as a real challenge to the legislatures and the courts, including the High Court as the constitutional court, for 2008 and beyond.”
I’ve seen excerpts of transcripts from the Federal and Supreme courts where Spencer’s loss in the public interest is appears to be accepted as fact. The question is whether he is entitled under law to compensation.
On Friday 18 December there was a muster at Saarhnlee, (see photos on Peter Spencer’s Agmates site) in part to ask Peter Spencer to come down, in part to publicise him and his cause. Barnaby Joyce attended, made a speech, Peter Spencer spoke to the gathering, Barnaby shinned up the tower and talked to him for about 20 minutes, only one came down.
Barnaby’s participation did generate a slanging match mainly with Lyndsay Tanner.
Joyce says the farmers should be compensated. Tanner says compensation would be massive. Joyce says that just goes to show how much has been taken from farmers.
Joyce reflects and phones The Australian to say that he accepts that compensation would be too costly. He wants a change in the legislation and farmers offering
to store carbon on their properties in return for payment, but without governments regulating as ” middlemen”.
Not sure how this would work under ‘direct action’ and without a price on carbon.
There is no doubt that the Spencer case has grabbed the attention of farmers themselves. many have been surprised at how many cases of real stress are surfacing. But there is also frustration in not being able to cut through and engage the broader community on the issue.
It’s a bit ironic, I think, if the answer is seen as another farmers’ special interest group. Surely there are enough peak farmer organisations. The problem, in part, is that they have accommodated to talking to government in a ‘reasonable’ manner to achieve, as my brother said (see comment of December 11, 2009 at 7:31am), yet another Pyrrhic victory.
Selected additional links:
Peter Spencer’s 2005 proposal for farmers to be paid for environmental services.
ABC recent interview with Michael Duffy.
Interview with Michael Duffy in 2005
Steve Truman’s ‘Carbongate’ The Great Carbon Heist at Rooted.
ABC NSW Country Hour
ABC Q & A
ABC YouTube segment
Justin Jefferson in Quadrant Online.
Andrew Bolt does a grab of Justin Jefferson’s piece.
An account of the “Saarhnlee Muster” by Peter Gough.
Barnaby Joyce’s account of the muster
Peter Spencer’s letter of reply to his supporters.
A report from Spencer’s doctor.
Daily Telegraph article by Bob Carr
Good Lord, call a RC and get him down from there.
And thank you Brian for disclosing the origin of the ‘ideological load’ in your recount, which is apparent.
There’s a lot to be said about all this, but let it be said in a RC and after Mr Spence has a sandwich.
Planning laws change all the time and affect thousands of people who bought land thinking they could do certain things on it which then change.
If we were to make that a compensatable matter, then no new planning laws would ever be introduced.
There are two things that I don’t think are widely enough recognised in this disgraceful situation (rightly called “carbongate” in some circles):
First, the real scam in this is that much of the land that has been locked up would probably never have been cleared and certainly not “clear felled”. So our dishonest politicians used carbon that was never going to enter the system to offset what the coal industry (as an example) is putting out. (It reminds me a bit of the bloke who died and his executors were chasing up various debtors. One of them says: “No, I paid that bill. Wrote him a cheque and tucked it in his pocket when I went down for the viewing at the undertakers.”) A substantial part of the “carbon debt” against the Kyoto agreement was paid with a cheque that was never going to be cashed. Now THAT is dishonest and it has been used to con the rest of the world. I suspect it is only because the international carbon accountants are absolutely clueless that the Australian government got away with it.
Second, on Peter Spencer’s situation specifically, he didn’t want to clear fell his land. As I understand it, he wanted to thin regrowth and restore the previously pastured areas. In other words, he wanted to restore it to much the same condition that the aborigines had maintained it in (and I think there would be historical descriptions to verify that). Now, if the Government is saying that Peter cannot restore his property to pre-European vegetation cover but that his land is to be used (at his expense) to store additional carbon for the benefit of other industries, that puts an entirely different light on his case.
I am a landholder with 53 per cent of some 6,000 acres locked up under this legislation. It irks me that I cannot benefit from the carbon that has been locked up. The government simply gifted it to the carbon emitting industries. It also irks me that I have areas of whipstick wattlewhich should be thinned for the general benefit of the environment but are locked up under vegetation legislation, yet I have areas of virtually pristine riparian woodland which I could legally put a bulldozer through if I wanted to be an environmental vandal. This situation arises because, sadly, most landholders exercise a greater degree of responsibility, and certainly have more environmental understanding, than the bureaucrats who regulate them.
I feel for Peter Spencer who was apparently declared economically non-viable for drought assistance while the carbon emitting industries were gifted the carbon credits that the government created from his land.
Thank you Brian for posting this, you are playing a part in spreading the “ideological load.”
This is a situation that should not be left in the domain of commentators & forums on one side of politics. This saga is essentially about justice and sharing a burden fairly on how society chooses to manage the environment. These are subjects that should not be bound by imaginary boundaries of political thought. Our responses to Brian’s post should be focused on justice & fairness within our society
It shows poor form by the MSM to have paid little attention to this story and others like it. Believe me there are many other stories like this one.
I have some sympathy for Spencer’s case if only because he appears to be a landowner who was prepared to be innovative on options open to him. I’d be interested if he ever thought of taking out a conservation agreement with the NSW Government or any number of conservation incentives offered by same or local catch-ment authorities. Unfortunately a good proportion of farmers are only interested in ‘mining’ their country for all its worth. The RC idea might have some merit if it were nationally based and widened to cover issues like open cut mining in bread basket regions like the NSW Liverpool Plains – coal in this case. Better a science based review of where agriculture is going and what marginal farming needs in confronting climate change. After three dust storms in 09 this is overdue.
I’ve got some sympathy for Spencer on the revegetation issue, though even in the 1980s the push to limit clearing on sensible sustainability grounds was in full swing so the legislative risk was foreseeable when he bought.
I’ve less sympathy on the other things he’s upset about – a farming business that cannot survive severe droughts and bushfires in this part of the world really is not a viable one. Investing on the assumption that there would always be plenty of free water available for those trout seems especially dumb. Anyway the “Exceptional Circumstances” drought relief package offered a bloody big cash payment for people to walk away from non-viable farms; if the bureaucrats could see his farm wasn’t viable then why couldn’t he? As for the “mismanagement” of national parks, maybe it’s as he says but I’ve heard too much crap from local farmers near the Kosciuszko and Brindabella NPs to take it at face value – “greenies” are always a convenient scapegoat.
In the end, farming is a high risk business that requires large amounts of capital to buffer those risks; those of us that don’t have that capital should not get into it. Still, I hope the guy comes down and rebuilds his life in a more personally and ecologically sustainable way.
Victoria introduced strong planning controls on the clearing of vegetation in 1989, South Australia earlier.
Having followed the debate reasonably closely during the 90s, it was certainly motivated by biodiversity loss and catchment condition, the health of the Murray-Darling, at least the public arguments wre very much pitched that way, and carbon storage was a secondary issue, if mentioned at all. I don’t think it’s right, on the face of it, to suggest that this was some tricky legal manoeuvering to meet kyoto commitments by the Feds without their hands getting dirty.
mehitabel @ 2, so it’s OK then if the few are deprived of their livelihood in the interests of the many. Doesn’t seem civilised to me.
The principle of the greatest good for the greatest number, or whatever the Bentham quote is, needs to be balanced by the injunction do no harm IMHO.
I’m hoping in the new year to research a story where a high value property has just been gazetted as koala reserve with an embargo on development of any kind. So the value is now a fraction of what it was. The odd thing is that it hasn’t got a tree on it, but as seedlings appear they will have to be nurtured and let grow.
More than curious, if true.
These regulative approaches always seem to throw up anomalies. It seems in NSW there is a massive disincentive for public servants to address these anomalies where they appear because they can be held personally liable in assisting farmers in breaking the law.
Or so it is said.
wilful @ 7, it seems that the motivation changes during the 1990s. There is little doubt that carbon storage was a major focus by the end of the decade. I was interested in the ABARE study Spencer claims looked specifically into the possibility of carbon storage on marginal lands and his claim that this was taken to COAG and an intent formed there to deprive landholders of rights without compensation.
Beattie certainly had a go at getting compensation, but apparently buckled in the face of the Feds refusal.
I think a royal commission would be useful to get to the bottom of all this.
DD @ 6, likewise we can’t be expected your statement:
at face value.
In this case we are told that Spencer is bordered by national parks on three sides. We are told that he never wanted to clear his land entirely, but I understand that he had to submit a detailed proposal for development taking into account various land and vegetation types. An expensive excercise in itself. I understand that he was preparing this when the vegetation management laws cut across his path.
A further factor, most of ecologies he’s dealing with thicken in the understory (sheep actually eat the seedlings until they get too big). When it then burns it goes up with such heat that the seeds are cooked in the ground to 1.5 metres.
So we are told.
The fires that did him in were the same ones that wiped out houses in Canberra.
I understood it was a case of “no management” rather than “bad management”.
It seems that many roos and wild dogs escaped to his place and he’s had trouble keeping sheep alive ever since.
There are too many stories everywhere about a lack of management in national parks, for them to be dismissed with the wave of a hand. The national parks that burnt near Rockhampton earlier this year had not seen fire to reduce the load for 45 years.
This is a prickly situation because if handled badly by environmentalists, it can dig deeper the divisions between those who want to work the land with those who want to protect it. The only solution is to do both – and it looks like Peter Spencer has attempted that in the past but he’s been rebuffed.
I don’t think direct monetary compensation is in order for this. I think money should be channeled into agronomics foundations to develop and apply tailored “work & protect” solutions to properties like Spencer’s.
Although the focus of this issue is a farm, the real matter is personal ownership rights.
Transfer the theft of this fellow’s business rights to any business in Australia.
See yourself in his position.
You may own land, a home, a business. Those who are entrusted with the care of the SOCIETY in which you live, remove your land, your home, your business for the benefit of the SOCIETY.
And pay you nothing – leaving your without your land, your home and your business.
And SOCIETY receives the benefit.
But does it?
One of the surest ways to undermine and destroy a society is the lack of protection of the foundation of that society.
And every society’s foundation rests on the protection of private ownership.
How do you get a home loan without an asset, a business loan? Whether that asset is a permanent job providing a wage, a home that has a recognizable value, gold, silver, paintings, etc.
The legals of a land purchase are so stringent, that to remove them – as govt are now doing – means that the other types of ownership have no legally recognized protection.
So nothing you own is safe from govt, if your land, home and business can be removed.
Yes, Peter is fighting a “farming” cause, but when we farmers are all removed from our land (which is what govt want) – you city people will be next.
Be very aware of that.
When farmers are removed from the right to provide food, you who eat are next.
Brian, thanks for a very well written and informed piece. In working in this space recently using market-based instruments (where landowners are paid competitively for their conservation contribution), it is easy to see why instruments such as these are more conducive to win-win outcomes than legislative changes.
You’re right to point out the inequities arising from blanket changes, but it must be acknowledged that biodiversity has been haemorrhaging across Australia over recent decades, and continues to do so. It is ugly and messy, but from a distance it seems that the stick of legislative change was required to stem the flow.
Thanks again.
Replying to Mehilabil who says if compensation has to be paid then no new planning laws would ever be introduced.
Maybe that would be a good idea as planning in New South Wales and other states certainly has a lot to answer for.
So much bad planning and lack of planning where it is needed – Roads – Hospitals and other public infrastructure. I thought that Government was supposed to concentrate on planning the infrastructure for the country. Looks like that has now been abandoned and Planners have become more interested in planning what can and can’t be done on private property.
We should all remember that if we allow our private property rights to be watered down by these insidious laws then eventually our rights will be taken away with another stroke of a pen. Already the idea of us only being custodians of the land is being pushed by the lefties and their coherts in the Goverment.
I bought my land in “Fee Simple Title” and I believe that I really do own my land and that ownership of that land bestowed upon me the right to use that land how I feel and not how some bureaucrat now decides because a new meaning has been invented. That would be Socialism if the State or Federal Government can override my ownership rights. Without ownership rights then Australia is not a free country anymore and is only a pretend free country.
Thankyou Brian for the good in-depth treatment. Mr Spencer wants a Royal commission as does NSW Farmers Association which has come out in support of Peter Spencer and renewed calls for a Royal Commission into the science behind climate change – http://agmates.ning.com/group/peterspencerhungerstrike/forum/topics/nsw-farmers-comes-out-in
Seems to me – the CPRS is in some disarray following Copenhagen, Spencer (and the affected farmers) have been clearly failed by the machinations of politics (Rudd Government were not responsible for these), and the grinding of the law (see SOS account of what I think was Mr Spencer’s last day in court after 200 appearances in local, state and federal courts – appeal to the High Court http://www.sosnews.org/newsfront/?p=368).
There is a need to sort out the whole mess on an equitable basis and this is a matter of national importance – why not a Royal Commssion as a way of going forward.
Would someone like to have a go at drafting terms of reference for a Royal Commission. I would like to know what specifically it is supposed to address. RC’s are very expensive exercises and can’t just be free for alls. As has been said many times before, Govt’s won’t (shouldn’t) set up enquiries unless they know the outcome.
kymbos @ 11, I think there is inherent conflict between the interests of food production, conservation and carbon storage. I don’t think there are win-win solutions, rather we have to make the best compromise possible. I’m not smart enough to work out what this might be. The approach of using local forums with stakeholders was tried in Queensland but people across the ideological divide tend not to enter into these things in good faith and whoever has the ultimate power wins.
The locus of ultimate power has now shifted in Qld from the landholder to the govt through legislation. The Labor govt is suspected of vote harvesting the green city vote at the expense of the farmers. The green interests are seen by farmers as essentially insatiable. Under these circumstances there is not enough good will for sensible communication.
We are now suffering environmental deterioration through climate change.
Carol @ 12, I don’t think the notion that private property rights are absolute and indivisible is sustainable. Property rights don’t go as far back as most people think in our history. At the extreme, it would ridiculous for me to be able to buy up a suburban block and build a tannery. If you get away from the extreme you get into shades of grey. You can’t expect to get away with destroying other people’s amenity in enjoying their location indefinitely.
The problem with farming is that a single farm is part of a broader ecology in which others have a legitimate interest. In terms of global warming that broader ecology is the whole planet. The fact that many farmers deny AGW doesn’t help their cause and in fact gives rise to very negative opinions about farmers as a class.
The principle of paying farmers for environmental services is well-established in Europe. We seem to have a cultural disposition against it.
I do find the special place of land, and particularly arable land, amongst investments fascinating. If this chap had bought, for instance, stocks in a company that produced RU486 for Australian supply just before it was banned or Uranium mining shares for a just-to-be-opened new mine that was stopped I believe the response would be fundamentally different. Even if it was bought to build flats that the planning department rejected after initial acceptance, I doubt so much sens eof injustice would be engendered.
There is something different about how we regard farm land. Perhaps that the rights to it are more real than the rights to other forms of property or that the purchase of it shows such a low appetite for risk that a change of political environment and Government regulation impacting on the profits is unacceptable and unfair.
I would add that I am not sure this is wrong, just that I do not quite understand it.
Sue M @ 11 Hernando de Soto’s The mystery of capital is an interesting read. Secure property rights are indeed basic to the functioning of a capitalist society. But capitalism is not the only society imaginable and doesn’t take the same form everywhere. There are differences in emphasis. See Will Hutton’s The World We’re in for the essential difference between European continental capitalism and the American version. It’s not black and white.
There are some negatives about privileging individual rights and truncating the capacity for common action. It’s a matter of balance as any social democrat will tell you. Societies with bigger government sectors can be characterised by more social cohesion and trust.
We all have our utopian dreams and they are not all the same.
Dr S @ 17, having grown up on the land, that farm is part of the fabric of my being, although it only exists in memory now. I’ve been back and unfortunately it’s gone.
I shan’t bore you all with the entirety of MacKellar’s 1906 poem but merely bring one line that commences the third stanza to your attention:
“The tragic ring-barked forest”
This is by way of illustrating that even at the time that landowners were picking up state bounties for clearing forests, especially those forests on land over 30 degrees incline, there were people with deep misgivings about the nature of public and private land management practices. It was not until the first Forestry Act of 1909 and the Forestry Act 1916 (that set up the Forestry Commission of NSW) that the widespread clearing of leasehold lands in eastern and central NSW was brought under some form of control. Clearing of forests on private holdings continued unabated.
One of the political consequences of this deforesting of NSW is a deep loss of faith in the capacity of private land holders to make ecologically informed decisions about land management practice. If you examine the country from Bombala to Cooma via Dalgety and Berridale you’ll see plateau country cleared for sheep grazing that is so devoid of native plant cover that it couldn’t support one bloody crow per 100 hectares let alone anything else.
In other words when it comes to land management practices private owners have very little public credibility. Maybe some deserve more than others but there is a long history of gross exploitation, error and mismanagement to overcome in order to win back some cred. Add to this a long history of agrarian socialism as a sop to the Hanrahanism, the conceited belief that rural Australians somehow represent a morally virtuous form of Australian masculinity (mapping an historic European tendency to ascribe virtue to the country and immorality to the city well explored by Raymond Williams) and it is no surprise that the issue of this bloke up a pole hasn’t had much of a run in mainstream media.
mehitabel @ 2, so it’s OK then if the few are deprived of their livelihood in the interests of the many. Doesn’t seem civilised to me.
This is analogous to the agitation of “timber communities” where the woodchip industry is threatened by opposition to the industry. Now I’m not in favour of any class of person being summarily thrown out of work and think that there should be support structures in place for people disadvantaged by industry change and change in circumstances. Having said that, rural industries receive disproportionate attention here. In my Western suburb of Melbourne, vastly larger numbers of families have lost their livelihood over the last twenty years because of large manufacturing or processing companies packing up and leaving, either due to “competition” from sweatshop industries, or simply technological change (Kodak, etc.) Many of the changes in rural employment are down to one form or another of the same kind of pressures. I’m not denying their grief in any way, but they do tend to give the impression that it’s all the fault of selfish city people whose lives are all icecream and rainbows.
I amd no lawyer (or even a bush lawyer) and do not know how to start on a draft of a TOR for a Royal Commission, however – I think (some of the issues) are:
Spencer and thousand of others previously owned or bought land subject to existing laws
Their rights have been severely restricted by the native vegetation acts (NSW) and equivalent Queensland laws imposed by the 2 States, sponsored and paid for by the Feds. Thousands have been affected, their livelihoods effectively stolen (or slowly starved by vegetatn regrowth). No – payment or compensation to be paid because of State Laws – this is a neat political trick. Families made poor – almost certainly this has contributed to suicides.
The science is not good – sterilizing the land to allow re-growth is not a good all round enviromental outcome (biodiversity, bushfires, soil erosion). It is pretty much certain that there are likely to be better ways to achieve environmental outcomes, achieve carbon sequestration and for the farmers/land owners to make a living from their land (asset).
Feds have in turn claimed the resulting carbon credits and thereby made use of the locked up land to achieve Kyoto targets – thereby showing that locking-up the land has value that way (but STILL NO payment or compensation for the landowners).
Spencer and others have taken this to the courts and been ground down and exhausted by the heavy machinery of the Law.
Seems like a resonable starting list of things that are wrong, affect a significant part of the community and our nation’s ability to manaage our land, the environment and contribute to global warming abatement.
I would just ask people not to see farmers as all the same. This particular bloke seems to have been sensitive to environmental values, but that didn’t help him. The sins of others in his class should not be visited on him.
There is a fundamental question as to whether it is OK to deprive people of property in the public interest. There is a host of related stuff that clouds the central issue.
I accept there are circumstances where farmers should be compensated for decisions that affect them, but I think each of these claims is questionable. The trout one in particular – if you can’t work out there’s unlikely to be an ongoing supply of fresh water in an area like that you’re probably not going to succeed as a farmer for other reasons. Despite the repeated claims that national parks are responsible for bushfires I’ve yet to see evidence of this. In fact its not uncommon to see cases where areas around parks burn and the parks are resistant, but this never gets acknowledged by the sort of people who are backing Spence. Unless there’s actual evidence the parks put him more at risk claims for compensation are basically fraud.
The issue of land clearing is more complex, and I don’t have my head around it, but I’d have to say if someone has made two baseless demands for compensation you have to treat a third one with some suspicion, but of course Barnaby Joyce won’t acknowledge that.
When BHP in Newcastle closed the door back in 2009 it shut down 11,000 jobs with a multiplyer factor hit on the surrounding economy. The reason was that BHP couldn’t make sufficient (not any, but sufficient) profit from steel. That is 11,000 employees. Did the NFF or the equivalent of ‘agmates’ campaign for special compensation for those people. No, didn’t think so. When it comes to requesting compensation the small businessmen of the bush have no equivalent. And they do all this while remaining resolutely anti-union. In fact, my recall is that rural opinion and action was pretty solidly committed to Reith/Howard/Costello’s attempts to break the MUA.
And now you want solidarity with this bloke up a pole?
derrida derider – You missed the point and some of your information is wrong. The government made Peter Spencer unviable by locking up his land and then said he was not eligible for drought assistance because he was not viable. That hardly seems fair or reasonable. As far as the trout go, Peter Spencer’s “assumption that there would always be plenty of free water” was only an assumption that he could use the water that fell on his property as rain (NOTE: not water that flowed in from somewhere else). That doesn’t sound too dumb to me. How was he to know that governments would prevent landholders from using the rain? Why has he been stopped? Because the government wants the rain that falls on his property to flow downstream to the irrigators that they have already sold it to. In Queensland, where the government is encouraging householders to install rain water tanks, there is already talk of taxing people on the water that goes into those tanks. Apparently governments now believe they own the rain.
Finally, you refer to a “bloody big cash payment for people to walk away from non-viable farms”. I think the payment was about $100,000 and I am not sure how many people would have qualified for it, let alone received the payment (last I heard, no one had).
Perhaps this information will help you to understand why suicide rates tend to be higher in the bush.
Again, “bucketloads of extinguishment”. Can we address the title rights of farmers, after we’ve addressed the title rights of blackfellas? Because I have a friend who needs neither memory, nor bureaucracy to reinforce that his country is the fabric of his being. He doesn’t want compensation, he just wants to look after his country, unimpeded, and he’s not getting any younger. [also, I see his lawyer just moved his own 'deed of title' from one leafy suburb to t'other, just sayin']
Anyhow, I would guess that this discussion will play out like so many discussions relating to feminism because at it’s core is a sense of entitlement. A large group of people who are having their privileged positions in our society challenged and they find it…well….challenging. duh.
Helen #21, “that it’s all the fault of selfish city people”
If we are honest with ourselves, one must acknowledge that it human nature that each one of us has the capacity to be selfish. Finger pointing between urban & rural communities is not helpful; it certainly creates much distrust. (That was a general comment Helen, not just pointed at you.) When an issue doesn’t directly affect any individual or any sector of the community it is very easy to ignore it. The lack of connection between different sectors of the Australian community, especially urban & rural, also creates a lack of information & understanding.
In time the natural succession of plants will go back to reach a balance of both scrub and native grasses.
The native grasses that thrive under a native scrub canopy can be good and reliable grazing grasses provided they are not overgrazed. Lower stocking rates and more strategic use of grazing animals can help both systems co exist. At least the scrub is helping to stop the soil blowing away and preserving the soil carbon and nutrients for cycling locally.
Vegetation Dynamics in a Grazed Mulga Shrubland
http://www.publish.csiro.au/?act=view_file&file_id=BT9840239.pdf
FB #27
I see many similarities between your thoughts and those of many others. The very issues that “people” on the land and associated with the land – regardless of heritage – is overwhelming.
I aggree that there has to be a change made, and have spent many years striving for just such a balance. You wrote below,
“He doesn’t want compensation, he just wants to look after his country, unimpeded, and he’s not getting any younger.” and here in the legislation we need to concentrate on making legislative changes. i agree with lets challenge them!
Too many people compare running a farm business to the equivalent of say running a dry cleaning business in a city.
But there are some very significant differences. Don’t have time to list them all but here are a couple of examples
Retention of skilled human capital in rural areas. Who can grow this food? To be a productive farmer required a subset of very highly developed skills. Like any profession it takes time to become an expert. The rural workforce is an aged population; younger rural people look to futures elsewhere, those that do want to stay on the land need to be cultivated and supported. If rural communities are allowed to decline any future there will be a population shift to the cities as has occurred in many countries around the world.
Land management for ecological and productive reason. The majority of Australia’s arable and productive land is in the hands some type of farmer. To retain its capacity it needs to be constantly maintained otherwise the rehabilitation cost becomes prohibitively expensive or too late. Likewise the management of introduced feral pests and weeds – farmers do the bulk of this work in Australia.
buggar – sorry about that formatting above – all bold was a mistake
[max, you forgot to put the / in closing the tabs. I've fixed it - Brian]
My understanding is that tree clearing laws were brought in for reasons other than meeting the Kyoto agreement. They have been brought in in most states in Australia, and I don’t know of anyone else arguing for compensation.
Firstly, they weren’t brought in by stealth. There’s been lots and lots of education in this area in rural areas. The message that landclearing practices had to be reformed was well and truly out there. When it became obvious that these messages were being ignored, then legislation was resorted to.
Secondly, on the question of compensation. Councils rezone on a regular basis. This creaates winners and losers. In a given rezoning, housing values can fall and rise dramatically as a result. Should councils have to compensate every ratepayer whose house value has (on paper) dropped?
The very first house I bought was in sixty acres of wilderness. The wilderness had originally been divided up into quarter acre blocks. Only our block had been built on, in the 1920s. Sometime in the ’70s, the council changed the planning laws so that you could not build on less than a three quarter acre block.
So there were 239 blocks which were all individually owned, attracting rates, which couldn’t be built on. Individually, each block was worth almost nothing. Most of the blocks were simply abandoned.
The end result was good. The original blocks were too small to adequately dispose of sewrage on site and too expensive for individual servicing. Environmentally and socially, the creation of bigger blocks, which eventually occured, was a far better result for the community as a whole.
What I’m saying is that this sort of planning outcome is very very common.
A reasonable analogy of what has happened to Peter Spencer and the thousands of other affected farmers/landholders is:
SAY – in the event of an on-going housing shortage because of an influx of refugees, the Government found (by dubious means) that one-half of the individual housing area of houses of a certain type in selected suburbs of Melbourne and Sydney were no longer suitable for habitation by the curent residents and brought in laws to suit. The influx of refugees would then be housed in the “locked-up” half of each house or the locked-up half houses left empty.
The value of each house so affected would be reduced by perhaps 50 % or more (“there goes the neighbourhood”). Selling at this location and then buying in an unaffected suburb would then become pretty costly execise. Meanwhile the banks holding the mortgages would get nervous and demand accelerated payment of the difference in the values of the loans held and the new property values.
I think activism and politics would take good care of this problem. NO NEED for a Royal Commission.
I am a townie and a micro-scale private professional – I have relatives and friends who farm – seems like they are creative and inventive, work hard and long in the hot and the cold outside – often on their own. It is a pretty damn hard way to make a living and these people make a real contribution to our economy under ever worsening terms of trade. Am pretty sure they often take better care of the land an environment than the National Parks organisations at NO cost to the public. Damned if I know what “their privileged positions in our society challenged” means.
Planning law changes affect surburban houses as well, you know.
In fact, suburbanite suffer from far more restrictions as to what they can do on their block of land than any farmer. These restrictions change reasonably frequently, so what might be allowable on your suburban block one day won’t be the next.
So you now can’t have a rooster in a town area – once upon a time, you could. You can’t have a brothel in a surburban street – once upon a time, you could. You can’t build a garage without permission (you can on most farms), you can’t run certain businesses from home, or set them up in suburban streets – again, once upon a time you could.
All of these changes have good reasons behind them, but all of these changes caused inconvenience for somebody (if the outlawed action hadn’t been happening the rule changes wouldn’t have happened).
Nearly every law passed by governments, from local to Federal, inconvenience somebody. If we had to compensate everybody for every change in circumstance, there would be no government possible.
If we then take it a step further, into the realm of what I might have wanted to do with my property in the future, and argue that a dream which might never have been realised anyway is deserving of compensation, then things really get interesting.
The local council here has recently ruled that noone can build on flood prone land. Moreover, if you have a house on flood prone land, you can’t rebuild it if it is destroyed or even extend it. No compensation. The alternative, however, is to continue to let people build in a dangerous situation.
G’day Brian,
Thank you for this post. I don’t believe that I’ve seen anyone write on this issue who has shown a greater understanding of what can be for the uninitiated a very complex subject.
You use of links to various excellent references sources and additional information shows the depth of your knowledge on not only Peters protest but the issues behind it.
Your post is a significant contribution to the efforts being made to circumnavigate the stonewalling of this issue by the mainstream media and our Politicians. We are finding that as the general public becomes aware of Peter’s protests and the reasons behind they are angered and amazed at the injustice that has been perpetrated on a relatively small group of our own people via what is becoming know as “Carbongate”.
Thank you for taking the time and caring.
mehitabel #33
Others upthread have fallen into this trap as well, because of some wrong not righted years ago we can’t show support to this wrong today.
This case & the many others like it are a far different situation to the drop in value in a residential allotment. It’s not just a place to live & income is made elsewhere. Income has to be made off the farm & if laws seen as for the “greater good” impede this; it has the effect of a slow & sure economic strangulation. It also creates stress in decisions that affect the balance of productivity & stewardship to all the land including remnant bushland. It also creates much anxiety when the connection could be broken to a pace that goes to the fabric of your being.
Anthony – Monaro is a treeless plain, was so long before European settlement
http://crcleme.org.au/RegLandEvol/Monaro.pdf
After rain – the country looks fantastic. We have been in drought since 1996 – a drought worse than the Federation drought – that is why there is not much grass cover – some good land managers, some not – probably like people in your profession.
A land of “droughts and flooding rains”.
Send the parrot back up the pole and this bloke’ll come down soon enough. That’s right folks, the dreaded parrot has taken up the cause. “Carbongate” indeed. More like a man being used by agribusiness in order to rip more compensation out of Australian taxpayers for coporations who don’t deserve it.
“Prior to May 2003, when a moratorium stopped the bulldozers, Queensland had one of the highest rates of land clearing on the planet – an average of 500,000 hectares per year. The environmental costs were catastrophic – species decline, dryland salinity, degradation of our river systems and significant greenhouse gas production.”
Yeah, I remember the footage in about 1999 of the AMP society goin’ berserk in Qld ripping thousands of hectares. The reason this tewwible dwakonian wegiswation was bwought in Elmer, is because of bloody ecological hooliganism in the first place. I feel a rush of Hanrahan jokes coming on.
I doff my hat at ur linkage skills.
@15 Actually, alot of our early Royal Commissions were on policy matters which the government didn’t have the details worked out yet.
It’s only in the last 30 years Royal Commissions in Australia have focused on criminal and corruption matters – the kind of RC that surprises (known and unknown) are politically unwelcome.
I’d not be too surprised to see Rudd appoint one. It fits in with consensus-building style. Howard, I think, only appointed five or so commissions, which historically is very low for a government.
mehitabel #33
“My understanding is that tree clearing laws were brought in for reasons other than meeting the Kyoto agreement.”
This document was published in July 2000,
The following quote is on page 1 & 2
“The Commonwealth pursues a role of fostering improved native vegetation management at a national scale because of:”
Amongst four sub headings is this one:
On yer anthony – done your Monaro research yet?
Maybe you don’t know that much about small scale individual private enterprise?
Actually its REAL big business – big money with big budgets for big lobbying firms who have successfully influenced our politicians IE in the areas of BIG coal, BIG mining and BIG energy. Their success is reflected in the CPRS – they’ll get paid billions to pollute (that’ll come from our taxes) and the farmers have lost control of land they paid for out of actual hard work – they get paid nothing and theor locked up carbon makes Australia look good (well as good as the shoddy science allows).
Brian,
I agree with Steve Truman, I think you have done an exceptional job of stating the case on this issue. Well done!!
While Peter Spencer is an individual, I hope he comes down to continue the fight for justice in this and other cases. It must be remembered that there are hundreds of cases where legislation is having a severe impact of primary production land viability and urban property values.
I see the issue here as not in relation to clearing bans, access to water etc, but the issue of the bundle of rights we had under common law that are being and have been extinguished, modified or stolen under existing legislation.
We all can see the need to maintain biodiversity, not over use water and not destroy property that is of real heritage value. However the existing legislation enables the removal of whatever property right you can think of; and as long as the word acquisition is not mentioned, there is no requirement to pay compensation on just terms.
More importantly these rights cannot be compensated for under current legislation unless the government or a third party can be proved to have gained from the loss of these rights. The implementation of the legislation and the gain for the government or third party does not necessarily coincide in time.
While as singularities each piece of legislation seems innocuous enough, in reality when you combine vegetation controls, with lack of reasonable access to water and habitat for endangered species etc, and they all be applied to one property, the landowner has little left. In the situation where the property provides income; the financial, mental and physical impacts can be devastating on the landowner.
The problem shouldn’t be looked just as a rural problem, heritage listing of urban properties without the owners consent and cases of unjust enrichment are quite prominent.
I’m afraid the issue is much bigger and has more impact than we all perceive at this time.
It is not in any landowner’s interest to have legislation remove enough rights to severely devalue the property or make a property non-viable. However there is no doubt this is happening in many cases.
According to the Nature Conservation Council of NSW, which source I believe is respectable:
“Approximately 74,000 hectares of native vegetation were cleared in 2005, made up of 44,000 hectares approved clearing and 30,000 hectares illegal clearing (40 percent of total clearing). There is no specific data for earlier years as illegal clearing has only been measured accurately for 2005, ten years after clearing regulations were introduced.
Much of the current clearing is occurring in areas where there has already been the greatest loss of native ecosystems and biodiversity. Loss of native vegetation is continuing despite efforts to revegetate.”
http://nccnsw.org.au/index.php?Itemid=809&id=1278&option=com_content&task=view#whyis
I agree that the big corps are the bad guys here and am an active supporter of opposition to the mining in the Hunter Valley. However, yr man in Cooma appears to have been caught up in some collateral damage from legislation designed to put an end to outrageous land clearing practices in NSW.
Oh,this is too bloody funny. White man experiences the following:
“rights we had under common law that are being and have been extinguished”
The extinguishment of property rights under common law. Strewth, where of I heard of that before. Now, how did ‘The Land’ and Barnaby Joyce line up on that issue. It is the end of civilisation I tell ya.
OK, I’ll stop now.
anythony – I am still struggling to understand why the theft of land-use from “White man” is so funny.
I understand that theft of use of land under the Wild Rivers legislation in Queensland (there are some parallels here) is NOT thought to be so funny by the indigenous people there
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/nationalinterest/stories/2009/2716414.htm
It is a delicious irony, that’s why.
I expect to see Barnaby Joyce out supporting this guy soon.
http://andrewnorton.info/2009/12/22/melbournes-disappearing-milk-bars/comment-page-1/#comment-82211
But perhaps some businesses are more deserving than others.
Ian Hampton: grassy woodlands usually have some occasional trees (hence the term ‘woodlands’) and there is buggar all up there mate. Then there is the issue of routine over grazing but oh, never mind.
I think you hit the nail on the head by saying that some people think AGW is a fraud (ouch, strong language). AGW is not really a matter of opinion, but a matter of science. I think it can be carefully said right now that the science is far from settled, so I believe the third interest should not be given priority in this case.
Of the first two interests, why couldn’t both food production and environmental sustainability be met on the same patch of land? I seem to recall it to be a fairly big parcel of land.
That being said, I am a city girl, who has a deep and abiding respect for farming.
Like others have said before me, if one farmer’s property rights can be stripped away, there is no protection for all owners.
Thanks to the author for putting this case into slightly different context. I now have more ‘food for thought’.
Thumbnail
Which is what I’m trying to point out. You have the right to own a piece of land, yes. That doesn’t mean what you do with it can’t be restricted in such ways as to make it useless to you.
still @ downfall, that supports what I said. Kyoto is not the only reason. The fact it’s tacked in there at number 4 suggests it’s not the biggest. These laws would have happened regardless of Kyoto (and given we hadn’t ratified it when these came in place, that’s a given).
As for ‘trap’ of accpeting a wrong because it’s been in place a long time, planning laws exist because people don’t do the right thing.
To extend the argument that people deserve to be compensated when laws change and affect them adversely:
I want to build a house. I’ve got the designs drawn up by an architect. When I first decided to build the house, I consulted with council and have applied by the rules I was given then. Now, when I come to submit my application, I find the rules have changed and the house needs substantial redesign. This is going to cost me money. Do I have the right to compensation?
Or—
I start off (as a hobby) rebuilding motorbikes in my garage. Word gradually gets around – first I fix a couple of mates’ bikes, gratis. Then a few of their mates ask me to fix theirs. I start charging. I quit my normal job. There are now up to eight motorbikes in my garage at any one time, and I’m working til late at night fixing them. The noise disturbs my neighbours, who report me to council.
Turns out that fixing motorbikes for money is illegal in my residential street.
Am I entitled to compensation?
If you are going to insist on compensating people every time a planning rule changes and adversely affects them, then you are never going to be able to change planning laws. Thus, even when you discover a problem (like the methane gas leak recently reported) you’ve got to let people build there anyway, because otherwise you’ll have to compensate someone because you’ve said they can’t build there.
Thumbnail #50
“why couldn’t both food production and environmental sustainability be met on the same patch of land? I seem to recall it to be a fairly big parcel of land.”
I believe that was the original intention. The quote below can be found in an interview Peter Spencer did with Michael Duffy of the ABC National Counterpoint in 2005
.
We need to stop, or at least significantly reduce, land clearing because it is wrong.
Out of curiosity, does anyone really disagree with that statement? If not, maybe we can all get in a big bus and drive around and choose which part of the landscape it’s okay to decimate? Would that feel okay to most of you? [we'll leave out the deserts, I think we've established the eastern states people only think about them when the desert is actually blowing around the streets of sydney]
Go on, the next time you’re on a drive and you see some some bushland, put yourself in the place of a farmer….these people for whom the country is “the fabric of their being”, choose which part of that vegetation you think is expendable, put a price on it, and decide whether it’ll be beef or lamb, or wheat or whatever, that replaces that vegetation. Because the legislation that limits land clearing really has SweetFA to do with Kyoto, and it has everything to do with you and me, and the fact that the majority of people find land clearing objectionable. Maybe it’s in the fabric of our being?
When I was in Western Australia for the Ecological Restoration conference we went on a field trip to talk to some farmers who are restoring the landscape so that they can restore their livelihoods. They are attempting to rescue the land from the effects of salinity. One of my peers said to a landholder, “If I were to put it to you that you need at least 30% natural vegetation cover in order for this area to be functional again, would you think that controversial?” The farmers reply was, “No, I think that is the reality, 30% at the very least”.
Oh, and for what it’s worth, the only time I have ever had a conversation about carbon storage being the motivation for restoration, was when a land-holder initiated some research into the matter, so he could claim carbon credits for the trees that were being planted with NRM funding. Some people are more entrepreneurial than others, he was also researching a mechanism by which he could claim credits for natural regeneration.
Again, I want to reassert that significant amounts of public money is spent on private land, to facilitate restoration. A large proportion of this money is spent on fencing, with the next highest expenditure being on weed management. I actually think that public money being spent in this way is far more controversial than the land title issue, especially given certain parts of the community having an aversion to anything vaguely socialistic. Levy payers are contributing in huge ways to the management of our natural capital, it is unsurprising to see governments trying to get a return on our investment.
We sold off a community asset, the national telecommunications company, to fund land restoration in this country. This was of course an act of the Commonwealth of Australia, under a Liberal/National Coalition. Most of that money was spent on rural lands, much of the ‘environmental’ work was incredibly poorly targeted and badly executed, a significant amount of it was siphoned off on to privately held lands, at the expense of managing our National assets. Now, as a part of the sub-text to this story we have the issue of those badly managed national assets being used to lend legitimacy to this particular landholder’s cause. “Oh noes, the kangaroos are eating my pasture!!” That it is not, “you beauty, free livestock!” is a pity – this is one area someone needs to sit down and think about. We have an incredibly prolific native animal, that provides excellent, low emissions meat..yadda yadda yadda, we’ve had that discussion before, but really, Mr Spencer’s situation highlights our idiocy as a nation.
I once read a story about how the rural Chinese, paying close attention to the weather conditions, can predict a locust plague, they take the opportunity to breed up more ducks, the ducks do a bit of pest management, whilst the Chinese get some extra duck for the table.
mehitabel @ 51, the first analogy doesn’t hold. You are talking about a one-off cost, not the capacity to earn a living.
The second doesn’t hold either, because if it is anything like where I live there are laws about running a business from hold including, when I looked into this some years ago, erecting a notice of your intention and otherwise advertising it so that people in the neighbourhood can object if it is going to adversely affect them. Besides there are laws about noise that exist all the time.
The situation in either case is nothing like Spencer’s if that’s what you are arguing. I’ve just come in and haven’t read the thread right through.
@mehitable and still@downfall,
Ah, thanks. I did not know how I would go, considering I know jack schitte about farming here in Australia.
That section from Counterpoint in 2005 makes this even more heartbreaking. Peter Spencer sounds like a very reasonable man, and a competent steward of the land, who could well be supported by this Government, no?
Oh, and yes, I do believe we need credible and suitable limits on clearing land, for many local reasons.
I am going to do a bit of homework. There was a bloke who has dedicated his life to managing water. Australian Story did two shows on him. I will come back to this discussion.
Anthony @39 etc. Great strategy – someone has done something we don’t like so let’s penalise everyone (where have I heard that before?). Don’t worry about the collateral damage. We’ll just put on our jackboots and give the lot of them a good kicking.
I don’t know where you get your ideas, but you can forget about the environment. The Queensland vegetation laws are not part of a plan to protect the environment. In many cases, the laws lock up rubbish and leave critically endangered environments unprotected (as on my own land). Governments don’t give two hoots about the environment, except to get the green vote. There is more being done – voluntarily – by landholders to care for the environment than most people are aware of. But that doesn’t stop the ignorant lecturing to us.
And “the title rights of blackfellas”? I don’t know if you are qualified to speak for the first Australians. But those I know (very close friends) and work with (in aboriginal communities) would probably find your language offensive and would not necessarily appreciate your patronising views. There are many country people working with Aboriginal communities to help them in education, training, and developing business opportunities. A lot of landholders also work with the traditional owners to protect cultural heritage and ensure that the spiritual link is maintained (as I do). Just because you don’t find much of that in the city does not give you the right to assume it doesn’t happen.
In fact, a lot of “farmers” (to use a generic term) actually contribute to society in many ways, just quietly going about their business because that is the way they do it. They have every right to complain when an asset is taken from them and given to someone else (carbon from farms given to the mining industry), just as I am sure you would complain if the government took away your house (if you have one), your car (if you have one), or your mobile phone (which I reckon you would have) and said “It’s not yours anymore, but you can still pay the bills.”
fb #53, one thought at a time fb, I’ve got to try & keep up.
I won’t be able to answer all of that at once.
Starting with your intinal comment, its all a bit achedemic now because clearing of remanant vegetation has been stopped. But I’ll give you an alternative statement of my own. Its not whether you clear or not but how its done. My thinking on this fits into your expierence in WA
A field based Qld scientist recently retired after more than 40 years of study on the retention of vegetation & its impacts on production & bio diversity produced a study that showed the worst thing that a farmer could do in clearing was to clear fence to fence with no trees left. The second worst was to leave scattered individual trees in an English park type setting. The best outcome was to leave solid timber lines or if you like wildlife corridors with total clearing in between. The percentage of timber retention was around 30%, which maintained maximum farming productivity.
But this is a digression, there is a man who has placed himself up on a tower in a lonely, solitary location; one of the most highest altitude farms in Australia, exposed to extremes of weather conditions and has been there for 31 days. It suggests a level of desperation and even though I may sympathize with his cause, Peter Spencer needs to get down before his health fails.
Actually, I think he shoulod stay up there as long as he likes. That’s his right. If he wants to die up there, good on him. Another law I disagree with is preventing him from doing so.
The first Australian question is also not about whether individual farmers commit charity towards them, it’s about the legislative system depriving people of what is theirs for the convenice of others. By comparison Spencer has no grounds to even mention his problems – it’s not as though there is a government department dedicated to the extermination of him and his. But sure, if he’s standing in solidarity with the native title claimants to his land, good on him and he has my support. If not, I hope he has the courage of his convictions.
My feeling is that this is agribusiness asking for yet more special treatment. The whole kerfuffle is just overplayed emotional blackmail attempting to make sure that yet another class of environmental vandals get to suck subsidies out of the taxpayer to continue busines as usual. He’s specifically portraying his experience as just another type of investment subject to legislative vagaries and asking to be made a special case – those compensated when the law doesn’t favour them. I am not sympathetic.
Ah, thanks for those quotes from Spence.
So it’s like my house plan analogy – he had a whole lot of things he MIGHT have been going to do in the future. No guarantees that any of them would have happened.
Governments can’t compensate for possibilities: it’d be a never ending spiral.
I’ll get back to the original article, which I drifted away from:
From the sounds of it, the farm wasn’t covered in regrowth when he bought it. He let it go, then when he got around to cleaning it up, found the vegetation laws were in place. It sounds as if, had he cared for the place properly, the vegetation laws would not have affected him (there wouldn’t have been regrowth to protect).
He put in fish ponds without being assured of water? Crazy, man. Even if you have heaps that falls from the sky, you still get a license ‘cos all farmers know there are years when it doesn’t. Even I’ve got several mg which I never use. Just in case.
As for the ‘he was going to use rain’ argument, this shows he didn’t do his homework when it comes to trout. They HATE warm water, it kills them. Unless the water comes from a permanent mountain stream, you have high fish kill rates. If he was going to (as I assume) use rainwater tanks, he would have lost most of his fish on a regular basis.
Oh, and water laws do not change overnight. The Victorian government spent a number of years introducing theirs. There’s always reasonable notice built into these things so that people don’t get caught out unintentionally.
He then put sheep on, who were wiped out by wild dogs. Why should he be compensated for that? Wild dogs are a fact of life near bushland, and farmers need to take steps to protect their animals, either by NOT stocking with animals who are susceptible to wild dog attack or through adequate fencing. Also, wild dog areas are well known. It’s a risk of farming.
I notice that other farmers in the area are impacted on by wild dogs and kangaroos but he’s the only one up a post. Is that because the other farmers in the area have dealt with the issues?
Yes, he’s had some bad luck, but it also sounds as if he’s made some poor decisions.
If he hadn’t made the poor decisions, he mightn’t have had the bad luck.
The issues raised by Peter Spencer appear to be mainly about the individual property rights of a particular category of citizens – rural landholders. That he is aghast not only at the imposition of legislative or regulatory limitations on what he can do with his land but as well with his right to do what he wants to do with his land is totally coherent with a long history of rural individualism that has been, as we will see, systematically pursued by rural communities and not the least by the peak rural body – the National Farmers Federation. The claim is made that Peter has fallen into a regulatory pothole in so far as the NSW (2005) Native Vegetation Act in so far as its provisions came into play after he purchased his property. It might appear that Peter wants equity and justice in the form of compensation. In fact he apparently wants to rid get rid altogether of the act. He portrays himself in a post at On Line Opinion 27-01-06 as a battler not beset by market forces but by a triumvirate of evil forces consisting of the state, greenies and a nearby national park.
I was right @ 45 to note that Peter’s plight would be represented as the end of civilisation. Justin Jefferson at Quadrant Online certainly agrees:
“If there is a social need for a person’s property which is to be forcibly acquired, then society needs to pay for it. But if society can’t afford to pay, then it can’t afford to have it and is not entitled to it.
To breach this principle, as the Federal and State governments have done, violates basic ethics, blatantly subverts our Constitution, and is already spelling the end of limited government and a free society.”
Barnaby Joyce is also supportive. The Eden-Monaro express quotes Barnaby as saying, in a rare moment of lucid if paranoid expression, that:
“We know how they did it, through the State governments so they didn’t have to compensate,” Senator Joyce said. It was all very sneaky, but that doesn’t make it right. It doesn’t make it just and it doesn’t make it fair.”
They?
What Barnaby means is the rat cunning way that sinister city livin’ Labor socialists have managed to enact this stripping of individual rights via separate state legislation in order to avoid Federal guvmint liability subsequent to a so far failed legal argument that compensation is due to those landowners disadvantaged by Australia’s signing the Kyoto treaty.
The same newspaper report states:
“Vice president of property rights Australia Lee McNicholl passed on a message from National Farmers Federation (NFF) president David Crombie that the NFF would support access to fighting funds if needed.”
Property Rights, BTW, is an organisation whose purpose is, among other things:
“About justice, respect and equality for the decent rural and semi-rural people who labour long and hard under difficult conditions to achieve those goals that are so dear to Australian’s hearts and ambitions.”
Smell the man from the snowy river yet? Lee McNicholl was an outsp[oken opponent of the lack of compensation for landowners when Qld introduced its desperately needed land clearing legislation. It wouldn’t surprise too many people to see that he raises the Ghost of Pauline in this ABC interview on The World Today 08-12-1999:
“LEE McNICHOLL: Well they will see the Beattie Government in court. It’s as simple as that. They will be fighting to feed their families in many circumstances and I think that, you know, it is, no other sector of the Queensland population that has freehold property is potentially faced with this sort of intrusion into their properties and potential threat viability of their operation.
GERALD TOOTH: Lee McNicholl says the tree clearing issue is making people in rural Queensland feel more politically isolated than ever and that feeling is quickly turning to anger.
LEE McNICHOLL: If they’re going to get beaten around the head by urban based conservationists and city based governments they will react to support more radical political parties. I mean you saw what happened with One Nation at the last election. If One Nation organises itself again they will garnish more support out of issues like this, and you’ll find independents and other splinter groups emerging and they will attract support.”
It is a pity that the Nationals privilege the remnants of the squattocracy over those of the rest of their electorate isn’t it? Youse wouldn’t have to lurch to the far right quite so often if that was the case.
It is however, the possibility that the NFF might actually engage that quickens the pulse. The NFF makes the claim that:
“Other high-profile policy issues that have seen the NFF leave its indelible impression on Australia, include wins in:
Australia’s infamous Waterfront Dispute – calling for reform to yield productivity gains over union-lead labour demands;
The Shearing Wide Comb Dispute – advocating and securing the need for efficiency gains through adoption of new technologies;
and
The Mudginberri Dispute – the AFFF’s first case, against the Meat Industry Employees’ Union, enabling the sector to challenge and overturn long-standing inefficiencies, securing major outcomes, which wore down union dominance in Australian industrial relations.
These were all precedent-setting cases in upholding farmers’ rights.”
http://www.nff.org.au/history.html?hilite=history
They did eff all for workers’ rights but workers (ahem, employees) are not your true blue rugged Aussie settlers of Howards mythology,are they now?
In case anyone has forgotten the role of the NFF during the failed attempt to bust unions in Australia by busting the MUA one newspaper account of NFF activity puts it thus:
“Encouraged by the acquiescence of the trade union movement, the National Farmers Federation (NFF) has successfully begun training a strike-breaking force of scabs at Melbourne’s Webb Dock, in the middle of Australia’s largest industrial port.
NFF executive director Wendy Craik has proclaimed victory, boasting that the month-old operation has successfully called the “MUA’s bluff” of a national waterfront stoppage.
Run by the NFF’s own company, P&C Stevedoring, the Webb Dock training base is central to plans, backed by major sections of big business and the Howard government, to break waterfront strikes, inflict mass sackings and dismantle waterside jobs and working conditions.
NFF president Don McGauchie has told reporters that “training will take place around the clock” to ensure that the company has a work force of 200 trained within two months. The first recruits are already operating cranes, forklifts and other cargo handling equipment.”
Nice one boys.
You didn’t like Mabo, you didn’t like Wik and you reject the authority of any institution outside your own institution like self authority to regulate what you do. If anyone was wondering where the right wing kick back against ecological social solidarity was going to come from – we know now.
mehitabel #59, you are taking some very long assumptions & added them to some bare facts you have at your disposal to arrive at an equation clouded by ideological baggage.. I’m sure you can do better than that. Your house plan analogies are yet to come close.
Can I suggest that you take more time to study the original posting by Brian & the links provided. Your response in # 51 to a link that I provided to you #41 indicates you did not trouble yourself in educating yourself further on the issue. If you had you would have seen that the quote I provided was listed number 2 of the 4 Commonwealth responsibilities not as you in 51 tried to pass off as relegated to 4 out of 4.
I believe that although the Kyoto protocol may not have been an inclusive aim of the Commonwealth to be active in the States vegetation management legislations; Kyoto & carbon was certainly on the table.
The introduction of a performance based (impact assessable) approval process would solve these types of problems with land-use, like the one ditched by the Queensland government recently (which was the final product of the Fitzgerald initiated reforms), and replace with the politically corrupting, prescriptive, tick the box model, so that any old dummy can operate it and call themselves experts or for that matter, scientists. Building these statutory immovable fences just feeds the corruption, which must suit some of these do nothings, save everything in sight but don’t ask me to approve anything which does not suit us, today. Where is the innovation?
What a useful bunch of hypocrites?
Dalls\as @ 62: what are you talking about?
peterJ @ 56:
“…the laws lock up rubbish…”
I guess you mean that they lock up what you regard as non-valuable habitat but an fuller example of this kind of failure would be useful. I cited @ 39 a Qld clearance rate of 5000,000 hectares a year. That appears to me to be little more than industrialised slash and burn agriculture. Are you saying that stopping that rate of clearance is a negative step?
“Blackfellas” isn’t my language. Didn’t use the word. Are you hallucinating? And, there are no qualifications to speak for Aboriginal Australians. They speak for themselves and I speak as a non-aboriginal with informed views of the subject. That is my right. If I ever get anything wrong I’ve total confidence my koori workmates will sort me out quick too. Right boss?
As to my own economic circumstances – WTF? I accept the legal limitations on the uses to which I put my property: you know, road rules and municipal taxes and so on. Why can’t you?
I’ve run out of time tonight, but some of the commentary reminds me of climate scepticism, and some is unworthy of usually sensible commenters.
Just a couple of things, not necessarily the most important. I’ll have to say more over Christmas because I’ve got a long day in the sun tomorrow.
furious balancing, I didn’t expect to be sneered at by you over my comment that the farm I grew up on was “part of the fabric of my being’. I believe that there is something about the attachment to place that isn’t limited to farming. I feel it about the Brisbane I knew in my university days.
But farmers often naturally feel a deep attachment to land they have worked for years. However, it’s not the same as what Aborigines feel when they say that they are part of the land.
mehitabel, do you read the links?
Look again on page 3. The Commonwealth gives reasons for its role in fostering improved native vegetation management at a national scale under four headings:
still@downfall quoted the second of these, not the fourth. And the order has to do with the logic of the whole statement rather than any priority.
It’s not clear to me what happened over the fish pool exercise. I understand the original project was to set up a trout fishing lodge. I have no information as to why this was ruled out of order, but I’ve heard nothing about a lack of water.
mehitabel, no-one would suggest that everyone should be compensated for every change in regulations. But to have 80% or more of you property locked up where Spencer says it is illegal for him to pick up a piece of wood is different in scale. As well as being different in kind from most of your examples as it is his capacity to earn a livelihood that is at stake.
And can we get his name right, please? It’s Spencer, not Spence.
fxh @ 48, your comment about Barnaby supporting a milk bar owner whose landlord is not renewing the lease is more about you needing to say something smart rather than a serious comment.
Excellent post, Brian.
What has happened to Peter Spencer is not really similar to the effect of urban planning laws, despite what some people here are claiming.
Mehitabel has a scenario of someone who starts repairing motorbikes in their shed, builds up a small business, then gets shut down by the council due to noise.
Well, if I were a next-door neighbour, I’d say: three cheers for the council! But note: the council’s act has not destroyed the value of the land, has it? The owner can still sell up, get the market price of the property, and find a better location to fulfil his or her motorbike-repair dreams.
But it looks as if government actions have completely destroyed the value of Spencer’s land. That’s a bit unsavoury, if you ask me. I have never heard of an urban council decision that did that.
Furthermore, isn’t Spencer still legally liable to maintain the property, even though he can get no income from it? If wild dogs, for example, escaped on to someone else’s land or into a park, Spencer could be sued.
Lucky man. We’ve obliterated the value of your major asset in life, but you still have to maintain it, even though you have no income. And you can’t sell it, because no one in their right mind would buy it. He must be feeling like a character in a Franz Kafka story.
If the NSW Government had any decency, they would make him a reasonable offer to take the property off his hands and incorporate it into the park system.
Brian, it wasn’t a sneer, it as an epression of deep frustration with the notion that those who grew up in an extrmely privileged position in our society infer through their commentaries that what they descibe as “the fabric of their being” has something to do with land tenure.
A number of years ago a farmer at Euroa in Victoria planted his property in trees. The local council made him take them all out because it wasn’t compatible with its ‘zoning’ There is much discussion on the merits of pasture vs trees for ‘carbon sequestration’
We all need to bombard the Prime Minister and our local members to obtain an equitable settlement for Peter and other landholders like him!
I remember Peter Spencer as Paius Wingti’s whiteman during the Wingti years as Papua New Guinea Prime Minister 1993/5. At that time he was a control freak who clogged up the PM’s office and made sure all words spoken on behalf of government came through him. He seems to me to be a larger than life charactar who has grand visions grounded in obsolete systems. He wanted to be lord of the manor in Southern Highlands and white masta in PNG. But gets caught as history moves on.
Here is a little of Peter Spencer’s PNG background from a submission he wrote to a Parliamentary Inquiry into Pacific
“Having lived in Papua New Guinea for 27 years and most of those years spent in the field I became increasingly aware things were not improving but deteriorating. Each year one felt it could not go down any further but each year new shocks would rock the country. Over 25 years people accepted it all as inevitable. If it had all happened in one year the populace would have recoiled in horror, and demanded to have the rot stopped.
My time was spent in business. This was an ever increasing challenge. Towards the end of my stay I was Deputy Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister, Office of the Prime Minister’s Administration officer and Press Secretary to the Prime Minister.”
Anthony @63
I do apologise for attributing the wrong quote to you. I must be getting old. I note your position, that you “accept the legal limitations on the uses to which (you) put (your) property “, apparently without question. So you would accept poorly thought through legal limitations or even unjust law? That’s OK, lots of people do. But I recommend that you read one of the most important legal addresses ever made in this country, the address on “The Ethics of Advocacy” by Sir John Barry, at the Albury Law Society in July 1941 (Barry was later a judge of the Supreme Court in Victoria). It is relevant because he talks about the continuing struggle against the Executive’s attempts to wield absolute power. Ironically, it is also relevant because it talks about the tactics of the Nazis, an issue which had concentrated most people’s minds at the time. Lots of people in Nazi Germany accepted the law of their State too, and the most authoritarian of them made good concentration camp guards, etc. So it pays to think a little deeper.
The vegetation laws, which you seem to think are a wonderful thing, were not aimed at getting good environmental outcomes. Just about any landholder could show you where they fall down on that point. For example, I could legally put a bulldozer through almost pristine riparian woodland if I wanted to be an environmental vandal. But I can’t touch acres of whipstick wattle regrowth to thin them and allow the original environment to regenerate. In Queensland, you cannot even remove a declared noxious weed from a protectred area! Good law? Good for the environment? I don’t think so! The only reason that we have these laws is that the State wanted to lock up the carbon to use as offsets for the fossil fuel industries and claim that they had met their international commitments. So they legislated to determine the mode of use of the land to meet their needs. The fossil fuel industries benefited because they had to do nothing about emissions. So just as the Nazis viewed private property rights as conditional upon the mode of use, Australian governments of all stripes decided that they could legislate away certain property rights because they wanted to change the mode of land use. And just like the Nazis, they gave the benefit to their mates in big industry.
That’s the way it is. It doesn’t mean they are Nazis. It just demonstrates how corrupt governments achieve their ends. They only need enough people cruising along saying say “I’m comfortable so everyone else should get on with their lives” and they can do pretty much as they like.
I am not a conspiracy theorist, just a man who has some 40 years of education behind him and a working life a bit longer than that. I long ago learned that the purpose of education was to teach you to think for yourself. And it was ingrained into me from a very young age that when you see something wrong, you speak out. So I do. But that’s it from me. I have bigger fish to fry elsewhere.
Godwins
It sounds to me as if Spencer destroyed the value of his land, not the government.
I await actual refutation, I’m going by the information provided.
- if the land was not previously being used for farming (and forgive me, Brian, but that’s one of the longest posts I’ve read on the net, making it difficult to follow all the ins and outs) then it would have been dirt cheap. It would still (regardless of clearing regs) be worth about the same. Know lots of people who buy cheap blocks like that – sometimes simply to preserve a bit of bush, sometimes as a place for a holiday shack. It also wouldn’t be very expensive to maintain, as rates as based on valuations and the upkeep on nothin’ is nothin’.
- if the land was farming land, which he allowed to run down, then that was his fault. No good farmer is negligent. If he had no use for the land at the time, he either shouldn’t have purchased it or leased it out. Instead it sounds as if he let it literally run to seed.
I know lots of local businesspeople who find themselves losing money and blame the local council or the government. Strangely enough, the circumstances they find themselves in are exactly the same as other businesses, who continue to thrive and don’t blame others for their mistakes.
As I don’t hear – and have asked – whether neighbouring farmers, facing the same scenario as Spencer, are similarly affected, then I assume Spencer is one of those, who faced with setbacks, would rather find somebody else to blame than acknowledge they’ve made some mistakes and need to lift their game.
Nana Levu #68,69 I have been carefully finding out all I can about this situation since I became aware of it about a month ago. Having talked to people much closer to the action (I have never met the man, you are quite correct in saying that Peter Spencer is a larger than life character & can be difficult. But the issue is not whether Spencer is a flawless character (who is), but whether he has been dealt an injustice.
I am not on here wasting my time if I hadn’t spent considerable time in thought over this situation. This is not a game, I believe that is one determined man who is at the end of his tether & they’re too many possibilities of a bad outcome.
Mehitabel # 72
I bring to your attention Sir, numerous landowners – regardless of heritage, whom have had the distinct disadvantage of the Native Vegetation Acts in their various forms throughout Australia.
I encourage you Sir, to investigate this for yourself, as Peter Spencer is one of thousands.
There are many landowners who are, as in all business’s extremely apt at change – however when the agenda of a Government changes continually, and legislations imposed and ammended- then inevitably a business cannot cope.
Why then should landowners be any different?
As within other industries, that have diabolical regulations, should this draconian legislation not be ammended?
I draw your attention to the legislation, not inparticular Peter Spencer, as here is where the debacle resides.
Paulus @ 65, thankyou for appreciating the simple point of the Spencer story.
fb @ 66, that “extremely privileged position” for us was one of quite significant poverty.
Anthony @ 60, I didn’t set up this post as one that addressed the rights and wrongs of tree clearing legislation in relation to food production and the ecology. If I had I would have limited it to Qld which I know a bit about. It would have included information about how many trees there are in the state, the vigour of regrowth in warmer climates and the fact discovered by an Australian Greenhouse study that even in the 1990s 40% of the clearing was of regrowth rather than remnant scrub.
But I guess that fact that laws everywhere in the country seem to be regulatory and amount to in effect top-down coercion is relevant to the Spencer case. The Productivity Commission had a look at this policy strategy a few years ago. They found it entirely inappropriate and likely to be counter-productive.
But I would have also had to highlight and provide evidence for green aspirations that appear to go beyond 30% retention and appear to be in conflict with ongoing food security on a planetary level.
I would have had to highlight that what you get with laws that proect ‘remnant’ vegetation is not always in fact remnant is not the same as some imaginary pristine pre-European forest landscape. Also there are significant problems in how that woody vegetation is to be maintained and kept free of invasive species when you are attacking the economic base of the people you expect to do this for nothing.
A full treatment of these issues is beyond the scope of this post. but might be included in Spencer’s desired royal commission, which again I know nothing about except that he sees it as looking at farm regulation.
But in the Spencer case we can take the laws as a given, for better or for worse. In the post I said that the Federal and Supreme Courts had found that something of significance had been taken away from Spencer. The facts are not really in dispute. The question is whether Australian law should compensate people adversely affected in this manner. It’s a legitimate question and common sense provides a very simple answer.
Mehitabel, you mentioned a case where 239, I think the number was, people bought a block of land sold to them as suitable to build a house on. That was what the block was there for. Then the local authority changed the regulation to prevent them building a house, drastically reducing it’s value. To me it is an open and shut case for compensation, as plain as the nose on your face.
I’ll be out for the rest of the day, working on a 50-acre property within the Brisbane city boundaries that looks lovely from the distance, but is in fact hopelessly kacked up with every weed known. I worked on clearing the crap out of a nearby property last week and the rate of progress was about one square metre per hour. That patch was particularly bad. Landholders involved in food production can’t afford the intensity of effort required. So I’ll see you tonight and if I miss you, have a merry Christmas!
Paulus @ 65.
One example of where a direct comparison occurs between urban and rural legislation and regulation occurs:-
Councils can and do use heritage listing to protect properties of value (as they see it) with or without the owners consent. A recent example just down the road from me where a couple bought an old police station on two blocks as a retirement investment where they lived.
The impact on the couple is severe because the land under the police station is worth $500,000 (two urban blocks).
Once heritage listing occurs the value of the second block becomes worthless, because the police station covers part of the second block.
There are numerous heritage listed buildings now vacant and falling into disrepair in Adelaide as a result. No one can develop the properties and nobody wants to occupy them. The owners certainly can’t and won’t spend the bucket loads of money required to maintain them.
The same concept applies to rural land, locked up non-productive under vegetation controls, with feral weeds and animals taking over. In the long term non-productive land from which no income is derived will degrade, because neither government nor owner can afford the ongoing upkeep. Locking up land in Australia, now that human have modified the original environment, will automatically prevent the return of the original natural biodiversity.
The original natural biodiversity can only returned or maintained by the constant application of effort and money, the same as is applicable to the maintenance of a building.
Well I wasn’t going to comment cos I can’t see this heading anywhere positive, its too clogged up with polarised viewpoints.
Worse, I have respect for 2 of the antagonists here, Brian and furious, sad to see them on opposite sides.
But oh well what the hell ….
We went through a similar type of thing that Spencer seems to be complaining about, perhaps smaller scale, although I’m not sure about that, when we sold up our city house, resigned our jobs to build our dream home and develop our business here only to find out that building approval had been rejected because of new EPA regulations.
So we appealed and sat in a tin shed on our property, unemployed and homeless [no thats exaggerating ... a bit] for 9 months anxiously awaiting the result which was good and then another 9 months before the house was built which had been set to go 18 months prior.
Had Plan B ready to go if necesary.
At no time did we feel that the world was out to ‘get’ us, or complain or consider going up a pole cos there nothing to complain about really.
The environmental values of the place have to be maintained and obviously, well I would have thought obviously, Australians are now aware that clearing vegetation as we used to do is no longer viable.
Just as there are bookloads, literally and really, of regulations governing what we do and how we do it in the city so there is now to a lesser degree on the farm.
And I dare to suggest only those with an overbearing sense of entitlement would feel the need to complain to such an extreme extent as Mr Spencer is.
He has apparenly owned his land for nearly 30 years so the ‘new’ vegetation laws should have come as no surprise at all.
He has suffered no loss of income that I can see.
Accept that vegegation can no longer be destroyed, move on.
Unfortunately we don’t have the full story.
Clearly.
The ‘history’ in the post is one sided.
Its from Spencer’s POV only.
He bought the place in 1980, “before he could clear it the government brought in native vegetation laws which made clearing illegal”.
When was that? What were the preliminaries? Why couldn’t he clear it? More questions.
We are not told the details, who knows what they are.
“effectively the nationalisation”
No, not so, thats emotive and pejorative language. There is a lot of it about.
Its simply native vegetation being protected, surely to god that is now an accepted need?
The extreme language that permeates this story and issue is really off putting, its continued here in the comments sadly.
“He then invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in setting up ponds for trout fishing, but the introduction of new water laws ended the venture”
I’d like some details here, when, what laws, how did they effect the venture, what exactly went on?
We are not told.
The ‘history’ is too fragmented, too one sided.
It hasn’t been shown that the laws have impacted unexpectedly and unfairly on Mr Spencer, only asserted.
Then we have an entirely unrelated issue, the ’stealing’ of carbon?
Pardon? “Stealing”??
Nothing has been stolen.
I presume my patch of scrub has been entered into whatever has been done for the sake of Kyoto.
I am no poorer as a result.
Zero impact.
I am not agitating for unearned compensation because its carbon was ’stolen’ [what the hell does that mean anyway?] nor do I want compo for not being able to use the land it is on.
I just accept a reasonable and necessary even desirable state of affairs.
Quite frankly the claim that carbon has been stolen, owners of native veg deserve billions in compo is really preposterous.
How about all the trees in suburbia?
Look I come from a rural city where one Friday arvo over a thousand workers got the sack, none had work a week later and within a year or two the population of the city had dropped by tens of thousands and there were entire rows of empty houses whose inhabitants had lost lots, in some cases everyhthing.
I heard recently that more than 20% of the workers who lost their jobs at Mitsubishi are still unemployed, many suffering from stress.
We have just come through a narrow miss where the GFC could have caused, I dunno, hundreds of thousands of people to lose their jobs and their dreams?
And some thousands have anyway.
A bit of perspective please.
Sorry Brian, you have informed me a lot on various topics which I appreciate, but I reckon you are on the wrong end of a very tribal issue here.
Brian, you are not the only person in this thread who used the phrase. That you grew up in poverty means we, at least, have that in common. Which brings me to the point I was trying to make – it was less a sneer at you, or any other title holder and more a declaration that those without a deed of title feel a connection to this country too. To be honest, if you don’t recognise privilege in the ownership of title, then I think that sort of emphasises my point.
mehitable @ 72,
I think you are going beyond the information provided, in other words making stuff up. My impression (subject to confirmation by further evidence) is that he bought the property in a run-down condition and formulated quite exciting plans for its future, which if successful might have made it into an exemplary example of what a bit of energy and imagination can do.
His story is that he was cut off at every turn by government action (nothing to do with blaming city folk, who in general don’t know what’s going on) and as I said the Supreme and Federal courts seemed to accept this.
As to other nearby farmers, my impression is that his situation is unique, possibly the highest farm in Australia, surrounded on three sides by national park. Somehow under the law, which I don’t understand, he was caught with 80% plus ‘high value’ regrowth, probably because his plan always was to retain the larger trees and work the native grasses that grew underneath with a fine wool business.
His situation would have been more within his control if he’d knocked the trees down when he had the chance. Sad. Then he may have even been able to grow timber and sell the carbon offsets.
In the initial years in Qld regrowth was always eligible to be cleared. Spencer’s mistake on the evidence available is that he wanted to do something environmentally more sensitive.
We are told that sheep eat the seedling trees. the fact that his propert didn’t burn in the 2003 fires indicates that the understory was still relatively clear. If you now let it go, as required by law, sooner or later it will burn in a fire so hot that it will cook the land.
What I’d like to know is whether the nearby national park has recovered to any extent. The story is that Spencer still has 50% more dogs on his place than formerly which makes running shep difficult.
But for all that is written we are still short of a clear, detailed account as to what happened. If Spencer dies the information may die with him.
Gotta go.
Agmates has an onlineine piece complaining about the structure and funding of the NFF: http://www.agmates.com/blog/2009/10/20/the-national-farmers-federation-revealed/
Agmates appears to be a splinter of the rural community with deep dissatisfactions about the way the NFF responds to their needs. One cannot blame them. The NFF has consistently been a union buster for years. On of its more interesting actions was to fund what the HR Nicholls Society calls ‘The Troubleshooters Case’ to a High Court hearing. The issue there was to do with building union practices. Whatever the material facts of that matter it is difficult to grasp exactly how building union practices are linked to agricultural production and exactly why the NFF would fund it.
You can read Peter Costellos account of the NFF funded Troubleshooters Case at:
http://www.hrnicholls.com.au/archives/vol12/vol12-9.php
Another account of union busting in which the NFF and HR Nichols Society appear to have been working together is detailed at: http://www.hrnicholls.com.au/archives/vol17/vol17-2.php
Agmates appear to have a parcel grievances with the NFF one of which is that it is chary of funding serial litigant Peter Spencer.
Hannah’s Dad asks about NSW Government regulations on clearing and water harvesting. Mr Spencer probably ran foul of the Dept of Land & Water Conservation around 2000 when clearing was restricted to no more than 2 ha perannum and none on protected land ie land of over 18 degrees steepness. As others have stated, the issues of old and re-growth were cause for concern, the distinction between being anything over 10 years. There were various allowances made such as clearing fire trails and boundary fences.
Water harvesting followed and the aim was to overcome ‘head of catchment’ problems such as farmers constructing ‘turkeys nest’ dams across major creeks, thereby denying neighbours – and downstream rivers – of their feed source. Landowners were allowed 10 percent of all collected rainfall as runoff on their property. It is only a guess on my part that Mr Spencer was first affected by these restrictions well before Kyoto and carbon trading emerged.
furious, I do recognise the privilege of owning title. But what the problem is here is that the title was gained under conditions that the guy could make a living out of that ownership. But the conditions of ownership were changed by government action so that he couldn’t.
Or so the story appears, although I recognise with hannah’s dad that we need more information to really know.
What is upsetting me is that others think that they have enough information to say that he has nothing to complain about, when clearly they don’t.
I’ll say here that I have some more information which clearly contributed to his decision to go up the tower. But it is not my place to release it.
We have to be careful about assuming we know all the particularities of a situation.
From justice Peter Bricoe of the federal Court:
From J Rothman of the Supreme Court judgement:
I’ll try to find links for those judgements tonight. Those judicial officers would have had more information at their disposal than any of us.
Now I’m going to turn this computer off.
I have done a lot more reading on this matter since this morning.
Here are links to the court hearings and decisions:
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/federal_ct/2007/1415.html
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/federal_ct/2007/1787.html
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/FCA/2008/1256.html
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/FCA/2008/1378.html
But I am left thinking is a hunger strike likely to reap a positive response from government? After the Oceanic Viking asylum seekers captured attention, if another hunger strike has a positive response, will we then see a wave of hunger strikers. People of Tuvalu seeking a new home. It is like paying ransom money for hostages. More will follow….
To the comment back at number 60
It’s my opinion that a unfounded attack has been made on a person that I have known for some time.
Lee McNicholl endeavours to run his rural property at a high level of sustainability. He was a founding member of the Murilla Landcare group. The attitudes that Lee & his wife have practiced is evident by three children who are now environmental engineers. Lee is not from a privileged position & for the many years of community service has not received a cent in return.
These type of comments are unhelpful in the context of this blog where we are talking about another farming family near Canberra who have tried very hard to stand on their own two feet but have been blocked at every endeavour by unthinking & uncaring attitudes as shown in comment 60.
#84 Nana Levu
I beleive what you say is realistic in reguards to a hungerstrike.
A careful read of the court proceedings will reveal some improvements could have been made to the legal campaign.
As we have discussed before this is a determined character. I have also said that there are too many possibilities of a bad outcome.
But I firmely that Peter Spencer & many like him have been delt an injustice and it deserves to be investigated.
anthony n @ 80, as I understand Agmates, and I’m not sure that I do, it is simply a web-based social network where farmers can share information and discuss matters of mutual interest. You have to be a member to comment, but comments are freely accessible for all to read. But it’s a bit more than that. It has an E-trading facility, for example. Anyway here is the main page:
I get a bit confused by the differences between the Forum, Groups and Blogs sections. The same topics and authors seem to pop up all over the place.
Obviously you don’t have to be a farmer to join because Christine Milne has a “group”. I find it curious, however, that this post appears on her page. Not sure how that would have happened.
So I don’t think Agmates is a lobbying organisation at all.
But the complaint about the NFF is not a surprise. I understand that Agforce gets funds for projects from the Qld government, which, if so, must compromise the representations they make to government on behalf of their members.
Farmers complaining about peak farm organisations is not new.
Nanu Levu @ 84, thanks for the links. I haven’t had time to look at them yet and my wife is threatening to ban me from the computer for a few days, but eventually I will.
I’ve been thinking that whoever advised Peter Spencer that it was worth going down the legal road, and supported him in doing so, did him no favour. It would seem to me a very long shot to get Commonwealth compensation when the laws which caused him grief were state laws.
You have to pick your case in these things, have very good lawyers, deep pockets and be prepared for a long journey. The pattern in Qld when people have taken the Govt on about their vegetation management laws is that every judgement is appealed, however comprehensive a judgement in your favour seems to be.
I’m surprised about the PNG involvement. Are you sure there isn’t two of them?
“it’s OK then if the few are deprived of their livelihood in the interests of the many.”
Whaling anyone? I was a schoolboy in Albany in the ’70s when the “environmentalists” came to town and shut down the whaling station. I think the operation was uneconomical anyway but the argument was all about the livelihoods of the crews and workers at the station versus the animal cruelty and threatened species arguments (and the generally held idea that whales are special) of the conservationists. I would say that I would have supported the conservations on animal cruelty and unnecessary exploitation grounds despite the fact that people I new were directly adversely effected by the closure. Get used to the fact that this kind of thing happens all the time and usually for good reason. It’s called change.
hannah’s dad @ 77, I can’t answer you point by point, but a few general comments.
I don’t see your case and his as completely analogous. First there is the issue of scale. Spencer lost control of 80% plus of his land and there seems no remedy. I don’t know about the NSW laws but the Qld ones are designed to be non-appellable. When an officer makes a judgement adverse to you and it is confirmed effectively by ministerial authority you can’t complain about the judgement only whether the officer exercised his/her duties properly in making it. The law here is essentially procedural and empowers the minister to conduct a vegetation management regime as he/she sees fit.
There is a lot of grief about how these laws are structured and administered, which may well be worth a royal commission, but I’m a bit out of my area of competence here and I have no knowledge about how things are done in NSW.
As I understand it, Spencer wanted to leave the tall trees in place, largely or completely. Apparently native grasses grow underneath and this would have fed his sheep. What he wanted to do was to keep the understory in check, but was prevented from doing so. Understory means no grass and also means greater vulnerability to fire and a hotter fire when it comes. But his inability to clear the understory has clearly limited the grass he can grow, so I’m astonished that you would think there was no loss of income.
Justice Callinan said that under common law people would expect to own the trees on their land. I think that in 1980 the notion that someone else might own the trees would be astonishing to most landowners. In Qld my brother tells me the timber is listed separately on the deed when you buy a property, still is. It would have been common practice to sell some of the timber to “improve” the land.
What does seem to me unusual is that 80% of the property was covered by the vegetation retention laws. It seems high. I have no idea what the appropriate proportion is if you are going to balance food and fibre production against conservation interests. still@downfall said, I think, at least 30%. I’ve been told that 20% is workable, but more than that can cause economic stress. I have no opinion on the matter, but think the ideal might be different in different ecologies.
In writing the piece there was no material I had except stuff that supported Spencer. I didn’t do a running commentary about my own ideas at every point because it would have been cumbersome and I’m not sure my ideas are worth all that much. In quoting Duffy’s summary of the history it was simply the best of several available. Perhaps I could have written my own, but it could not have been ‘objective’ in any real sense because I’m not close enough to the events and the people.
I had seen the excerpts of the judgements I quoted @ 82. My bottom line was that he had an obvious grievance, and in terms of natural justice probably deserved some kind of compensation but legally had Buckley’s chance of getting it.
I’m actually curious as to why such emphasis was placed on carbon. Perhaps his lawyer thought it was the best chance of compensation. I’m not familiar with the black letter aspect of the Kyoto Protocol but I’d be surprised if signing Kyoto and not meeting the obligations would cost actual dollars. Otherwise Canada would be in deep trouble.
So the real carbon heist might be still to come. For example, I mentioned the study on the Qld beef industry. It’s possible with a price on carbon that farmers could be charged for methane emissions but not given credit for woody vegetation growth. And then if it burns, who pays? The government can legislate any way it pleases but with the CPRS at least it would be the Feds legislating where compensation is due “in just terms” under the constitution. Which brings the High Court into play.
Patrickb @ 89, so anything goes in the interests of change? The ends justify the means? There are no questions of degree?
I’ve been in government and made decisions that adversely affect people. It’s one of the reasons I often think about guilt and forgiving the unforgivable.
The injuction do no harm still seems good to me. And in a civilised society I’d expect governments to protect the few from the tyranny of the many. Sorry, I’m not giving up on the possibility of a just society.
BTW the whaling analogy doesn’t quite fit to my mind. An argument for another day, but a dilemma for sure.
It seems obvious to me that if the government was going to lock up 80% of Spencer’s farm they should have bought it and incorporated it into the national park instead of leaving him there as an unpaid, rate-paying park ranger.
Brian at #88 Yes I am sure it is the same Peter Spencer that was in PNG for nearly 30 years. I used to do some work for him when he was Prime Minister Wingti’s whiteman. He owned Shannon Flat property from 1980 while he was heavily involved in PNG. He used carpenters from PNG highlands to help build his huge house at Shannon Flat.
His story is of a man with grand visions doomed at the end of eras; a psychological tragic. This is not the first time he has sought billions of Commonwealth government funds; he had a grand plan for recolonising PNG when the colonial time was well over. His time in PNG gave him a highlanders view of compensation. His personality lead him to his narcissistic hunger strike.
I don’t know Peter King, but I believe he also has a background in PNG.
Brian, No I don’t think my case is completely comparable but its not too far away, and I’m sure if I moved in the same circle as the Spencer group they would feel outraged and all that and if I were to go to the likes of Jones Duffy, Bolt, Joyce, et al I’m sure that we could concoct a communist greeny govt plot to steal from honest hard working farmers like pure me, just trying to make a living but being unjustly prevented and having our birthright stolen from us.
Again I reiterate, we are only hearing one side about all this, that via a filter of, shall we say, dubious, intermediaries?
Someone above has suggested what may be the true story behind the alleged reason Spencer lost his ‘fish ponds’ and I read somewhere that there is a bit more to that scenario than has been let on.
I can tell you that if the case is same as here in SA there is absolutely no problem in getting government approval to have roos and dogs on a property shot, I was offered a ‘Destruction Permit’ [nice name isn't it? for same without even wanting it and I have had pro roo shooters ask to shoot roos at my place.
Look Brian there is no case here.
Its an extreme fringe group whining about evil commie city slickers [read the comments at their sites],nothing has been ’stolen’, and any loss of income could have and should have been planned for yonks before the crunch came.
Circumstances change, we have to take the good with the bad and there are lots of people who have been dealt much much harder blows than this bloke has and they have had to roll with it.
Any other group, say thousands of workers dismissed virtually overnight or subject to tighteneing changing roles in the work place have to get on with life as best they can and the impact on their lives is huge, in the case[s] being presented by this noisy mob its all abstract and in the eye of the beholder. Thats why they have only been urged on by blokes like Jones et al.
Please Brian don’t associate yourself with blokes like him.
This case is quite confusing and some of the elements of the Spencer claim are unsupportable.
The land was purchased at a time when the laws which were in force regarding land use where such that landclearing could be done. On this point readers should also be aware that land clearing is expensive and is done so productivity from the farm can be enhanced and the proceeds used to pay for the cost of the landclearing.It is a longterm repayment and works if seasons go your way and markets are favourable.
Then at a later date the state government( with or without the federal government’s passive or active support ) changed the landuse rules.
Such a change should be an act which can be challenged in a court when compensation isn’t paid.
The Spencer family has a completely reasonable case to present as their capacity to earn income to the extent that it existed under the laws which pertained at the time the land was purchased had been destroyed.
All the subsequent stories about fish farms and wild dogs are unrelated to the only valid argument the Spencers can try to advance.
These variations in circumstance are likely for any primary producer and stink of being a whine aimed at unnecessarily widening the argument and might be there to try to build sympathy but I think on this count they are counterproductive.
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Readers should also not confuse this specific and case based argument with a broader appeal to resume landclearing. That doesn’t exist and no-one bar a few fringe lunatics is arguing for it.
Anyone who has purchased rural 1A land in NSW is aware of the laws on landclearing and water harvesting. The value of the property incorporates these features into the price and can be seen to the casual reader in the property descriptions – this block contains a permanent creek and is 40-50-60 or whatever % cleared.
When Brian asks ‘why bring the C capture /price into the equation?’. I’d guess that the landholder sees the claims that Australia has met it’s C abatement measures as being soley the product of this ban on their clearing land.
As such they will try to argue that the failure to meet the Kyoto protocols targets would have meant a cost being imposed on the power producers.This has been
avoided by a cost imposed on landholders.
Now aspects of this argument are unclear.It is by no means certain that the land not cleared was going to be cleared . As such Australia’s claims about lowering eCo2 emissions could be said to be at least in part fraudulent.
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Counterarguments based on individual workers losing their jobs are wide of the mark.
Same for council rezonings- when these occur the landholder is usually a positive beneficiary of an increase in the land value. When has land ever been rezoned to a lower value and the council hasn’t been liable for compensation?
Spencers case isn’t aided by the hysterical presentation nor the blame casting and generally whinging attitude.But he still has a specific and reasonable case for compensation on the single issue that he has lost an opportunity to earn income as a result of an action of the state government.
I agree with you Hannah’s Dad. There is another side to this story. Here are some questions, the answers to which would flesh ot the other side:
Did Spencer sell the viable part of his property and leave himself with an unviable rump?
Did at least 15 years of not paying close attention to Shannon’s Flat property due to heavy involvement in PNG business and politics lead to loss of the property’s potential.
What was the cost of his divorce settlements?
Murph @ 94, that is an extraordinarily sane account of the whole matter. You have very deftly picked your way through the whole thing.
Nanu and hannah’s dad, I’m not going to comment on the core matter of compensation further until I’ve read your links and listened to this ABC interview which I believe is about a hour long. I wanted to get the post up before everyone scattered for Christmas and because I usually only work on these things for a few hours late at night I simply ran out of time. Similarly I had one link to the court stuff and didn’t have time to follow it up.
I was hoping that more would come out in the comments, but, Nanu, you are the only one I think who has come up with new material that is relevant to the case. I think the whole saga deserves the attention of an investigative journalist, such as you get on Four Corners or RN’s Background Briefing.
murph said:
I think the first of these was Helen @ 21. It’s like saying there is bad stuff going on over there, so this bad stuff is OK because it’s ‘normal’.
The issue of norms is indeed relevant to the law. Hernando de Soto in his book The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else pointed out that British property law didn’t work in the US because the social norms were different. There is no doubt that in the social arena norms have an influence on law.
I think Justice Callinan is saying that Australian norms are not conducive to adequate compensation. Or if the are they are, not strongly enough in favour of adequate compensation to prevent legislators and administrators from serious skimping. If that is his view it would have received some confirmation on this thread.
I understand that vegetation management legislation, certainly in Queensland and perhaps in Australia, is attracting international interest. This article identifies a paradigm shift:
This shift occurred after Spencer bought his land.
But there was a shift also from co-operation and incentives to coercion and penalties. And the article also seemed to welcome this aspect:
Frankly, this is a worry in a democracy.
And the problem is that the “problematic consultative processes” have been replaced by laws that are felt to be highly problematic and punitive to farmers in their structure and procedures. At one level (stopping clearing) they have been effective, but at the expense of methodologies that some jurists consider breach principles of natural justice. This is not germaine to the issue of Spencer’s right to compensation but goes some way towards explaining the hostility of farmers towards the laws.
This might be the subject of a future post (what fun!) I’m aware of a PhD being done on environmental law and the thought occurred to me that I might be able to get a guest post, because I’m going a bit white around the gills at the thought of tackling it myself.
The fact remains, however, that the management of land (I think 80% or so) in Australia is in the hands of farmers. No-one (or very few) would contest that conservation values should be strongly represented in farm management. Co-operation is preferable to coercion in most things. In this instance the Productivity Commission report of 2004 seemed to think a devolved co-operative approach would be more effective.
But a new framework of communication and trust would need to be established. Farmers will need to accept that the paradigm has shifted and that there is a legitimate public interest in how they manage the land.
The green groups, I think, would need to change their approach from control without responsibility, to one of support and assistance. They are not line managers and never will be. They can influence but they should not determine. I say this from a quarter of a century of experience in supporting and assisting schools in government as well as setting up regulative policies.
But sadly, Spencer’s contribution may in fact be a step backwards.
Patrickb @ 89,
The comparison between whaling and Peter Spencer,s case is not really a comparison at all.
Whaling or the harvesting of sea food does not relate because of the ownership issues. In the case of landownership the owner owns property sold originally from the crown, and the goevernment has no equity in that property as a result. To take some of the equity back morally requires compensation.
In whaling the whales themselves were never sold by the crown to anyone.
Peter got soaked as the tail of tropical cyclone lawrence passed over nsw. Then on Christmas Day his sons arrived from US with full kit of weather proof shelter to keep him dry and lift his spirits. http://agmates.ning.com/group/peterspencerhungerstrike/forum/topics/a-conversation-with-peter
I think the first of these was Helen @ 21. It’s like saying there is bad stuff going on over there, so this bad stuff is OK because it’s ‘normal’.
I utterly, utterly repudiate that. What I am saying that highly politicised and organised communities such as “timber towns” and agbusiness people portray the loss of livelihood in the country as a tragedy, which it frequently is, but at the same time the loss of whole swathes of jobs to similar economic and social forces in the city is received by the popular press with a resounding “meh”. I was making the point that the townies, who are sometimes derided by the country groups as having it unbelieveably soft, are experiencing the same type of thing. And I wasn’t talking about individual job losses. In the Footscray area we lose jobs a factory at a time.
I have never made the “well he did it, so it’s OK that we do it” argument, and I never will.
Helen, I’ve checked your comment @ 21, and yes, I’ve misrepresented you. My apologies. I should have checked rather than relying on my failing memory!
The comment does raise some interesting issues which I might take up later, but there are a few other things I want to attend to in the immediate future.
Here’s some more informatyion.
Back in 2005 Sean Murphy did a Landline segment on vegetation laws, starting and finishing with an interview with Peter Spencer. Murphy interviewed a number of other farmers, also Francesca Andreoni of the Wilderness Society. We are told:
(The farm varies in size in various reports, but I understand it is 5,000 hectares on the plan and some 8,000 on the ground.)
We are told that he drew a farm plan up with the Department of Land and Environment, which took 18 months to prepare, and which was approved for implementation. I understand from the Duffy interview from memory that this plan cost some $300,000 to prepare. Shortly thereafter came the vegetation act and he was told that he couldn’t proceed.
He claims that this reduced the value of his place from $2 million to $500,000.
This Agmates post gives the letter Spencer wrote to the Prime Minister. CO2 does seem to be highlighted, but unfortunately the attachment which contains his specific demands is not available.
This article from The Land says Rudd won’t negotiate.
Also:
The NSW Farmers’ Association has come out in support of Peter Spencer. They have in the past supported his legal action financially, they say, through the NFF Australian Farmers Fighting Fund. But believe it or not they have joined Senator Fielding in calling for a royal commission on the science of climate change. You might recall that Fielding suggested such, jointly chaired by Ian Plimer and Ross Garnaut.
I do hope that was not one of Spencer’s demands. I recall him saying the royal commission should be about farm regulation.
Brian the Agmates site has a thread, ‘the point has been made’, with a post with references to court transcripts:
at http://agmates.ning.com/group/peterspencerhungerstrike/forum/topics/the-point-has-been-made
• Spencer v Commonwealth of Australia [2008] FCA 1256 (26 August 2008)
• Spencer v Commonwealth of Australia [2007] FCA 1787 (1 November 2007)
• Spencer v Commonwealth of Australia [2009] FCAFC 38 (24 March 2009)
• Spencer v Valuer General and Ors [2009] NSWLEC 128 (16 June 2009)
• Spencer v Australian Capital Territory and Ors [2007] NSWSC 303 (4 April 2007)
• Spencer v Elichung Pty Ltd [2006] NSWSC 523 (6 June 2006)
• Spencer v Cooma-Monaro Shire Council and Anor [2008] ACTCA 18 (12 November 2008)
• Spencer v Cooma Monaro Shire Council Anor [2007] ACTSC 42 (29 June 2007)
• Spencer v Commonwealth of Australia [2009] HCATrans 126 (5 June 2009)
• Spencer v Commonwealth of Australia [2009] HCATrans 95 (1 May 2009)
Brian @ 101. I can’t believe a farm plan would cost $300 000. These were encouraged by the Dept of Land & Water Conservation. Aerial photographs were the most expensive component but nothing approaching that figure. Various private agencies would assist but if Spencer paid more than $10 000 then he was ripped off there too.
pablo, it’s a bit more complicated than that. See the 2005 Duffy interview.
Re-reading Duffy doesn’t help much. Natural resource mapping by Landsat satellite imagery of the Spencer property suggests it falls between two bio-geographical regions – Australian Alps and South East Highlands – each with its own vegetation profile. These regions were defined by Environment Australia, a Federal Government agency. This would have added to the complexity of defining Spencer’s farm and where clearing might have been possible. He concurs with the steep hilly description of his uncleared land and SEPP46 from the NSW Government prohibited clearing anything beyond 18 degrees, for good anti-erosion reasons alone. I very much doubt Spencer was ever billed for satellite imagery as per the natural resource mapping, but a farm plan using aerial photos is a different matter. Landowners can do their own. I have used ultralight flyers to take a few snaps with no problems.
I still hope Spencer gets his chance at a judicial review of some sort.
Pablo. If Peter Spencer were offered a farm plan for $10,000 and a farm plan for $300,000, he would choose the grander, more expensive plan.
I see someone referring to Peter as a Darryl Kerrigan type, you know, from The Castle. The simple family man, satisfied with sponge cake, winning a court case based on the vibe. There are more apporpriate archetypes for Peter: much more complex; maybe Walter Mitty, or Don Quixote, or Icarus.
pablo, my simple presumption is that he’s telling the truth unless shown to be lying.
It’s relevant to the extent that whatever he paid may have stretched him financially. As murph said @ 94 clearing is expensive, the more so if it’s selective. So he pays for the farm plan, which he would have budgeted for, but he is prevented from proceeding and has a property of reduced value against which to borrow for any other projects, of which he had a number.
There’s a chance that these circumstances came out in the legal cases so far, but I haven’t tackled them yet.
Whether he would have ever brought any of his plans to fruition is speculative. But the central point is that the vegetation laws changed the character of the property from a productive proposition into a hobby farm. I think that’s what he’s saying in effect.
While not strictly in reference to the Spencer case, the following is another example of removal of property rights:-
“Secret heritage protection listArticle from: Font size:
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Submit comment RENATO CASTELLO
December 27, 2009 12:15am
..UP to 431 properties in Adelaide’s CBD – including the Crazy Horse in Hindley St – have been placed on a secret list that recommends local heritage protection.
The list has been prepared by Adelaide City Council, which is pushing for a 50 per cent increase in the number of heritage-listed properties in the CBD to prevent developers from knocking down ageing buildings of interest.”
They could just approach the owners and buy them out if they are so important to protect. However legislation now allows the removal of normal property rights.
This is an excellent article and my congratulations to you Brian. It puts the issue into perspective and shows the complexities surrounding these uses.
There is another approach that I put up on “online opinion” are repeat here with minor modifications.
There is a simple way out of this.
The way is to give the land owners the rights to zero interest loans of the same value as the land rights being acquired but require the land owners to invest these loans in ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The loans are to be paid back by from the returns on the investments.
The sorts of things the land owners must invest in would be to plant trees, invest in ways to increase soil carbon sequestration, build solar plants, wind farms, or geothermal power plants. Part of the loan conditions would be to specify whether the land owners were able to use their loan money on their own land. If not they could invest it elsewhere. If they were not interested in investing at all they could sell their rights to loans for whatever they could obtain.
This would be done at a benefit to the government because these are loans that will be repaid and the earnings on investment will be taxable. The money can come from the government asking the Reserve Bank to issue the money for the loans at zero interest. The Reserve bank is always giving loans to banks and there is nothing to say that they cannot give zero interest loans to land owners. They may even do it via the banks to keep the banks happy.
The land owners would get new income. With zero interest loans repaid over the life of the investment almost all forms of green house gas reductions become profitable so the land owners would have a new source of income as well as able to repay the loans.
To see the mechanics of how this can be done visit
http://cscoxk.wordpress.com/2009/12/18/financing-renewable-energy-with-zero-interest-loans-2/
http://www.abc.net.au/rural/content/2009/s2778535.htm
Mike Kelly the Federal Member for Eden-Monaro says the claim that Peter Spencer has made that he cannot clear his land is not true.
He says there is an ongoing offer from the local Catchment Management Authority to discuss his application to clear.
He says the CMA and Mr Spencer had a discussion about a smaller amount of land clearance, as his original proposal was to clear too big a chunk of his land, about 1,400 hectares.
Mike Kelly says there are 16 threatened species on Mr Spencer’s land.
He says on the issue of whether the Federal Government has received a benefit by the action it has taken regarding Mr Spencer, Mike Kelly says he can’t comment on that as that is the subject of court action.
“I’m very concerned about his health and wellbeing, and written correspondence with various government ministers on his behalf.
“This action by Mr Spencer is not worth the risk to his health.”
The Prime Minister has responded to Peter via a letter from Minister for Agriculture Tony Bourke, saying he can’t comment on the compensation matter before the courts, but there is an invitation in the letter for Mr Spencer to discuss his case with senior officials in the government, with a view to accessing some rural assistance funds, land management options and other government financial assistance that may be appropriate.
Day 30
A hunger-striking grazier in the south-east of New South Wales has refused to meet senior Federal Government figures despite demanding a Royal Commission into land rights.
Peter Spencer is entering his 30th day without food, perched high on a wind tower on his Shannons Flat property, near Cooma in the south-east.
He has received a letter from the Agriculture Minister, Tony Burke, on behalf of the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.
It details compensation options and possible land management strategies.
But his supporter Alastair McRobert says he will not open it.
“The Government wanted Peter to come down and talk about measures that were already in place to manage his land,” he said.
“It’ll be returned unopened.”
Meanwhile, the Australian Federal Police and local police both say they will not intervene in Mr Spencer’s protest.
#110
Another example of a property being locked up.2001/2002 – Narrabri
People purchased property, during title searches requested that that the 2 properties could be converted to “Freehold”- title searches revealed an amoutn of approx $8,000.00 to convert title, as given IN WRITING by DLWC. Also during title searches, asked if NPWS had an interest in either properties. The answer from NPWS was no.
So, they could convert to “freehold” & NPWS had no interests – all of this before settlement of contracts. On settlement of contracts, monies pad to DLWC for conversion of titles, attached with letter of amount from DLWC.
The new owners immediately sort a clearing of regrowth permit, and also embarked on farm forestry / beef cattle enterprise.
Secured timber orders, and the clearing permit was assessed by vegetation officer and granted.
Three months later owners asked why had the conversion to “Freehold”not been processed? A phone call from NPWS – then a meeting on their property revealed why conversion had been stopped. A wilderness nomination ( meaning an interest by NPWS – under 1987 NSW Legislation) had been placed on the property BEFORE the property was acquired by the family!
This “Wilderness nomination” stopped the conversion to Freehold.
From here the property was assessed for Wilderness, Native Vegetation, Threatened Species – Flora / Fauna, and “Freeholding ” rejected outright – with a penalty to be paid out of funds paid previously at settlement as it could now not go ahead.
NPWS and DLWC did not converse at the initial stage of title searches – so the left hand did not know what the right hadn was doing. However, under the Legislation of 1987, NSW Wilderness Act it is written in that this does NOT have to be disclosed – even when NPWS is asked to declare any interests.
The prospective purchasers ( new owners) were adament that it had to convert the title, which they were told it could be, due to the farm forestry enterprise, so they did not have to continue paying royalties. They were lied to, by means of comering up by the legislative process. The timber alone was valued by foresty officers at $2.4 million.
If you want more information about this family, as a real example i will gladly contribute more. However the tradgedy that ensued was horrendous, for them.
The NSW land clearing legislation is particularly underhanded. The NSW legal definition of virgin land is plain wrong.
Disgust isn’t near strong enough. for what should be felt against those who legislated and those who implemented this legislation.
It makes my stomach turn that the people who did this share a citizenship with me.
SATP, feelings do run very strong on this issue.
Nanu @ 110, yes, I was aware that Spencer had refused to open the letter from Burke. His claim is that he will deal with Rudd and no-one else. As you’ve detailed he does seem to be quite idiosyncratic and inflexible as a character, which is why I suspect he is not the best to further the farmers’ cause as they see it. Clearly Spencer likes to do things his way.
I’ve been looking into the ‘carbon heist’ aspect and might manage a separate post on the issue in the new year. One problem is that the NSW government has defended the case by moving to have it struck out. Spencer claims that this has prevented him from putting his main case. But if a High Court hearing has been accepted it can’t be entirely frivolous. Spencer and King must have done quite a bit of research and it would be a pity if we don’t end up hearing about it.
Brian, by not opening a letter written by the responsible Minister and insisting on communicating directly with Prime Minister Rudd; by not appreciating the efforts made by his local member, Dr Mike Kelly, on his behalf, Peter Spencer is showing his narcissism. I believe he has carefully honed his history to omit other relevant factors such as cost of divorce settlements, cost of litigation that was never likely to succeed.
Also in what way did he expect to reap returns from hundreds on thousands of dollars spent on trout lakes/dams? Was he intending to set up a high cost safari operation? How realistic was that? And as for his plans for fine wool production. That required keeping sheep on the edge of starvation for years. You cannot do that without constant supervision to prevent them slipping into damaging starvation and death. This would not suit a man who is off the land more than on it; a Don Quixote type off in four other directions slaying other dragons.
And what were his labour costs for all these plans? Did he have a realistic costing for labour? I think he made his first money as a New Guinea Highlands planter using cheap lines of kanaka labour. He was unable to adapt to a different regime of paying decent wages for labour. He had plenty of land available for farming. But he always had an unrealistic vision of what all his land was worth. He says his property was worth $2 million. Now reduced to $500,000. His land is a truly beautiful piece of Australia. But was it not always more responsibility to him than having a profit making potential.
He chooses to tell his story as a narrow story of land being stolen as a carbon sink. But he cannot pretend there is a much wider story to tell; a story of his personality type constructing grand illusions far in excess of the requirments of frugal farming in Australia.
Nana Levu,
Fine wool is grown by using sheep with a genetic disposition that produces the fine wool; from your comments it appaers you believe if you starve a sheep you get fine wool, that can’t be right!!
Also if you read the court transcripts I believe one judge commented that it did appear that Peter Spencer had a case in relation to the use of his stolen carbon rights being used as a Kyotot benefit. I refer you to the following from the recent ICM case:-
The scope of the term “acquisition” was explained as follows by Deane and Gaudron JJ in Mutual Pools & Staff Pty Ltd v The Commonwealth[89]:
“Nonetheless, the fact remains that s 51(xxxi) is directed to ‘acquisition’ as distinct from deprivation. The extinguishment, modification or deprivation of rights in relation to property does not of itself constitute an acquisition of property[90]. For there to be an ‘acquisition of property’, there must be an obtaining of at least some identifiable benefit or advantage relating to the ownership or use of property. On the other hand, it is possible to envisage circumstances in which an extinguishment, modification or deprivation of the proprietary rights of one person would involve an acquisition of property by another by reason of some identifiable and measurable countervailing benefit or advantage accruing to that other person as a result[91].”
The State Governments and Local Governments can appropriate, extinguish and deprive landowners of any right they like, however if anyone gains benefit from the “theft” of these rights rights; in this case it is likely to be termed acquisition and compensation on just terms is then payable.
This “stolen carbon” guff is still quite unclear to me.
Completely apart from the fact that it’s a dubious claim anyway (witness that Victoria and SA essentially banned land clearing in teh 1980s), in what sense does the Commonwealth get to “own” or “profit from” any carbon that Peter Spencer’s land may have sequestered? I am reasonably up with the LULUCF debates (though they are fast moving), and it seems pretty clear to me that any carbon that has been sequestered on private land post 1 Jan 1990 is owned by the landholder. Which he can sell to any party under the relevant NSW law, as long as his documetnation is up to scratch.
In no legal sense does the Commonwealth have a proprietary interest in this – the only way in which they benefit from this is that they can politically make some claims.
Oh, Nana Levu, you’re a bit off regarding fine wool. Nutrition is important, as is a high level of care, but you don’t get fine wool through starving sheep, but mostly through superior genetics.
Wilful,
There is no time frame applicable as far as I’m aware. If a property right is removed today, whether that be carbon or the right to subdivide etc,; if the government or any other person obtains benefit in the future (that is identifiable and measurable) either acquisition or unjust enrichment is still potentially applicable.
Sorry John, that doesn’t answer my question.
Who owns the (kyoto compliant) carbon sequestered on Mr Spencer’s land? I reckon Mr Spencer does, no one else.
nana levu 114
How come you keep on “playing the man” – not the normal discourse on this forum I reckon?
There is also a nice element of “kick the man when he is down” in your messages – do you want revenge?
Do you really know the history of Saarahnlee
Comments 111 to 113, little wonder feelings run high
Look4balance2 #111
“Also during title searches, asked if NPWS had an interest in either properties. The answer from NPWS was no”.
“under the Legislation of 1987, NSW Wilderness Act it is written in that this does NOT have to be disclosed – even when NPWS is asked to declare any interests.”
Why does a Government find it necessary to draft laws in this fashion?
As Brian has observed in #96 (BTW comments 94 & 96 are must reads to newcomers to this thread)
As outlined in comment 111, Peter Spencer is not alone in experiencing very perverse outcomes sacrificed in the greater glory of a green utopia. There needs to be a Royal commission not only in the lack of compensation to the victims of sweeping new laws but also into the structure, procedures and breech of natural justice of environmental and resource management laws.
John #115 and Wilful #117 point taken on genetics for fne wool sheep, but the reason why fine wool sheep are on the Monaro High Plains is because there is no risk of overfeeding. Given the ‘high level of care’ needed farm management and supervision is crucial – my arguement stands.
Perhaps Mr Spencer could build sheds and have battery sheep as practiced in Victoria for ultra fine wool
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2007/09/26/1190486394030.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
Here “sheep are kept in single pens in sheds for up to five years to produce the world’s finest fleeces….They are fed a minimal diet and confined to protect their fleeces in order to produce the finest micron wool, which often fetches record prices from high-end fashion designers in Europe, particularly Italy.”
Ian #120. I never like to see anyone using hunger strikes as emotional blackmail. If the government responded to one narcissistic hunger striker then everyone with a grudge would come on board. So as a method of approach it is dubious.
As I see it Peter has very carefully chosen to tell a very narrow version of his story. It is very naive for supporters interested in the impact of the Goverment’s carbon sink regime on farmers to see Peter as some kind of Darryl Kerrigan type. The wider aspects of his story; the history of Saarahnlee and his properties and political actvities in PNG that distracted him for many years, should come out into the open for proper evaluation of their role in his undoing.
Wilful @ 119. Yes Mr Spencer owns the carbon or trees. However the legislation prevents him from either removing the regrowth or cutting the trees as saleable timber.
The fact the government has even politically said that this has helped achieve Kyoto years later is the basis of the case that someone else has received benefit from the deprivation, potentially making it acquisition. When the government pays for the carbon they will own the trees, however Mr Spencer could then ask them to remove their property. A difficult situation, the government needs to purchase the property outright, however how many carbon claims are then applicable, trillions of dollars worth I susupect.
Nana Levu @ 122,
The government has already responded to hungerstrikes on refugee boats with success. Why wouldn’t other people see this and use the same method of attracting attention to unsatisfactory situations.
The feeding regime for fine wool sheep should have nothing to do with the wool fineness. If you under feed a wool producing sheep you are likely to create weaknesses in the wool defeating the whole purpose of fine wool production.
I can understand trying to keep the fleeces clean by husbandry methods, but restricted feeding just doesn’t make any sense to the argument.
nana levu at 122 – Monaro graziers have been in the business of growing wool including fine wool for around 150 years. They are very good at it – Monaro stud sheep are sought after all over the country because of their robustness under tough conditions – cold, low rainfall. Monaro wool growing is NOT based on half starving the sheep – under these tough weather conditions the wool will have weaknesses and can’t be sold. Victorian example is irrelevent
nana levu at 122 – I don’t think “emotional blackmail/one narcissistic hunger striker” (your interpretation of his personality) has that much currency. The culpable Federal Government would also like us to think that… The reason why Peter Spencer’s desperate stand has so much touched the psyche of farmers all over NSW and Queensland is because so many farmers are similarly constrained from earning a decent living (including dealing with ever worsening terms of trade) under unfair laws such as the “native vegetation act”. These farmers feel the same kind of desperation when they also have to deal with the dead hand of bureaucracy and see that they have no effective political voice. It is certain that these “native vegetation acts” on there own have contributed to rural suicides.
Ian Hampton @126: a variety of contributors here have mentioned rural suicides as an emotive ploy to attempt to sway readers as to the devastating effects of this legislation on rural landowners. Without in any way diminishing the appalling tragedy of any suicide it is important to note, however, that what distinguishes the higher rates of effective suicide attempts (ie successful suicides)in rural areas from ineffective suicide attempts in non-rural areas is the availability of the commonly available farm implement – the firearm. This means that depression and feelings of hopelessness, which are common enough in all citizens regardless of postcode, are more likely to lead to actual death by suicide in rural areas because the means of killing one’s self are more readily to hand.
As to Nana Levu’s playing the man: I also have serious reservations about the political credentials and background of Peter Spencer and view the fact of his employment by Wingti in PNG as deeply suspect until proven otherwise. That may just be my distaste for colonialism but that is how it is.
At this point, given recent developments, I’ll admit to developing genuine concern about Peter Spencer’s mental health. This is not meant in any sense to be perjorative or condemnatory. For what it is worth – I once talked a hippy out of a prolonged tree sit in the S-E forests of NSW, where he also was on hunger stike and had been for weeks, on the basis that real courage demanded the will to live and face a potential defeat and that starving to death was the poorer behaviour compared to the sort of courage required to keep on living against the odds. If his health deteriorates I hope that this will be of some use.
Nanu, the term “narcissistic” is inevitably problematic. It has a meaning in psychiatry, of couse, which is itself contested ground. I’m aware of one psychologist who claims that all mental illness is at base narcissistic, for example.
For these reasons and because I don’t know the guy, personally I’m avoiding talking about what his true personal motivation might be for choosing this particular strategy. He did actually say, I think, when his sons suggested he come and live with them in America that he had nothing to live for.
Obviously no-one wants him to die and he can’t tell his story when he’s dead.
I wonder if this is the case that the High Court wants to resolve before it hears Spencer’s case.
I assume this is the same case as the one outlined @ 111.
Aliatair McRobert’s press release is posted here.
I wish the blogger would go easy on the red ink!
Brian, #129, in answer to the links you provided.
Yes, I do believe that is one of the cases that the High Court wished to clear before seeing Spencer’s case again. The water buyback case is now over, there are more links in this discussion
Yes, you successfully found another reference to comment 111. More detail has been added on this other site. If you refer to the last paragraph of 111, I think perhaps look4balance2 is saying, if it is your wish I’ll add more otherwise I won’t clog up your blog.
The Peter Spencer situation is now dominating all activity on radio station 2SM. Common reaction to feedback callers is, this is day 39 of his hunger strike, why have I only heard of this before now? Why isn’t the MSM been covering this?
The Daily Telegraph did carry in on Tuesday, calling the story, Dying for a chat with Kevin Rudd.
still@downfall @ 131, in the post I referred to potential conflict between the interests of food production (naturally I’d add fibre), conservation and carbon storage. Spencer has called for a royal commission on farm regulation. The Narrabri case @ 111 is analogous to Spencer’s in the sense that the goal posts changed after the land was purchased and is in the general ball park identified above. So more, within reason, is fine as are other cases.
Here’s the link to the Daily Telegraph piece. It’s just a small news item. What we need is a serious investigation into the issues.
Brian,
Have set the ICM High Court case decision to you via e-mail. Basically the government now own all water as far as I’m concerned.
Hopefully it doesn’t progress to regulation and metering of rain water collection from suburban rooves; Of course I’m silly to jump to the next step, or am I.
John, haven’t had time to look at it yet.
I understand that there is no international standard methodology for determining water rights. The best candidate is the “Helsinki’ which looks at rights across a whole riparian system. In this system water falling on individual properties would be part of the mix and not necessarily the property of the landowner.
You probably are going too far to suggest they’d be fiddling about with suburban rooves.
Thanks Brian,
Water was never owned by the landowner, he/she only had reasonable access to it as it past thru as it were.
One copy cat hunger striker
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_strike :
“Australian Jessica Johnson
On December 19th, 2009 an Australian transgender Jessica Johnson has began her Hunger Strike with regards to her battle in facing endless discrimination by the Queensland Government as well as the Federal Government and charitable organisations that have openly discriminated against her in her endeavour to have equal rights.
She has been left no choice, for those who are aware of her hunger strike are not advising anyone in the hope the problem will go away.
Organisations in Australia who have neglected Jessica Johnson because she identifies as a transgender,
The Salvation Army, The Smith Family, St Vincent’s De Paul Society, Anglican Church, The Catholic Church, Presbyterian Church of Australia amongst a few who have failed as they have different views on those who identify as transgender.
Queensland Government & Australian Federal Government has also failed to act in more than two years of constant communication which has been pointless.
Jessica Johnson has emailed over ten thousand in her quest to seek assistance.”
Nana Levu,
Why do you persist in trying to move the subject from property rights to either animal rights and/or sexual rights issues. Neither has anything to do with the subject under discussion.
Can I suggest you write an article on either subject and have it published under a relevant title.
Is it that you feel guilty about the plight of landowners in Australia that are being legislated and regulated out of existance? Many of these had no intention of destoying the lanscape (their own property), however they are now paying for the green legislation that they were never consulted about or had a democratic vote on.
Well if Spencer wanted to keep this focused on property rights he has distracted us with the madness of his hunger strike. He has attracted to his cause all sorts of mad buggers who want to bring in bull dozers to flatten his trees – even those trees he valued and never wanted flattened. A hunger strike/suicide calls into question his mental health.
Now there is this hunger striker fighting for sexual rights. Next we could have all sorts of crazy people with their various protests lined up outside parliament house hunger striking for this, and hunger striking for that.
Here is some more detail of the trout fly-fishing business that Spencer had going. This article is written by Spencer himself in 2006.
Further to comment 140 above; as is always the case in a comment stream someone had a go at Peter Spencer,(link above). His answer below relates to the trout fly-fishing.
S@D @ 141
you quote Spencer as stating :
“It is said this pondage and its connecting rocky stream flowing form the similar structure directly up stream may be the only place in Australia where trout may actual breed naturally.”
reflects quite badly on Spencer’s credibility, and any “scientific” advice he allegedly took wrt to the trout scheme.
That statement is clearly wrong, trout breed freely (naturally) wherever the appropriate conditions exist, which include, for example, almost all waterways and lakes in Tasmania, and in most of the mainland East Coast rivers south of the tropics.
So, as it is demonstrated that Spencer regards “truth” as an elastic concept, why should exceptional consideration be given his arguments ?
For those whom may be interested in protecting their property rights in relation to property they have purchased and/or own.
DEMONSTRATION DETAIL FOR CANBERRA
Meeting of supporters will be at Magna Carta Place, Queen Victoria Terrace, Canberra on Monday at 10.30am. Those travelling from southern areas and Victoria can meet at Cooma NSW, in the centre of town at Centennial Park to form a convoy for Canberra leaving at 8.30am.
pterosaur, you are going one step too far in assuming that Spencer, without any shadow of doubt, is stretching the truth, ie lying. He said:
It’s not a crime to be misinformed. To me he is quoting something he’s been told. I can’t see that this has a substantive bearing on his legal case. Ditto to Nanu about his divorce.
‘The dams were planned and constructed with the then Soil Con Department who maintained an engineering earthmoving division just for this purpose..’
Spencer is correct in this bit of history and the subsequent problems he faced appear like the chickens coming home to roost wrt the NSW Government role.
The Soil Conservation Service were notorious for the ‘freebies’ offered landowners who needed a dam. This had its political equivalence in Macquarie St and Canberra with the election pork-barreling regular of ‘feeling a dam coming on’.
The subsequent problems of limited downstream flow prompted the water changes in the 90’s restricting landowners to 10 percent of their property runoff and the banning of ‘turkey’s nest’ dams on primary creek headwaters. This may describe the situation on Spencer’s property given it’s high country description.
Brian @ 144
“I can’t see that this has a substantive bearing on his legal case.”
Nor can I.
However, I do regard the use of false statements (whether from misinformation, ignorance or deliberate intent) to support his argument and made in the public arena as worthy of comment, are indicative of gullibility, laziness or malice.
I do think that this detracts from the matter of Spencer’s general credibility.
The use of the qualifiers you highlighted certainly reminds me of a certain ex- PM’s use of “weasel words”, I must confess.
Point taken, pterosaur. I was going to comment that there is some new information beyond the fish ponds in the piece Still@downfall linked to. But some of it seems not to quite gel with what we have been told elsewhere. For me it also raises a couple of new questions. I’d hope that his lawyer could keep the story straight over time.
The fact that the “SOS” organisation has invested in supporting the Peter Spencer story speaks volumes about this story, but certainly and finally ends the matter of its credibility. This is nothing more and nothing less than a far right wing nutto beat up.
PSS #148, I would have thought that a question of justice & fairness of our society is not a question to be confined by political divide. Should we allow ourselves to become so imprisoned by our own political preference so as to automatically reject an issue because “the other side” has come across an issue first?
Brian #147, It would have been much better planning for advocacy of their cause if a fact sheet had been drawn up that clearly showed how events occurred instead of us unfamiliar with this case until recently trying to understand this issue piecemeal.
On the other hand in this era especially in the political arena when so much spin is applied to make a politician or policy to appear perfect, we are no longer used to flawed personalities & a lack of sophistication to a media campaign.
Peter Spencer Sceptic, that is a mere flight from rationality into peresonal argument and name-calling.
Underlying all the arguments against Peter Spencer is the assumption that your right to freedom and property is what is left over after the government has taken from you and done with it whatever it wants.
How could a power to manage the environment be anything but unlimited? How would you limiit it, PSS?
Spencer’s case is showing that there can be no limit to government power once we assume that it is a legitimte function of government to manage the environment. But perhaps PSS thinks a bit more half-witted snivelling and intellectual dishonesty from totalitarian national socialists can obscure the fact that the issue is about unlimited government power and privilege and everyone else being reduced to the status of serfs?
I see Amy Dale has covered Peter’s story on Daily Telegraph.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/kevin-youre-dreamin-says-peter-spencer/story-e6freuy9-1225815343320
Oh, point duly taken thanks to you 149 Still@downfall, but you have assumed I’m of the wrong side. My political preference is defiantly right wing, but not modern day Nazi moronbrigade conspiracy nutcases, such as those who appear to be the major movers and spruikers for Peter Spencer’s cause presently. To clarify, my point is that this story is not one about justice and fairness: it is masquerading as if this is the case, but what we have is in fact a stunningly well-connected/networked land speculator in the first instance, and perhaps apparatchik of lunatic-fringe political outfits in the next.
PSP, your position on this is highly speculative and if I might say so more than a little nutty. So nutty in fact that I’m inclined to delete any further similar posts.
Please go somewhere else if you can find anywhere.
Nanu, thanks for the link. This from Judge Rothman, I think is worth highlighting:
I’m not a lawyer, but I think it’s substantively wrong to say that his land has been stolen. The law specifies what he can and can’t do with it but leaves it with him to keep the weeds and ferals out and to pay rates.
Peter H @ 150, I think it is a proper function of government to regulate in the public interest the uses to which land can be put. It’s just that the legitimate interests of the few should not be harmed in process, or if they are just compensation should be paid.
The key purpose of government is to resolve collective action problems which subtract from the net public good. That certainly is relevant in this case.
Brian and Fran
So your right to freedom and property is what is left over after the government has taken from you and done with it whatever it wants?
It’s just begging the qustion to use terms like ‘public interest’ and ‘collective action problems that subtract from the net public good’. That is just a carte blanche for total power. The question is what justifies it in coming to be a matter of public decision-making in the first place. The Kyoto ground was based on corrupt science, that just happened to be government-funded, surprise surprise, all in the public interest of course. Why should not those who want native vegetation on other people’s property have to pay for it? You haven’t established a ground for governmental intervention in the first place. Obviously politicians claim that everything they do is in the public interest, including taking billions of dollars worth of other people’s property without paying compensation in breach of the Constitution, which is exactly what Rudd claimed when confronted over this matter.
Try answering what is in issue: how could a government power to manage the environment be limited, even conceptually, let alone in practice?
Peter Hume
Limiting myself to just one of your errors, your definition of “property” is specious. Property includes the commons and it is at the commons where collective action problems intrude most greatly onto the kinds of “property” shared by all — the quality of the air, the water and the climate.
If the problem is not addressed, sooner or later all property will be diminished in value, including, most importantly, all those to whom property rights of one kind or another will be passed on in the future.
You want to draw arbitrary lines around pieces of land in the present in private hands as if they were special, but that simply makes you a venting fundamentalist. (pun intended)
Fran at 156 – the current legislation aims to do that.
The current situation with Mr Spencer is whether legally he is entitled to some compensation and basically how much.
It might be distasteful to some that capital owners will be compensated because of the state’s actions but that protects something more important to me – the rule of law.
Brian, you accuse PPS #145 #152 of being nutty.
However, when he typifies Peter Spencer as a “stunningly well-connected/networked land speculator” he is closer to the truth than those who typify him as a Darryl Kerrigan type or a “poor old gentleman”.
But there is something very much of an end of an epoch quality to a ’stunningly well-connected/networked land speculator’ going on a manipulative hunger strike.
Nana
That is just more pesonal argument that is irrelevant.
Fran
So what’s the answer to the question: how could a government power to manage the environment be limited, even conceptually, let alone in practice?
How would you avoid defining the commons to include all private property?
It is so far without doubt that the clearing of native vegetation remains a pressing issue. This is made abundantly clear from the (1995) paper Andreas Glanznig, Biodiversity Unit Department of the Environment, Sport and Territories.
http://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/publications/series/paper6/index.html
The maps make compelling viewing especially that of NSW. The rest of the paper provides a more than adequate justification for the legislation of the grounds of preserving biodiversity as an ecological foundation for the production of food and the maintenance of waterways.
Regardless of the specifics of Peter Spencer’s case the evidence above is sufficient to justify state intervention over private property rights. Continuing to allow land clearing unabated and unregulated was inviting ecological havoc. as it stands the intervention may still have been too little and too late.
It appears to me that a lot of grievance and argument with the legislation is a mixed bag. On the one hand a case is made that the state has overstepped the mark in assuming control flora, fauna and water and that this is an attack on fundamental property laws and therefore an attack on the rule of law and constitutional rights. On the other, a claim is made that, having asummed control over forms of property rights, the state is obliged to pay compensation for losses subsequently accrued to landholders.
This is an interesting juncture. IMHO anyone who believes that native vegetation clearing/biodiversity management and waterway protection ought to be left to the initiative of individual landowners is not facing the reality that while they may be capable of sensible management some of their neighbours are not. Beyond that, bioregional management requires a wider view with significantly greater input than any one landowener is capable. I note that the NSW DECC has not entirely disempowered regional populations and provides for ” new powers to local Catchment Management Authorities (CMAs) to make decisions in the best interests of the community.” It further claims that “Through CMAs, local people make local decisions about how to best manage native vegetation in their part of NSW.”
What is required at this point is the management of land that transcends the narrow economic interests of any one landowner or corporate landowner. It reads to me as if the message has not gotten through that land ownership brings with it a parcel of wider responsibilities that some individual landowners find onerous. Moreover, they find those responsibilities an affront to their own conception of their own being in so far as their right to dispose of their land using their own labour is now circumscribed by wider social and ecological responsibilities.
This is the reason it appears to be an interesting juncture. Leaving aside AGW, which I view as a real threat, the multiplicity of ecological issues we confront are clearly going to lead to further and probably broader circumscription of what we have in the past experienced as rights and freedoms. It is the case here that landownders are in the front line of that development.
Nana Levu # 160, Spencer at neither end of the possible spectrum you speculated on. ie. Land speculator nor a Kerrigan. There is no need to play the man.
Anthony #162, Brian said in the original posting.
I would suggest you are interested in only one of these outcomes & have no wish for intelligent debate on a balance of the three.
In my humble opinion there is point beyond which a land and property owner cannot sustain continued legislation and regulation from government, at that point the land is non-viable for agricultural production, the exact purpose for which the land was alienated from the crown originally.
Prior to this point in time it is imperative that the land be returned to the crown, by purchase under “just terms” and the crown will then “look after it.” The funding should come from the community or the taxpayer.
I come back to the urban example, whom amongst you would be happy for the government to resume ownership of their house for zero compensation. Please raise your hands. It isn’t going to be acceptable to rural landowners to have their property “stolen” because they have insufficient “voting power”
It should also be pointed out that the funds for “locking up” land for native vegetation protection was given to the State governments, however it was never received by the landowners affected.
still@downfall @ above. Of course all three are of significance. We are confronted by what appears to be a ‘perfect storm’ of policy convergance around precisely
the three matters that Brian nominates. Not one can be given prominance over another without risking the balance required between all three which is devilishly difficult.
In general, however, biodiversity appears to be the key guarantee of balance so that where there is genuine conflict between food production and conservation then I would prefer to err on the side of environmental caution. I think the map of land clearance at the link above suggests that there is an imbalance between cleared agricultural land and covered land and the current situation derives from the reality of addressing this imbalance hitting home.
I appreciate that there is a strong resentment of the stripping of rights from landowners and can see that there may (may, emphasis) be a case for compensation. Spencer has so far been beset by the fact that the commonwealth is not responsible for state regulation and his actions have been ruled out as a consequence. There is, however, a much longer history to land ownership, titles and rights than is commonly recognised. At the moment I’m thinking that what we are seeing is the emergence of a new form of rights in land use that is in fact the re-emergence of pre-modern use rights. Still looking for the referneces for that.
Anthony
You have asserted, but not established, that legislative intervention is justified. The authority you cite amounts to no more than saying that much native vegetation would be cleared in the absence of intervention, and that the land on which native vegetation is growing is scarce in the sense that it cannot be used for two inconsistent purposes at the same time, namely, growing food and fibre, or providing a ‘pre-1788’ botanical museum for environmentalsits to enjoy having on other people’s property without paying for it.
The issue is whether the scarcity of food and fibre on the one hand, and native vegetation on the other, should be rationalized using private property rights and individual freedom, or legalized theft and bullying.
It is no answer to say native vegetation is scarce. That is to say no more than that it is an economic good. It doesn’t say why those who want it, should have the privilege of forcing others to pay for it.
What you have not explained is:
- how do you know that the value society places on food and fibre is not much greater than the value it places on native vegetation, if in the absence of legislative intervention, society’s *consensual* interactions would result in using the land to grow food and fibre instead of growing native vegetation?
- Why should you be able to impose your preferred usage on others by threatening to lock them up in a cage if they don’t agree to submit and obey?
- Why should not those who want others to grow native vegetation on their property, have to pay for it like civilized human beings?
- how could a government power to manage the environment be limited, even conceptually, let alone in practice?
- How would you avoid defining the commons to include all property?
The problem facing the environmentalists in this thread is that they are finding it impossible to distinguish their ideology from one that envisages unlimited government power, and therefore, no way to limit the abuse of power.
It shows utter confusion to think that the issue is ecology, since the same ecological values can be conserved either way, by those in favour of them, paying for them voluntarily. The reason they don’t want to do that, is because many more people in the world are saying, through the price mechanism, that they want the land used for food.
Please answer the five questions I have asked.
Peter Hume @161
Well as a socialist it will come as no surprise that I regard the entire land as part of the commons …
I’m negotiable on the transition of course
Fran @ 158,
I can therefore assume you have no objection to anyone including the government depriving you of your property for the common good. Is your property not special?
There is basic concept here that our society relies on for stabilty, it includes your and my property whether it is land, television set or PC you contribute to LP on.
My property can be purchased on agreed terms, but I will never agree to it being appropriated by someone for someone else’s benefit without my consent.
I will point out again that land was alienated from the Crown without reservation originally, for agricultural purposes; so that those whom owned it could make a living. Therefore the general society has no equity in it and the idea that pieces can be removed has opened the door to complete removal, without just terms payment.
It is easy to consider the narrow view point for the common good; sometimes I think our society would be better off without television, but I’m not going to deprive you of yours withot paying for it unless you happy with that arrangement!! While the loss of your property (the television ) is bad if you don’t agree to it, I assume it doesn’t really impact your income. In the case of landowners the loss of a property right could also mean the loss of a livelyhood.
Please advise your address if your happy for me (or the government) to deprive you of your property for the common good.
The simple solution here is whatever property needs to be appropriated for the common good of society , is done with just terms compensation. Otherwise the basic concept of property ownership dissappears.
Anthony @165 Stay on the point. The Peter Spencer issue concerns the lack of compensation for loss of property rights and ability to produce an income. At least one judge has already commented that he seems to have a case. So you looked at a map of NSW – WTF? How does the map of land clearance you refer to indicate the imbalance that you suggest is there? What imbalance? Development does not ALWAYS harm the environment. Nor does preventing use of the land necessarily protect it. Have you any evidence at all that what Peter Spencer planned to do would harm the environment? Of course you haven’t. I’ll bet you wouldn’t recognise a keystone species if it bit you on the backside. So stay on the point. The issue is Peter Spencer’s loss of property rights and inability to produce an income (after negotiating with the government on this in good faith).
Firstly, thanks for such a well balanced and well linked discussion on this subject. I’ve been following it on a few sites and they tend to be rather one sided.
My personal opinion is that Peter Spencer appears to be his own worst enemy. He has created this situation himself by his failure to work his land and allowing it to be taken over by native vegetation. He would not be in this situation if he had looked after his greatest asset, his land.
His claims that legislation has devalued his property and reduced his income are irrelevant. He wasn’t working the land that was subject to regrowth, so what was the income from that part of his property? The property is reduced in value because he allowed it to become overgrown.
His local member offers to discuss his situation and find other ways his property could still be productive but Spencer refuses to talk to him. Instead he sits on a pole and stages a hunger strike to get attention.
I’m afraid I don’t have a lot of sympathy.
Fran
And since your body and life is also a means of production, therefore the government has a right to acquire it? Thanks for making clear that you stand on a slave philosophy.
People are a means of production too Fran, so does government own all the people too?
Now we are beginning to see the real issues underlying Spencer’s case. This is just a re-run of the 1930s.
Peter @166:
“…providing a ‘pre-1788’ botanical museum for environmentalsits to enjoy having on other people’s property without paying for it.”
That is not my intention at all. There are an abundance of national parks in NSW (let’s limit it to this state) for recreational and other purposes to which I have access and I don’t and would not want access to private property for such purposes. My understanding of the native vegetation legislation is that it is to preserve biodiversity, sustain water catchments and maintain rainfall patterns and distribition. The thinking underpinning this appears to be that there has been severe disruption to established ecologies in recent times hence the article’s statement that “In the last 50 years as much land was cleared as in the 150 years before 1945. Extensive clearing for agriculture occurred in the 1960s and 1970s and significant clearing is still taking place.”
The policy is therefore a conservative policy in so far as it puts the brakes on further clearing. That seems reasonable to me because it is policy developed to avert the potential collapse of entire ecosystems.
I’ve agreed that there may be grounds for compensation for the loss of use value. A bargain needs to be struck between those who experience an economic loss and those who benefit (over time) from the preservation of ecosystems.
The best question you pose:
“how could a government power to manage the environment be limited, even conceptually, let alone in practice?” to which the complementary question is “How would you avoid defining the commons to include all property?”
To address the last question first: all property is commons. You cannot take it with you mate and it goes somewhere after we do. We only ever have the use of a thing, or a resource, we never actually possess it. We can have exclusive use of something for our lives but we always leave it to others. There are particular elements of ‘nature’ that sustain us and these are only ever sustaining if they are managed so that they have the capacity for production and reproduction over time. Ecosystems, and the emphasis here is on coherent self sustaining systems, need to be treated as a commons.
Now the first of the two of your question I’m attempting to address re. limiting the authority of government and its capacity to manage the environment. This has clearly put the wind up landowners and I can see why. I don’t see the state as necessarily an impediment to freedom. It is as much a guarantor of our freedoms as it ever is a threat to them. The nature of power is that it is always necessary to curb it and contest how it is applied. The best way, it seems to me, in this instance is to devolve governance and decision making about ecological matters to bioregional level. This way people with direct economic and other interests in decisions that affect them have the required authority. Centralised authority (ie, federal and state level government) would be able to determine broad parameters and targets but how those targets were met would be the responsibility of people residing within the bioregion.
That, for now, exhausts my capacity to respond to yr questions.
To the point @169: you are quite right about my inability to recognise a keystone species even if it did leave fang marks in my bum. As I’m not an ecologist I’d never heard the term until you obliged me to google it. I do, however, read science and ecologists and have been guided by David Suzuki’s admonition to use my own senses and memory when making judgements about what best choices to make. I’ll admit to a level of suspicion about Spencer (as you may have noted from prior posts on this thread) because he appears to me to be aligned with reactionary rump elements who are not noted for getting things right.
All the environmentalists are openly tellling us they that envisage no limits on the power of government, that is, they envisage total government power over any and every aspect of human life, action, freedom, property, reproduction, family, home life – you name it.
If all property (Fran) and all ecosystems (Anthony) are common property, and this justifies government intervention and overrides the rights of private property, then obviously there can be no limit on the power of government. We are talking to totalitarians, folks.
What neither of you has established is what reason there is to think that government is going to be in any better position to decide how best to conserve ecological values than anyone else. Obviously they can do it if they disregard the problem of satisfying human wants apart from the environmtnalists’. But then it is a double standard. Assuming they are to try to balance human and ecological values (thus embracing the false dichotomy they decry in others), they assume it can be done by concentrating enough coercive force in the hands of a legal monopoly of force. But even if that were granted, *how* are they going to:
a) know
b) calculate or rationalise
the competing priorities in every single human action that affect the ecosystem?
They are only able to reach their conclusions by applying a double standard. For if greed and ignorance are the original problem, we have not discovered in government a race of perfect beings. The conservation of the environment will be *worse* under government, because they will have all the same faults as everyone else, will lack the capacity of economic calculation (a complete disproof of their claims that they don’t even understand), and will have all the defects and capacity for destruction that a monopoly of force and fraud can give them – at a much larger scale.
The environmentalists are blindly repeating all the errors of totalitarian government in the twentieth century – openly avowing the same reasons! – only this time they want government to control the whole economy *and* the ecology and the climate.
The fact that, on examination, they openly adhere to an ideology of totalitarian governmental power shows that they are unwilling or unable to identify and prevent governmental abuse of power over the rights of person and property, and should be dismissed and condemned out of hand.
Nanu @ 160, I do think you are over-emphasising the personal. You have experienced his personality in the PNG setting and your description has lent colour to the story. But even if he is the author of his own troubles in a sense, the bottom line is that I’m impressed with the notion that a couple of judged seem to think he has a case in principle. Whether the law gives him satisfaction is the question.
But yes, a hunger strike is manipulative and Rudd has made it clear that he won’t play. This should be very clear to Spencer, but he persists. Why? I simply don’t want to get into that question, because it bears on the psychology of the man and I don’t think it profitable or appropriate for us to become amateur psychologists.
On Spencer as the author of his own troubles, his story appears to be that he was following a dream by buying a slice of the high country, because his family on his mother’s side had owned such property which had been bought to turn into a national park. He saw himself as “coming home”.
Then he says he needed to work in order to gain the funds to develop the property, which, he says, was 60% cleared before the war. It was probably not unreasonable in 1980 to think that he could re-clear the block to that extent. Meanwhile the regrowth continued and he got caught with a change of the rules. I understand that he never intended to clear the land to 60%, but he claims in the same article I linked to that he was left with 800 of 14,000 acres as productive land. I make that 5.7%.
Clearly if he’d bought a suburban block instead of a piece of the high country his story would have been different. Possibly he simply over-reached and was never going to be able to restore the land to a productive enterprise able to support his needs (leaving aside his wants).
We don’t know and probably will never know. What we do know is that the rules governing what use he could make of his land changed by government action in such a way as to make it unviable as a production unit. And that by government intent for the public good, or, it could be argued and probably is, for the good of the land itself and for the critters and plants that inhabit it.
What happened here appears to go beyond questions of his character to whether the legislators have enacted a just law. I would hope and believe that the consequences are unintended on the part of the State.
But Spencer appears to be alleging intent on the part of the Commonwealth to adversely affect the private productive capacity of his land, indeed to effectively appropriate a portion of it for the purpose of sequestering carbon without compensation. That is a stretch further and I think very hard to prove, although my investigations so far indicate that carbon sequestration in trees was very much on the agenda leading up to Kyoto in 1997 and in fact was the cornerstone of the Government’s policy.
Peter H, I understand property rights to be typically limited in some way. As a personal example when we bought our 24 perches in the suburbs in the early 1980s the property next door changed hands. For about 9 months he remodelled the house and the yard, working himself as a building labourer. Then when the building noise subsided the true horror was revealed. The guy was a sculptor and proceeded to attack blocks of stone a metre or two high in the backyard with a grinder, creating awful noise and dust.
I hoped that property law would restrict the activities of our neighbour so that our amenity could be preserved. Luckily we didn’t need to find out, as he sold up and presumably went to annoy someone else.
I understand that pastoral leases in the early days carried a requirement that the land be cleared and ‘developed’. Now it’s use is being restricted to preserve biodiversity, and the functioning of broader landscapes, which I think is the main intent vegetation management laws. There is nothing intrinsically improper about this as long as no-one is unreasonably affected without due compensation. There can be a lot wrong about the structure of the laws and the procedures of implementation. In Queensland I know enough to think there is.
How should government power be limited? In the usual ways. Through the ballot box and if the laws infringe the Constitution, through the High Court. The fourth estate, the media, can be effective also.
None of that is easy, but then democracy is the worst form of government apart from all the others, is it not?
If we joined the rest of the civilised world by having a bill of rights, as I believe we should, then government power would also be limited. One would expect property rights to figure in such a bill. But I don’t particularly want to go there on this thread.
Peter Hume@170
Laughing … you reactionaries are so predictable. You hear one phrase and even that you misunderstand.
Can we leave that one about the body as a means of production, please? I’m sure Fran doesn’t believe in slavery and I don’t really want this thread to get into arguing about Marxism.
This is an interview with Peter Spencer this everning on 2SM. He is still up on the platform on the wind montoring on his 41st day of a hunger strike.
http://agmates.ning.com/group/peterspencerhungerstrike/forum/attachment/download?id=3535428%3AUploadedFi35%3A47901
Here is a link the the proposed wind farm mentioned in the interview.
Peter H @ 174, I do think in Queensland the green groups have gotten into a position of influence with the government that is worrying for democracy as it ends up with coercive legislation affecting third parties.
At the same time there is legislation now, heaps of it, affecting “action, freedom, property, reproduction, family, home life” and possibly much more. It’s inevitable in a complex society. It’s a question of not so much how far you go but whether your basic philosophy is supportive and life-enhancing or restrictive and constraing. I’m finding the words hard to come by but the hour is late.
I don’t think we are going to solve this here. Even tactically I wouldn’t be arguing that the government has no right to legislate in the area of vegetation management because that one is unwinnable.
But personally I’d still hang out for a co-operative model with more emphasis on education, information and incentives and with less on penalties.
As to whether legislation on areas that affect our lives should be infused with conservation values, I’d say yes, but not in a coercive way
Brian @ 175
If hunger strike is manipulative, then so is any form of passive protest (lying in front of bulldozers) – considered to be justifiable by many…
Many suicides in the bush – a number of farmers have blogged in or spoken out – they understand Peter Spencer’s desperation.
Fran’s descent into name-calling and circularity has evaded answering the issues, for obvious reasons: she can’t do it without showing that her ideology must agree to government having total control over her and everyone else’s lives without limit, which is exactly what the environmentalists are urging for.
Brian
“Peter H, I understand property rights to be typically limited in some way.”
They are, typically by the right of others not to be adversely affected in their person or property. In the example you gave, you would have a remedy in the common law of nuisance.
But the socialists and environmentalists are saying that anything that affects ‘ecosystems’, or ‘the environment’ justifies forcible overriding of property rights. What human action would be exempt from arbitrary power under that regime? It is not hyperbole, it is the crux of all the issues to ask – in such an arrangement, if government has a right to take as much of your products and your property without your consent and without compensation, what would be the difference between the position of ordinary people vis-a-vis government, and serfs or slaves?
“There is nothing intrinsically improper about this as long as no-one is unreasonably affected without due compensation.”
You still have not provided any justification for governmental intervention in the first place. It is not an answer to say it is for ‘native vegetation’, which in any event is not an ecological category, it is a historical and aesthetic category – it merely means species that were here before 1788.
None of the environmentalists have shown why they should have the privilege of forcing other people to grow native vegetation on their property, nor why they should not have to pay for the products they want like everyone else. When asked, they simply evade the question,whereas intellectual honesty would require they either admit they claim a privilege on a double standard, or deny they are entitled to.
“How should government power be limited? In the usual ways. Through the ballot box and if the laws infringe the Constitution, through the High Court. The fourth estate, the media, can be effective also.”
Problem is, they don’t work. Democratic constitutions don’t work in limiting the power of government, which morph inexorably into unlimited government. Spencer’s case is a perfect example. If government can take your property without your consent or compensation, the other constitutional guarantees are meaningless. And in the USA, the Supreme Court has recently held that if the President or any of his army of hundreds of thousands of officials, declare someone without evidence to be an ‘enemy non-combatant’, he can be disappeared, tortured and killed without trial *even if he is an American citizen on American soil*. Obviously, both here and there, we have reached the stage of totalitarian government, and none the less so for the fact of one-person-one-vote.
“None of that is easy, but then democracy is the worst form of government apart from all the others, is it not?”
Well that’s the issue, isn’t it? The American revolutionaries were tax rebels, rebelling against a rate of taxation that was 3%. The state they replaced the monarchy with, now taxes closer to 50%. Democracies are more tyrannical than the old absolutist monarchies were, when judged on their record of taxation, multiplicity and intrusiveness of laws, and aggressive war.
“If we joined the rest of the civilised world by having a bill of rights, as I believe we should, then government power would also be limited. One would expect property rights to figure in such a bill.”
There’s already a protection of property rights in the Constitution. It doesn’t work, that’s the whole point. If the Constitution can’t protect it, obviously ordinary legislation is not going to be in any better position. Bills of rights do not limit government power. You only have to read the US Constitution (it’s short and readable) to realise that 80% of contemporary US government is explicitly unconstitutional.
Spencer’s case is showing that the problem goes to the root of government as we know it. It is making clear that we have reached the stage where it is futile to appeal to begging politicians. It doesn’t work, and Fran and Anthony are showing why.
The orthodox debate assumes that the aggrieved property-holders don’t have any rights but what the government says they have, and that they must submit and obey in a system that judges the limits of government power by Caesar appealing to Caesar.
This ignores the fact that it is not against international or Australian law for them to secede.
Peter H I have to go out and work today, because grass doesn’t respect public holidays. I am concerned that this thread is close to a slanging match and may close it down before I leave. People are starting to attribute to others positions that they don’t hold in a somewhat derogatory manner. Civility and courtesy are basic requirements of our comments policy even and especially when respect is absent.
I’m not pointing fingers at anyone in particular, but it’s true that you are starting to attribute views to me that I don’t hold.
The only general point I’d make is that “socialists” (and few would claim the label themselves, Fran might be an exception) have a concept of freedom as foundational in their thinking. They would claim, I think and I certainly do, that such a concept of freedom goes well beyond the diminished concept of freedom contained in libertarian positions, which in brief see governments getting out of the hair of individuals apart from basic services like police and external defence.
Right now I’ll just ask you what you propose in it’s place if democracy has failed you?
Meanwhile my attention has been drawn to an article reporting that RTA officers are harrassing bus travellers planning to go to Canberra for a protest in support of Spencer.
I assume RTA means Road Transport Authority. If true such actions amount to bastardry and demagoguery of the worst kind.
Anthony @ 173 So you googled it. (“Wiki’d” as Ali G might have said.) But once again, you have strayed off the point (although it does serve to demonstrate how the government has you bamboozled).
When David Suzuki admonishes you to use your own senses and memory when making judgements about what are the best choices, he is arguing in the context of an issue with known and knowable dimensions. That allows one to make an intuitive guess. It is estimated that Australia has 2836 threatened ecosystems at bioregion scale. That’s a big draw on sense and memory for a non-ecologist. How can you be so confident in your judgement when the decision to lock up land was not based on a single plan to preserve one of those threatened ecosystems? There are allegedly 16 threatened species on Peter Spencer’s land. They would probably do better, and Peter Spencer would certainly be in a better position, if his land could be restored to pre-European vegetation cover. But he can’t do that, so the environment will not improve. The law is about carbon, not about the environment. In Queensland, landholders cannot even clear noxious weeds (such as lantana) because it is “valuable regrowth”. Don’t kid yourself. This government does not give a stuff about the environment unless there is a vote in it. And then they only pay it lip service. The government propagandists use the standard ploy of presenting “only that aspect of the truth which is favourable to its own side.” They plant “environment” as a suggestion and they “win” when they get people (as on this site) parroting their inferences as “fact”. No need to dispute that. Just think back to the invasion of Iraq and the weapons of mass destruction. When it turned out there were no WMD, people said “But you told us …”. And governments around the world said “No. We never actually said that.” That was true – they hadn’t. The propaganda train (which the media was happy to jump on) just steered people into believing they had been told that WMD was the justification. So it is with the environment in this case. Don’t be suckered by the government.
On the other hand, I believe you when you suggest that you have some sympathy for Peter Spencer’s position. But I am puzzled when you say that “he appears to [you] to be aligned with reactionary rump elements who are not noted for getting things right.” Fair go! He went on a hunger strike because he saw that as the only way to draw attention to his situation (would you have heard of him otherwise?). He didn’t do it because he was aligned with “reactionary rump elements”. (You will note that such labeling is another propagandist ploy.) As I understand it, that “reactionary rump element” is in the process of organising a protest at Peter Spencer’s property but the government has apparently deployed RTA officers to pull the buses off the road and stymie the protest. Do you think the government would do that to silence a group who you claim are “not noted for getting things right”? Hardly. So maybe the Peter Spencer supporters ARE getting it right. That would be reason to silence them. Surely you can see that.
So here is my challenge to you. I am just a builder’s labourer with a penchant for reading and a block of dirt for my retirement. But you seem to have a desire to represent a moral position. Let’s get back to the point. Peter Spencer’s case is about loss of property rights and loss of ability to produce an income. In other words, a basic human rights issue (the thing that governments fear most). So why don’t you put your talents to good use by joining in the protest at Peter Spencer’s property. Who knows, you may end up standing shoulder to shoulder with a builder’s labourer.
And for the record I don’t endorse or apologise for slavery.
Neither do I accept Peter’s exercise in reading back one’s human status from the ways in which communities deal with questions of land title or equity. This particualr exercise in metaphysical inference is very common amongst American “libertarians”.
It’s important to realise that the word “slavery” is being used in a quite eccentric way here by Peter Hume. We Marxists also use the morphemes “slave” and “slavery” as part of “wage-slavery”, but this too is eccentric in that it describes ultimately the alienation of the wage labourer from the products of the deployment of his or her labour power.
I do not propose to engage in an extended reatise here, but it’s worth noting that where the the alienated surplus value becomes generalised as common social utility and thus available to meet the needs of working people that “value” is returned and slavery is extinguished.
And yes, as a socialist, I take it as self-evident that what I’d call, the human project has human freedom (which is nothing less that insight into the nature of one’s possibility and by extension, that of others, and the means for approaching it) as its primary cause.
Back on topic, I accept that longstanding usages are attached to land, that that it would be capricious and likely prove to be of negative utility to try to reverse these with undue haste. That said, I believe that transitional measures to move away from a purely alienated model of land usage to on oin which landholding was done communally would be feasible and desirable.
Peter Hume @ above (x 2): you raise issues to do with the political legitimacy of government. Sovereignty, the right to self governance, always rests with citizens. we cede some of that sovereignty to government in order to secure the benefits that government brings not least things like law enforcement, judicial independence, social welfare and so on. Legitimacy in a democracy depends on the willingness of government to adhere to particular practices of fairness, predictability, transparency, rationality. It is a big subject and, rather than reproduce mass block quotes I’ve read the wiki entry on “legitimacy (political)’ and think it an excellent readily available summary of thinking in the area:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legitimacy_%28political%29
I’d empasis Weber’s view in which the political legitimacy of modernity rests on “Rational/legal authority. Legitimacy based on the perception that a government’s powers are derived from set procedures, principles, and laws which are often complex and are written down as part of the constitution. Example: representative democracy or bureaucrats.”
In Australia there are limits to government authority, there are processes of appeal and contestation. So far Spencer has tried these means of appeal without success and has now moved to a hunger strike to bring focus on his plight and build support for what he sees as a fundamental injustice. This is evidence of a strong democracy at work. I’ll point out here that Mahatma Ghandi pioneered the hunger strike as a political waepon and used it masterfully but was, in the end, regarded as something of a pain in the arse even by his fellow party members because of his tendency to use a hunger strike to get what he wanted rather than negotiate a settlement. I think I’ve already seen signs of disenchantment with spencer from his own camp due to this sort of obstinacy.
You’ve written above:
“Democracies are more tyrannical than the old absolutist monarchies were, when judged on their record of taxation, multiplicity and intrusiveness of laws, and aggressive war.”
Tosh. Our lives are circumscribed by laws and regulations and these act as guarantors of freedom. Leaving aside the issue of government expropriation of land use rights the fact that you experience a “multiplicity and intrusiveness of laws” as moments of unfreedom is down to your own mind state. I am law abiding and rule following up to the point where any such rules and laws intrude on my own freedom (rare indeed) and then I ignore them to go my own way and, if there is a price to pay for exercising that sort of personal sovereignty, then I most assuredly have paid it. It is called independence and I cannot imagine being any more able to exercise that independence in any other country than Australia.
To the point @186: I fell irritated by your assumption about my class identity to the extent that I’ve never stood alongside a b/l. Cripes! In fact the first union I ever joined was the BLF (NSW) under Mundey, Owens and Pringle. And you keep admonishing me to keep to the point while allowing yourself the liberty to drag in Iraq and WMD. WTF? I’ll repeat what I wrote to Peter Hume above – effective democracy involves contest. In the current case if the RTA is harrassing you blokes all I can sat is welcome to the (general) struggle to be heard. You might now spare a thought to what the kooris went through by way of harrassment at the tent embassy on the front lawns of Parliament house all those years ago. Harrassed by the RTA? Come off it. If you can’t handle that then your not up to it.
As to the rest of what you say – right now I’m off to the art gallery with my kids. Get back to you later.
I’m heading out and leaving this open. Contestation of ideas and indeed for the treasury benches, hence power, is indeed an essential of democracy, but let it be civil in this forum. It’s not a free public space. Participation is at the discretion of the hosts.
An analogy might be, we determine who comes into our lounge room and who stays there. There is no right of appeal to an independent authority!
“There is no right of appeal to an independent authority!”
No, or we’d be up around 2500 comments on the 9/11 thread by now. Damn you Mercurious, you maker of what was probably a pretty sensible decision all things considered!
Brian # 185, about the RTA inspectors going to harass coaches heading to Canberra for a protest tomorrow. I first heard this yesterday around midday & thought WTF; is this real! By yesterday evening the story started to firm up that the phone call was a RTA inspector & not someone stirring. Heard nothing so far that I can say with certain that someone in authority ordered out the inspectors to make the protestors reaching Canberra very difficult. If this story has any truth it is a very worrying abuse of power.
The organiser of the coaches contacted their local State MP, Kevin Humpries.This is an interview that Humpries did last night on radio station 2SM about the RTA inspectors.
Having problems getting this link to work. Is it normal for anything with a long address to give trouble?
RTAPowerpossibility.mp3, 3.2 MB
I said @1 that I thought it best not to make a public meal (sic) of Spencer’s extravagent protest. I remain resolute that I won’t comment specifically about his case.
However, and still wishing to address Brian’s and other’s musings about the need for just management of the effect of the laws of the state on individuals, I’d like to raise a few urban-based examples. I think it’s helpful to see this not in terms of a city-country false binary, but rather in terms of the relationships between individuals, the community and the state.
The best-known and best-established procedures for states acquiring private property is of course “compulsory acquisition” to build roads, railways etc. This is done in accordance with well established precedents and taxpayers pay to acquire the private titles (note, not compensation payments, but deemed market-value purchases). That would seem to me to be the most sensible way to address analogous problems in rural areas. There are well-established means to do it, and since it’s all a “market-value” transaction, there is little to no risk of outrageous compensation payouts being made to individuals from the public purse.
However, even in these well-ordered cases, individuals are affected, often adversely. I know of families in Naremburn, Sydney, whose backyards were literally cut in half by the Gore Hill freeway, and are now host to a 20-foot high concrete pylon and ‘noise barrier’ above it. In one view, they got paid money for the deemed market value of a portion of their land. In another view, they got screwed.
Perhaps a closer analogy is another case around Iron Cove, where residents whose houses enjoyed water views found themselves afoul of a council ordinance to allow the previously-cleared mangroves to re-grow. Result was a disappearance of the water views, to be replaced by mangroves, with all their mosquitos and low-tide malodourousness. No “compensation” was paid, or payable, nor was any money remitted, because it wasn’t on their land. But of course their property prices copped a whack of a few tens of thousands. Now, I doubt whether anybody, least of all me, would die in a ditch to protect the property prices of the good burghers of Drummoyne, but it remains the case that states can and do make laws which leave individuals with a sour taste in their mouth, and little or no recourse, to maintain a public “good” (ie. infrastructure corridors, wetland restoration).
In other cases, we willingly submit cede freedoms such as the freedom to drive after consuming intoxicants, we submit to intrusive security procedures at airports, and we wear seatbelts and drive to speed limits. The “compensation” we receive is, hopefully, fewer road deaths and airline hijackings.
I guess all I meant to suggest by the above is a hope that Spencer’s case will be treated according to the same principles we apply in other areas where the states exercise coercive power over individuals in order to facilitate a vaunted public “good”.
Given the hysteria spreading about this matter, I think it is time for someone to consider the definition of the term “vexatious complainant”. After all, that is what Mr Spencer amounts to.
Whatever, PSP @ 194. It’s his choice and he’s not breaking the law.
still@downfall @ 192, I’m not aware of any special problems with long url’s as such, but I’m probably not the best one to ask.
The COOEE drive was meant to start happening today. As far as I can make out there was an alleged threat to pull the buses off the road. Now there apparently is one private bus being used but for the rest arrangements were made to use cars.
If the threat was true it was a gross misuse of state power.
Mercurius, on the city-country divide, the plant police have arrived in Upper Brookfield in Brisbane where there are a lot of 5-acre and 10-acre lots, but some up to 50 acres. Two types – city council and state government. I’m told that the state government inspect, then send you a letter via registered mail demanding that you clear the unauthorised plants within 30 days. This would be literally impossible in some cases.
If you fail you get a summons and a fine. They can then clear the weeds themselves and send you the bill. I’ve been told that the going rate for contractors is $160 per hour.
I know it’s happening from two sources, one very reliable. The details I have from one source only and would like to confirm. But if true I think some people especially on 10 acre blocks might revise their thinking about where to live.
I’d like to see the state government get stuck into the BCC, as well they might. That would be fun!
BTW I work on one place carved out of a dairy farm that’s still there and working, but has sold off 10-acre lots from time to time. The land that is in the best shape is the dairy farm. By a country mile.
Mercurius, I was thinking about Peter H’s allergy to laws affecting our lives. You mention common cases like wearing seat belts.
When we are born there are laws governing who can assist with the birth and the event must be duly registered in the prescribed way. When we marry there are laws governing that too which are value-based and not to everyone’s liking. When we work there are laws governing the employment conditions, and thank goodness for that although some capitalists wish otherwise.
And when we die, those near and dear to us can’t just dig a hole in the back yard.
There is a tendency, I think, for some to think that property rights are somehow above the law, but they are a human artefact, socially constructed within the institutional framework of any given society and based on norms and values. It is proper that the nature of such rights be contestable in the political process.
Which is what we have, but I wonder how much would change with a change of government next election, say in NSW or Queensland.
But things do change over time, often for the better. We no longer have slaves within the law and the status of women has changed substantially.
Environmental laws that restrict a person’s property rights will only ever be fully funded when the environment is not treated as a common good and there are no externalities. Until such a time, no government will ever be in a position (nor should have to be) to compensate people for environmental regulations that are well-founded and entirely justified, such as native vegetation controls.
The alternative is that farmers pony up for the lost vegetation or lost carbon. Learning that Spencer’s parents were kicked off Kosciusko grazing leases and he’s still bitter about that hardens my view against him – they were unconscionable, the sheet erosion in high alpine areas is still causing injury. Protesting that 50 years later shows this man to be an utter dinosaur.
My persistent line of questioning in this thread has I think shown that the “carbon theft” claim is a crock of bullshit. Spencer owns his carbon in the first place, it hasn’t been stolen, and there is no good link between NSW regulations of the mid-90s and Commonwealth desires.
wiful, there is a claim that the Feds paid NSW over $1 billion to implement some laws or other. I have no idea what this claim is based on.
The Feds certainly refused to stump up compensation for Qld farmers when vegetation management laws were being considered late last century.
If the rate for contractors is $160.00 per hour, it must be being charged per team of labourers rather than a per person/per hour rate. And yes, people should factor that into their choices when they are purchasing property, it’s why weed free land is more expensive than weedy land. It’s why, as I have been saying repeatedly, the cost of clearing weeds from private land should be factored into our consideration of whether private land holders are being compensated for the conservation value of their land. As an example, I was on a 200+Ha property last month, 100Ha is part of a [voluntary] conservation agreement, the taxpayers in the last 3 years have contributed $110,000 dollars towards fencing and weed control.
As far as examples of policy changes impacting on urban dwellers. I chose my abode based on it having enough room to grow some fruit trees and have a veggie garden, it also had good access to public transport. I wanted to grow my business slowly and also grow my own food, and if things didn’t go so well and I needed to get rid of the car, [which is the single biggest expense in my life] I would still be able to get out and about. Then water restrictions happened, and the government told me how much water I could have, and the days I could use it, this eroded my ability to have a productive garden quite significantly – last year I found it depressing to look out my back door. The public transport has also become quite impractical. Life goes on, with the election year water restrictions we now have, I should be able to save the almond trees, [the galahs will be happy - bloody galahs! if I didn't live in a region known for it almond orchards I wouldn't have to put up with them, this of course is someone's fault other than mine, I know it.]
Peter Spencer’s approach to this makes me angry – and I think his attitude is a huge disservice to other rural landholders. Those that jump on his bandwagon and blah on about property rights make me even angrier…I really can’t stand the implicit sense of entitlement. I had to wait until I was 5 years old and Don Dustan’s Labor removed the legal discrimination against illegitimate children before I even had the same rights as a human being. Boohoo to P Spencer – vegetated land is cheaper to buy than cleared land for a reason…..Mr Spencer your ‘compensation’ was written into the price you paid for your land, suck it up and get on with your life.
“I’m interested in whether decisions of government made in the presumed general interest of the many have adversely affected the few and whether fair compensation should be paid”
If the CPRS is adopted where compensation is paid to segments of the community to alleviate the effects of the GWA effort, then there surely is a precedent against which farmers can claim proportionally.
fb, I have sympathy with the notion of cleaning up the Upper Brookfield area. It has every weed imaginable, including the dreaded leucaena growing there as bold as brass on Council land at the roadside. In February the trees have this lovely creamy blossom over the foliage. Great if you don’t know that it is madeira vine. Asparagus vine is everywhere, there are areas where every tree is covered with cats claw. I know of one paddock where the dominant ground species is asparagus fern. the common fishbone fern is growing up hillsides. There is heaps of groundsel in places and a dreadful tree species (the name escapes me) where the seedlings come up like a carpet. It’s not Chinese elm, we have that as well, it’s worse.
Something needs to be done. The only question is the administrative brutality with which the State Government tackles the problem. If the experience of farmers is anything to go by, landholders will be asked to do stuff that is in fact impossible, which is a legal defence. The penalties are large and if you show a willingness to fight them the charges are often upgraded. Then if you win in court no matter how weak the crown case it will be appealed in an apparent effort to exhaust your resources.
I’m a bit sick of being told that I’m being told porkies by whingeing farmers who should just suck it up (not saying you said that exactly). I’ve heard it consistently and from very reliable sources.
So I’ll be interested to see how things work out in the ‘burbs. The BCC apparently has a less threatening approach and a reasonable question is whether their approach would have any appreciable effect.
On the sense of entitlement, I do think that property rights are valued differently in conservative political philosophies, which tend to favour people of property, while not until recently extending the right to own property universally.
For some reason I don’t get angry about it and I tend to think, based on what I know and the opinion of some judges who presumably, that Spencer has a case. While acknowledging that judges are not value free and tend if anything towards conservatism. But then I don’t know anything about these particular judges.
So the bottom line is that I have an interest (“tend to think” was intentional) but don’t have to have an absolute opinion on the matter. It’s better that I don’t and what I think has no particular significance anyway.
wilful @ 197, I’m not sure you have enough information to make the judgements you make.
I’ve not heard of Spencer being bitter about the family property being acquired for a national park. He’s expressed nostalgia about it, but that’s all I’ve heard. While he is no lover of the poor management of national parks there is also no evidence that he was going to clear-fell the timber on the place. What I’ve heard repeatedly is that there was thickening of the undergrowth preventing the growth on native grasses under the trees. He claims that he intended to restore the vegetation to a state that was closer to the pre-settlement condition than will happen if you just let everything grow.
So his claim is that what he intended was more environmentally sensitive than what’s happening now.
He does say that the property is the steepest farm in Australia, with I think a 900m difference in elevation.
To make a judgement on his claims I think you need much more detail on what’s there, the nature of the country and what he’d planned. I concede that you might have good information about the middle of those three, but I doubt it about the other two.
On the carbon, yes he owns it, he is required to keep it but he is unable to get any financial value from it. Which contrasts with what would have happened if he’s cleared the place in the 1980s and then planted trees for an offset scheme. Meanwhile owning it prevents him form implementing money-making schemes, including the sustainable logging of mountain ash.
He claims that the Feds have realised actual dollars (in savings) in what they’ve done. On the face of it I can’t see this. There are penalties for Kyoto noncompliance, but I understand that every country has until 2012 to comply. Given the outcome of Copenhagen I can’t see the penalty regime coming into effect at all.
However you spell it Peter Spencer has been shafted!
Basic a callous action by people who have no interest because they live in Mosman.
Halfback
I was going to add, wilful, that Spencer repeatedly accepts that there needs to be legal limits on vegetation clearing, which contrasts with some of his supporters.
Brian,
as you say
” He claims that he intended to restore the vegetation to a state that was closer to the pre-settlement condition than will happen if you just let everything grow.
So his claim is that what he intended was more environmentally sensitive than what’s happening now.”
This is the real issue that “parks ” wont address and is crucial to proper management, until this is considered all parks are in a state of miss-management?
Parks do nothing to look after the land.
Halfback
More broadly Brian, this raises the issue of why farmers have allowed those speaking on their behalf to see leaving agriculture out of an ETS as a good thing — a victory for them.
Had they got behind the idea of a robust well-conceived and evidence-based ETS including the farmsector, then the whole issue of payment for carbon sequestration could have been worked out fairly and with benefit to policy. Rather than looking like part of the problem, they could have presented as part of the solution. Instead, they come off looking like rent-seeking freeloaders.
Fran, the NSW Farmers’ Association want a royal commission on the science on climate change, which will be seen by those in government they are trying to influence as like having a royal commission to see whether water runs downhill.
Peter H above referred to “corrupt science” or similar. This will not serve them well.
I don’t think farmers in general should suck it up, I think this particular individual, who I would be loathe describe as a farmer, most definitely should.
As an aside, one of the lectures I attended at the Ecological Restoration conference was on the restoration of farmlands in Lithuania after that country regained it’s independence. When this happened and Lithuania could begin trading freely again, farmlands were abandoned and what passes for nature in that part of the world reclaimed the country – [the lecture showed the succession of plants etc].
I had a field trip with the bloke that gave that lecture and I told him I didn’t understand what caused the farmers to leave, and he simply said, “why would we grow things when we have the entire EU to buy from?”. I remember being quite taken about by such a matter-of-fact response to what seems like such a loaded situation to me.
The talk is the one that stuck in my mind the most, as he talked about the shape of the farmlets pre-communism, and then after the nationalisation of these lands, which changed the boundaries and the communities. Farms had once been narrow, with a home at the front, forming a village and therefore a community. Communism created larger, square blocks that destroyed village life. Then the free market ended it all. It was fascinating, and for me it does highlight the need for us to talk about the implications of politics on land tenure and land use, and the further implications for us as a nation, should farmers choose to leave the land in droves. But really, what are the chances of having a reasonable discussion about it in the context of Mr Spencer’s situation? What is at the core of this is a carbon economy that does not yet exist, and in the imagination of farmers would only exist where they can reap the rewards without paying for their impacts. It’s ludicrous. There are opportunities here for farmers, and I think many realise this, but don’t you think there is more than a whiff of hypocrisy about all of this? – particularly from those that both support Spencer and agree with B Joyce’s stance on the ETS?
Today’s SMH makes note of new council planning rules designed to address 2025 estimates of sea level rises which includes, in the case of Shoalhaven Council, ‘no development’ in affected ‘high risk’ zones because of the risk of flooding. In other areas zoned ‘moderate risk’ (possibly affected by projected sea level rises between 2025-2050, development will be limited to slight modifications to existing buildings and allow only lightweight or relocatable buildings. There are 1400 property and landowners in the Shoalhaven council area who will be affected.
I’ve no doubt that some people bought land on the assumption that they would be able to devlop their holding by building on it. Nice beachfront block and all that. No mention is made of compensation to these landowners for new council rules which merely incorporate risks associated with projected sea level rises.
Equally I’ve no doubt that some of those 1400 as well as anyone else on the east coast of NSW who has sunk their superannuation into coastal land will face economic ruin subsequent to these council plannng regs. I had an army mate years ago who bought a block on Moreton Island described as a ‘fishermans paradise’ which, he later said with remorse, was a good description because on a good high tide the fish would swim right into your kitchen.
Now, are we going to compensate these landowners for losses subsequent to new council planning rules? If not why not?
Fran @ 206
Some relevant quotes from our Agriculture Minister and Farmonline. Its so easy to blame farmers for government action and/or inaction, and for not having any science that can be used to measure soil sequestration of carbon in Australian soils
“The science of being able to meaningfully account for soil carbon in ways which provide real incentives for farmers varies wildly between various soil types.
“That is why we have invested nearly $32 million in research and development to increase the number of options for farmers in sequestering and measuring carbon in soil.”
Mr. Burke said with the Chicago Climate Exchange currently trading at around 40c/tonne of carbon, there will be significant benefits for farmers but only when there are better means of measuring soil carbon.”
In the meantime the regrowth grows, the carbon is sequestered and Australia uses this to achieve the old Kyoto agreements. When agriculture is included, and they can evaluate soil carbon, one could expect Peter’s claim could be bigger (I pray he comes down soon). Refer quote below from ICM High Court case.
“The scope of the term “acquisition” was explained as follows by Deane and Gaudron JJ in Mutual Pools & Staff Pty Ltd v The Commonwealth[89]:
“Nonetheless, the fact remains that s 51(xxxi) is directed to ‘acquisition’ as distinct from deprivation. The extinguishment, modification or deprivation of rights in relation to property does not of itself constitute an acquisition of property [90]. For there to be an ‘acquisition of property’, there must be an obtaining of at least some identifiable benefit or advantage relating to the ownership or use of property. On the other hand, it is possible to envisage circumstances in which an extinguishment, modification or deprivation of the proprietary rights of one person would involve an acquisition of property by another by reason of some identifiable and measurable countervailing benefit or advantage accruing to that other person as a result[91].”
The last sentence is the critical one.
The 40c per tonne on the farmonline article could be a mistake.
Where did the term “rent seeking freeloaders” come from? This term I think adds nothing to the debate. The term landowner denied the right to farm viably would be a better description of Peter Spencer.
Anthony @ 209,
In relation to your question. In the case where councils have made urban blocks available on the sea front in recent times, I believe the local government is repsonsible to pay compensation if these blocks were subdivided since the potential for sea level rise was obvious (probably 10 to 20 years).
The same applies where local government has allowed subdivision on known flood plains.
You must remember there is a financial incentive to local government to create urban blocks (rates), however they have resposibilty not to put urban blocks in danger zones and should be financially responsible if they do in the knowledge that the block could flood or become a beach.
Mercurious @ 193,
The fact is the rural landowners (and urban landowners subject to heritage listing) don’t get sufficient compensation for the loss of property rights (for the property they own).
Unless its called acquisition it’s not acquisition. Its a neat way of removing enough rights to make properties non-viable for the purpose that the land was alienated from the crown in the first place, with the crown retaining no equity at the first sale from the crown.
While I agree anyone purchasing property knowing full well that vegetation protection laws exist, and are applicable to that property, should not be compensated; later removal of property rights that make farmland or urban properties non-viable should be compensated on just terms. There is no other choice , otherwise property ownership in Australia decends into a state of kaos and at the whim of State and Local governments.
furious balancing,
i doubt you have been to Shannon’s Flat or are familiar with the type of farming done on properties on the Monaro or know about farming hill country?
Please read all the background to the case and the case is that the farmers have been dudded by a country who wants a easy solution to carbon credits that does not look at the polluters.
Various politicians did in fact collude to take away farmer’s land rights for their own end.
Fine wool before China stuffed the wool prices was a good business.
5,000 sheep or more and you could make a good living with S/F Merinos.
This is what Peter Spencer had in mind .
Suspect your agri interest is just theoretical?
halfback
I’m short of time to take up some interesting points in the last few comments so I’ll just stick with a few new links. I don’t usually read Joanne Nova’s blog but she has a piece with a link to a very recent conversation with Spencer and Carter Edwards of 2SM. Edwards is a jock I couldn’t listen to all that often and remain well and Spencer is emotional, but I listen to these things for information.
Spencer talks about his last project which was a wind farm, hence the tower he’s up right now. I don’t have the story completely clear, but he reckons he was thwarted after investing money by Howard withdrawing support for the MRET in 2004.
At the end of the story he reckons that a big company that he was going to partner with is now just waiting for the farm to be sold by the bank so they can proceed with a multi-million dollar investment. From Nova’s link you can read about the ABC story on the wind farm here.
The company concerned has a familiar face as Chair, a bloke called Mark Vaile.
The ABC reported the COOEE rally today and did a story on PM.
Further to my comment above in the PM piece his son Kahn says:
I think there are three possible outcomes from here. One is that he’ll stay where he is until he dies. The second is that he’ll come down to see the doctor but won’t have the strength to get back up the tower again. The third is that his sons will take a hand in the matter.
In the Carter interview Spencer says that he sold assets to fight the court case which is why he’s broke. I think I said early on that whoever counselled, encouraged or supported him to go down the legal road did not do him a favour.
211
John Michelmore, you’re incorrect about councils having to compensate landowners for restrictions imposed on floodprone land.
If my house falls down tomorrow, I cannot rebuild here – in the time since we built the house and now, the land has been identified as floodprone.
No council regulations have been passed, as the plans have still to be finslised, but just the fact that the council has plans identifying the land as floodprone is enough for them to legally refuse permission to build.
There is no compensation available.
These changes affect hundreds of properties. Some people have sold up and moved – their house was no longer suitable for their present needs and they can’t extend. Others have suffered a real loss of land values – vacant land in prime positions can’t be built on.
In a couple of cases, these plans have meant that vast tracts of former farmland, close to town, have effectively become useless. They can’t be subdivided, as they’re floodprone. They’re surrounded by houses, and so can’t be effectively farmed.
And, as I said, this is despite no regulations being passed by council. Once they were aware that the land was floodprone, council has no choice legally – they must restrict the use of the land or they become liable for any potential loss of life or property.
And council couldn’t avoid knowing either. A couple of big floods necessitated the drawing up of floodplans – failing to do so would also be negligent.
Occasionally people suffer loss and there’s really noone to blame.
Brian 214 – If you google wind farms etc in Shannon Flat/Monaro you will see the name of the Company who are wanting to set up the Wind Farm. I did a little research on the Company & in the Company’s Report (ASX Site) they refer to the leasing of the property owned by Spencer. I haven’t put in any links as the ASX Site clearly states for private use. My point is – I’m not sure that Spencer has in fact invested any money into this project, perhaps its more about the income he was hoping to get. As with all proposals such as this it can be a lengthy process. Agree with the comment in #215 those who encouraged him down the legal road didn’t do him any favours. Court actions such as this are a gamble.
I notice AdelaideNow subbie has headed Spencer’s story with “Protester should return to Earth”.
Brilliant! More wisdom in that heading than in all the other gargage being written.
The Washington Post has published an article about Peter Spencer called, Angry farmers rally outside Australian Parliament.
Having lived in the USA for a short period I can tell you that there isn’t too much news from Oz that the American media places before their audiance. Has The Australian attempted to cover this story seriously?
John Michelmore @211: it may also eventually be the case that councils will rezone houses built in highly fire prone areas (on top of ridges, alongside parks and reserves) out of highly flammable materials or of non-inflammable design. Do we compensate landowners in those situations as well? If yes then it appears to me that you would turn the Australian economy into a compensation payout for people who have been wrong footed by chaning ecological conditions. The point here is that, sooner or later, we are all going to be wrong footed by those changes.
Mark Vaille? Dear oh dear. The only safe place around one of the ’sharks who walk’ would be up a tree.
The more I learn about rural poltics and economics the more my mouth drops in astonishment at the way the Nats and the peak rural bodies (NFF and constitutive state farmer’s organisations) rip off a significant section of the rural population. It is a case of big bikkies and big buddies. Environmentalists aren’t the real enemy here. The Nats are.
Wow, I commented at the start of this discussion on market based instruments, and have returned to see a very lively debate.
I just wanted to pick up on Brian’s belief that nature conservation and productive land use are inherently competitive. I believe quite the opposite, that without managing land for interests beyond short term profit, most of Australia’s productive land will decline to the point of non-production. There are some broader social interests that the farmer should not be required to pay for, and for these market-based instruments can be used to pay farmers for the ’social good’ activities they undertake. For more information on MBIs, see:
http://www.marketbasedinstruments.gov.au/
kymbos, that’s what I said. I didn’t say inherently in conflict.
The post was very long, but if it had been about land clearing as such I would have included a photo of brigalow land where the trees have been left in strips, from memory 80m wide in every 240m so that a third of the land is trees.
still@downfall drew our attention to this practice in Central Queensland on an earlier thread and explained that it had been found better for grazing than complete clearing. But I could also quote a real life instance in Qld where almost the whole property has been locked up because it contains a vegetation type that has largely been cleaned out in the sub-region.
Anthony @ 209, I think your mate may have bought land on Russell Island which is in Moreton bay, not Moreton Island, which is mostly national park. It was a scam pure and simple, which I think depended on people buying off the plan, or just flying over. Anyone who buys land that way has some responsibility for their own misfortune. Apparently there was no local government authority at the time, so the fault lay with the developers and sellers, some of whom probably went to jail.
But your examples are not a good analogy for cases where the laws have been changed to provide a public good.
Bria:
“But I could also quote a real life instance in Qld where almost the whole property has been locked up because it contains a vegetation type that has largely been cleaned out in the sub-region.”
I have no doubt that is true. These are the cases we really need to hear about because of their manifest injustice in the absence of compensation. To contrast the difference between building on rezoned flood prone areas and land clearing: in the former no compensation would be offered because no socio-ecological good flows from the decision whereas in the latter it does. Unpacking: where rezoning causes loss through adjustments driven by new ecological realities (ie, rising sea levels) there is no grounds for compensation because the rezoning is designed to extinguish the chain of loss over time at a particular point in time and no more. With native vegetation legislation the intention is to generate a social good through the preservation of intact ecosystems. It seams reasonable to me to offer some form of compensation for some (not all) economic loss associated with restrictions or limitations on freehold land use where those limitations are driven by a social good.
I recall a monumental package being offered to employees in the Tasmanian forestry industry for job losses. Unfortunatley that Tasmanian branch of the CFMEU publically backed Howard and the deal fell through. But the principle stands.
Actually Brian, to quote you: “kymbos @ 11, I think there is inherent conflict between the interests of food production, conservation and carbon storage.”
Regardless, there is potential to minimise this conflict or align interests in many situations (not all). MBIs can help us do this.
Congrats to you on managing this debate. It’s a fascinating read.
kymbos, touche! But what I would have meant is that there is a potential for conflict which is inherent between the interests identified.
On managing the debate, thanks for appreciating how difficult it is, especially when you are a participant. At one stage I almost closed the thread and said “never again”.
Brian, I’m glad you didn’t shut the thread down, we are starting to get to the point of getting our minds around this issue, departing from initial outbursts & settling down to more measured debate. Well one can only hope. J
Anthony #224,
“With native vegetation legislation the intention is to generate a social good through the preservation of intact ecosystems. It seams reasonable to me to offer some form of compensation”
This is close to the core of this thread. If something is enacted with the intention of ‘the greater good’ & has serious perverse outcomes on a minority it must be reasonable to offer some form of compensation in a just society.
Kymbos # 221,
Thank you for your link & comment. There is & always have been win/ win scenarios available. My great frustration for someone who has worked to achieve a balance between food production & environmental outcomes is that 20 years ago when there was huge potential to take a giant step in this direction, the relationship of cooperation between farmers & Government agencies was thrown out & a new era of coercion began. All big sticks, no carrots. This is another group whose ideal is a return to a better balance.
Righto then. We’re agreed, ’still’. Now what about compensating aboriginal people for their economic loss?
No socio economic good comes from rezoning floodland?
Of course it does. Discouraging people from building on flood prone land has a heap of consequences which are both social and economic – less lives in danger, less infrastructure which needs replacement, less stress in the community (having to evacuate myself and my stock from a number of floods, I can attest that I found them more stressful in the long term than the three major bushfires which have hit this area over the last decade), just to name a few.
On the other hand, locking this land up also creates heaps of problems, as well as real financial loss for the landholders.
Fair comment AN @229. Take the stolen wages issue in Queensland. The last I heard was a lump sum of around $50 million offered to eligible claimants whose numbers I don’t know, but the amount was I believe declined. If ever there was a case of outright theft by government this is it. And it is no better in NSW. The longer the issue is in dispute the less the number of claimants.
Still@downfall @229. Be interesting to know the uptake of landowners seeking this sort of certification. One problem with australia’s aging farmers – the average is somewhere in the late 50’s – is a lack of uptake in continuing education. You get a sense of it in reading the Cooee Drive blog.
The stolen wages issue is an injustice poorly handled by many successive Govt’s in Qld of both sides of politics. Don’t presume that aboriginal economic loss is a thing in the past; take a look at the wild rivers situation in Cape York Peninsula.
The uptake of the scheme I linked to can only be limited in the current economic, political & social climate. Without economic reality recognising a triple bottom line, (environment, production & social values); a system of coercion & vilification produces mistrust & grudging cooperation; social fragmentation because of poor services, low income levels & loss of community members displaced by mining. Just to name a few. Pablo, I must admit that I lack formal education. But there was once a robust system of in-the-field education provided by the likes of DPI that worked well & is all but lost.
Good Points still@downfall @ 229,
While it is not my intention to detract from the Peter Spencer story, this is just as an example of how the big stick (non cooperative) government approach can be used on landowners. In this case the government achieved nothing, the environment lost and so did the landowner.
I purchased a property (400 acres) 50% native vegetation (unfenced); and moved from a smaller property where I irrigated pasture and bred stud beef cattle.
The intention was to protect the native veg. and try and make the remaining 200 acres viable with a more intensive agricultural pursuit.
A heritage listing application were lodged for 160 acres (this vegetation is in the top 5% of the remnant vegetation in the Adelaide Hills)
Two bores were drilled finally finding water after one dry hole.
Then State government prohibition on the new use of water resources came in. An application for a prospective water user’s authorisation to irrigate was submitted, highlighting that the property would be non-viable without reasonable access to water. Also it was highlighted, that if the property was made non-viable due to lack of access to water there would be no point in heritage listing the scrub (landowners need to have viable properties to look after remnant vegetation ( weeds, ferals etc)). The application indicated I had moved irrigation equipment from the smaller property.
In the meantime, I lodged and was successful in receiving a $50,000 grant to fence the scrub under the “Bush Bids Scheme”
In a nutshell the prospective water user application was denied, I withdrew the heritage listing application for the high quality native vegetation, and declined the $50,000 fencing.
Three years later the same government department whom denied the water application, asked me to sign over the access to water I held at the old property (property sold when I moved to the newer property) acknowledging that I had always used water, was a water user; and under their own legislation should have been granted a prospective water users authorisation for the new property because the access at the old property had never been “sold.” Within one week of their request, and my heated return mail, they agreed to the original prospective water user authorisation.
So yes, there has been support for landowners; however the sequence of events I have experienced will now prevent me from ever giving any equity in my land back voluntarily (heritage listing). Why because the government attempted to “steal” a right I had been using, never bothered to come and inspect the property, and would not negotiate in trading off the heritage listing (for nearly 50% of my land) in return for me maintaining a piece of property that I could retire to and live from.
While I fortunately retain all the rights I had at this point, the lost production far outweighs the $50,000 fencing grant.
Maybe one day I’ll be able to protect the remnant vegetation out of my own pocket, but I certainly now will never accept government money in return for giving any equity in my property to the government. This situation has basically destroyed any belief I have had in the governments advertised motives in relation to the environment.
One real issue is that I was dealing with three separate government organisations, each was trying to control the situation, and none had any real concern for overall property management. The local environment ministers whom I asked for help from on three separate occasions did nothing to resolve the situation until they realised ”their mistake!!”
John Michelmore: accounts such as yours, red tape, horrible interdepartmental failures, ‘trap’s in dealing with govt dept’s – they make a better case than generalised ambit claims. Terrible tale and the sort that most people readily understand.
I find this news item interesting. http://www.smh.com.au/national/pursuing-his-case-through-courts-with-zeal-20100104-lq7k.html
Apparently the NSW government did make an offer of over $2 million to buy the land in question. However Spencer declined the offer, tried to sue the government instead and lost.
Steven, I agree. I think it demonstrates the futility of the legal road, that he has a moral case wrt to native vegetation but the carbon issue is a bit of a stretch.
I’d heard that he’d been made an offer but had to treat it as hearsay at the time.
Anthony Nolan,
“The more I learn about rural poltics and economics the more my mouth drops in astonishment at the way the Nats and the peak rural bodies (NFF and constitutive state farmer’s organisations) rip off a significant section of the rural population. It is a case of big bikkies and big buddies. Environmentalists aren’t the real enemy here. The Nats are.”
We live in an area affected by drought , when handouts came for hay we could not get a look in , it was all gone to big farmers with river-frontage and irrigation.
When you speak to the big farmers they freely admit to rorting the system and fiddling the books.
System of accounting means that fiddle the books and sell 500 lambs or 500 rolls of hay under the table, run your farm at a loss .
Smaller farmers do it very hard and work their ring off.
What i object to is the way farmers have been used in this eco-situation to prop up the problems of pollution/ carbon credits.
The whole matter is sinister!
Basically industry refuses to do anything about the problems it creates worldwide , the GFC has given an excuse for leniency to the actual causes and the culprits
My personal experience with gov departments has been one of intense frustration with their inability to do anything.
Rural stock squad have taken almost one year to do nothing over the theft of a large number of stock on our property. The matter is a disgrace.
Local copper is useless , failed to make contact after repeated calls of vandalism.
Parks and Wildlife people came onto the property some years back, i asked the fem-nazi what she was doing ,
“I do what i like.”
Living in the country is not as easy as people think, your on your own.
If your lucky you make some money but mostly you spend…………
Half
Steven, I haven’t got a reference for you but I have heard & read it somewhere that the property was independently valuated at greater than $9 million. There is also a debt to pay off. I would suspect that to accept the offer would mean that he walked away with nothing.
Open books on all the accounts, both in Australia and in PNG from as far back as 1980 when Shannon’s Flat property was bought, cost of divorce settlements, value of labour – paid and unpaid, value of gold expropriated, value of litigation, influence peddling, dragon slaying…. All this should be taken into account when assessing whether Spencer was ever likely to succeed as a farmer of a large tract of land; a lifestyle demanding frugal controlled care by an extended family, using profits from good years to shore up against hard times, droughts and fire.
Valuation and profit making potential are not the same. Maybe there was an valuation of $9 mill; but supporters need to be aware of how that valuation was made and used. The grand house would be worth quite a bit but has no more profit making potential than the little old house by the would-be-a-trout-lake. The valuation could have been used to borrow off to fund non-profit-making aspects of the lifestyle of his extended family and himself.
Of course we will never be given access to the wider story of Peter Spencer; he will continue to hone his story down to suit his current obsession with blaming Kyoto for his current plight.
Nana,
Once the vegetation regows and the property becomes less desirable for farming, the value drops. Which comes first the chicken or the egg.
The legislation directly results in a drop in value. The same applies when a building is heritage listed in a city, the legislation results in a drop in market value, because less buyers want it and the buyers left take advantage of this fact.
Then later the government caim the benfit for Kyoto, whether there is an exact dollar value associated to Kyoto claim or not it is “theft.” In addition there is the cost of the years of lost production from what was alienated from the crown as farming land , not as National Park.
The rest of the issues you raise are not really relevant to the discussion.
From The Punch, Crazy or not this bloke needs to get out of his tree
One thing to clear up from what is written in this quoted, it’s not about landclearing but perverse outcomes from something viewed at the time for the greater good. Its about the inability to be viable resulting from the changing of the goal posts. It’s about a few carrying the burden for many. What has yet to discussed in this thread in the justice of how the laws were drafted & the fairness of their administration.
Below is copy of text of an e-mail letter sent to Senator Bill Heffernan yesterday from a fomer neighbour of Peter Spencer at Shannons Flat. Full details, name, address, telephone and e-mail contacts were provided in the original letter to Senator Heffernan.
“Comments: Senator Heffernan Firstly I would like to state that I am a ‘Peter Spencer Supporter’ [but number one a Family Friend] and I guess one of the ones that you referred to when you said and I quote ”I think it’s barbaric that we’re all sitting around here wondering how long the bloke is going to last … I think they, absolutely this afternoon, should go and get him, and take him to hospital,” I would just like to help you try and understand the type of man Peter Spencer really is, a man that has the guts and the courage in standing up for what he truly believes in. Peter is a very passionate and determined man especially when dealing with anything that he truly believes in and especially when it concerns his family and will follow it through as far as he is physically able and he unfortunately is not afraid of death. I have known Peter since 1989 when I became one of the Spencer Family’s next door neighbours and the two families spent a lot of time together especially the children as living 42 kilometers from the nearest town the children not only played together they went to the same school, caught the same school bus and a couple of them were even in the same class, had the same friends etc as all country kids do. In those days Peter spent a lot of time in the highlands of Papua New Guinea as he had various businesses interests there mainly tourism accommodation type businesses and had been operating them for 10-15 years prior to us knowing him. Peter is/was accepted as a Chief in one of the Highland Tribes in Papua New Guinea and has been known to be called in by the then Papua New Guinea Government to negotiate peace between the two [probably sometimes more] fighting tribes putting his own life on the line in these situations but coming out with very positive results. In 1996/97 there was a riot at his Hotel in Mt Hagan where rascals tried to rob and burn his Hotel, Peter was taken captive and placed on his knees with hands tied behind his back and a gun placed at his head, fortunately for Peter the gun misfired and in the rascals confusion he was able to escape. I guess my point being in all this is that Peter Spencer while he has ANY control will not come down from that tower, come hell or high water it won’t get him down, he’s that type of man fighting for what he truly believes in, and that scares the hell out of me and my family, let alone what his own kids Aaron, Khan, Sarah & Emma are going through. They flew out from America to be with him to try to help and support their Dad that they love very much, then there’s Jesse 12 and Jeremy 9 living in Denmark and you really think that they want to lose their Dad. Sarah is a young woman/mother of 3 under school age children the baby Saxon is only 4 months old who she has bought out with her to Australia. She is already torn by her commitment to her father and her young family back in the States and she coped the lashing of your tongue yesterday which she definitely didn’t deserve. Yes! It is barbaric that we’re all sitting around here wondering how long Peter is going to last. BUT! not all of us have been voted into a position by the trusting people of this Great Nation and have the power to help Peter put pressure on Rudd to talk to him at the very least.”
Re 243
Prepared to send name, details of letter writer to blog moderator – if required.
# 243 “Peter is/was accepted as a Chief in one of the Highland Tribes in Papua New Guinea”. Funny that! There are no chiefs in Papua New Guinea Highlands. ‘Big Men’ maybe but no chiefs. And a Melanesian Big Man’s status waxes and wanes depending on this wealth and influences at any point in time. It is not an inherited status like in Polynesia. Maybe Peter has been spinning some tourist yarns. He is very good at that.
I wonder what the people of Western Highlands would think of a Big Man starving himself to death! Contradiction in terms. A truly Big Man would not do it; not leave 6 children to mourn him.
Great site (1st time visitor) and best commentary I’ve seen on this issue. My take on this is along these lines – in theory I do believe that farmers who have had an income stream affected by these vegetation laws should have some form of compensation awarded as they have directly suffered an instant loss. I do not believe that Peter Spencer necessarily fits into this as he had never made any income whatsoever on the portion of land affected. So to me while there was potential it was not a loss of income that had previously been established or depended on.
I don’t believe it has anything to do with Kyoto as the vegetation laws came in years before Kyoto was even established and we had the Howard government dodging AGW the whole time while never giving Kyoto legitimacy/signing – so I don’t see how he can claim a govt who was certainly not progressive could have had carbon credits in mind back then. This is not the platform he has used in the 200odd other court appearances to date. He is trying this angle now because of the perceived benefit of carbon sinks and Copenhagen. This I can only find desperate and opportunistic from an obviously litigious man.
Not sure about the need of a RC but agree that more needs to be understood and sorted out. I would not like to have the loony B Joyce in my corner as his grandstanding is more to suited to his own ends. And I don’t think that Spencer is a very good poster boy for the cause.
Voxpop,
I’m not sure you understand the ramification of the States being able to remove any common law property right or any property right you have if you own property, without compensation.
It is now exceedingly simple for a patch of scrub somehwere near the edge of a city to be “locked up” without compensation to the land owner.
The landowner is often forced to sell because it is of no value to him and he sells at a reduced price. The land could have been purchased by a developer with the right connections to local government/state government get the land rezoned and the vegetation controls lifted and make a massive profit selling as housing blocks at a later date.
The same applies in the case of the Kyoto “claimed” benefit by Peter Costello; making the claim years later does give a legal standing to Peter Spencer, and so it should otherwise corruption will overtake the property issue quickly.
In response to half@213: my interests in this topic are well established in this thread and on this blog I think, but in case you missed it, I work in conservation/landscape restoration…I’ve been pretty up front about that and where I am coming from in regards to discussions like this, so I’m not sure what your point is about theoretical agricultural experience? I work with agronomists, farmers, hobbyists, and govt agencies to restore landscapes for conservation, I greatly prefer to work with farmers. But really what has that got to do with anything I said? My main point is simply about the carbon market and the potential it may offer people just like Mr Spencer – if only the National party had not misrepresented it in the name of fear-mongering.
I’ve not commented about Mr Spencer’s land, nor how he planned to manage it, but over here in SA if a farmer allows his land to regrow to such a state that he is no longer able to clear it under the Native Vegetation Act, then I would suggest his peers would think he had rocks in his head and/or was an appalling land manager, either that or perhaps he was a ‘kinda green’ and was letting it regrow out of a love of nature. I know many that would love to have it just come back in the way it does up there, over here they slave away planting it and routinely lose most to drought.
Personally, I think that farmers should be assisted/compensated when they have entered into a formal agreement to restore their landscapes…which is exactly what happens here. Farmers here are also free to look into the possibility of trading in the carbon offset market. The issue of carbon auditing and the notion of double-dipping in the carbon market was raised long before Mr Spencer began his protest. I don’t think my view that his actions are a disservice to rural landholders is particularly controversial, but that’s just one view from over here in SA where many farmers are simply wondering whether landholders upstream will let any of the flood waters flow in their direction. And when it doesn’t because of the QLD and NSW govt policy to leave the Darling river unregulated and to over-allocate the Murray, will those SA farmers be compensated? When they bought their properties, how were they to know that their fellow Australians would deny them the opportunity to earn a livelihood?
His daughter says: “We’ve all vowed that until he’s not of sound mind, it’s his choice whether he stays up there or comes down.” …
That’ll be interesting, how they make that call: what will be the first physiological manifestation of his self-harming, which I guess will be sufficient grounds to section him under a mental health act.
Kidneys packing it in probably, especially since he’s stressing them with a concentrated vitamin regime. Hopefully the famiily and supporters are having a whip around right now to finance a dialysis unit and the staff for it so Spencer won’t be a drain on the already stretched public kidny pathology services. With all his fans, he’ll at least have a good chance of there being a good donor match for a transplant, which is more than most un-purposely-self-inflicted kidney damage sufferers can hope for.
For me it’s only a difference of degree between Spencer and other idealogue martyr terrorists, Spencer’s idealogy being simple craven profit and property, and the victims of his terrorist act not being bloodily maimed, just the public being put the unpleasnatness, and for some no doubt the trauma, of seeing this played out in public.
fb # 248, having interacted with on this site before I can reassure half that you are a reasonable person & have in the past been thoughtful in your response to issues.
fb, I don’t have to tell you that vastly different management practices have to engaged in the vastly different landscapes across this big brown land. Spencer’s alpine property could not be much more different to that of yours in SA, especially the more arid areas. And the same goes for the lands I belong to in southern inland Qld.
In the SA experience it may be possible that once cleared it is readily easy to keep the land utilised for food production free of regrowth. I’m not 100% on this, leave me know if I’ve got it wrong. There is at least a third of the area of Qld that is never free of regrowth. It is simply a different bioregion that needs different management & is used for pastoral activities being unsuitable for cropping.
This is a long prelude into simply saying that those of us with no experience of this alpine property shouldn’t jump to conclusions to its management.
The Spencer story was on Channel 7 Today Tonight program.Farmer Protest.
still@downfall, like you say it depends on the ecosystem, and I understand that, and, as I think we have discussed elsewhere, it’s often not ideal to just fence land off and let it regrow. I’m not making any specific value judgement over how Mr Spencer has treated his land, but if he wanted to maintain it as productive land then that goes to his skill as a land manager – if he wanted to conserve the vegetation, that also goes to his skill as a land manager – the reason I like working with farmers is because they are also the best of the people I deal with at actually managing conservation too. As it is, Mr Spencer seems like an investor that wants a return on an asset, rather than a land manager, which is why I am so cynical about his actions.
In SA regrowth was counted as 10 years without disturbance and now I think it is 20 years. How much work would be required to keep land productive?..I dunno..I think most farmers who want to maintain productive land, just keep it lightly stocked if it’s open veg, and maybe harvest timber for firewood.
furious balancing and still,
how many acres does Peter Spencer have?
The Shannon’s Flat area and Yaouk have very high rainfall in good years.
They are on the cusp of a corridor that runs north through the Brindabella’s and west to the back of Yass were the Walker’s run sheep. Early last century it was a 60″ rainfall area, prolly a bit less now. Basic sums show it could be very viable.
Peter Spencer as did many in that area have persistent problems with wild dogs roaming from the national parks, parks sat on their hands over the matter for years and went into a state of denial.
This matter alone would upset most people .
The area is very suitable for super fine wool and he prolly thought he could make money when s/f wool was $18+ a kilo.
Either way for Peter Spencer to go into wool means he is not afraid of work.
Clearly he has something going for him and made some good things happen in his life, a functional and cohesive family is a great achievement for any father let alone one who has lived in hostile places.
Most people struggle under even the best of circumstances to raise a family that is functional.
My point being there is prolly a lot of good in this man?
We exported the best genetics to NZ and also china which has undermined our position. Certainly does not help.
Who lets these things happen?
The whole carbon credit industry does not really address the issues of sustainability and enviro’ responsibility and this is what i object to .
Half’
Also, further to John Michelmore’s comments, re the situation with water rights. Your right having to deal with seperate agencies is a huge problem, but regardless the Heritage agreements are a function of the Native Veg Act. From my reading there is no person who would be authorised to negotiate Heritage Agreements and ‘trade’ them in the way you mention. In a way the agreements themselves are less important than you may realise…in that they cover land that can’t legally be cleared anyway, they do genuinely exist to offer ‘in kind’ support to landhoders who are actively engaged in managing their land for conservation.
I suspect that the Dept. is already overburdened with Heritage Agreements [I understand there is currently a waiting list], particularly in the Adelaide Hills. The Hills seem like a bureaucratic nightmare to me. The holdings are generally small, the weeds issues are often enourmous, if the property holders are okay, you can almost guarantee their neighbours will be horrendous, because it seems like there is never two properties in a row that can cooperate…etc, etc. Geez, I’m just a contractor, and it bugs me to such a degree that I try to avoid all Hills work if I can. :p Sorry for sounding so glib and all…but I doubt anyone within the dept. of env. would lose sleep over whether you sign on to an heritage agreement. They are intended to be voluntary and cooperative for a reason…too bad you don’t want to be involved – me might have met..I do good work!!
danny @ 249, I think you’ll find that Spencer started his hunger strike in the house and 2 days later went up the tower to make it impossible for anyone to “section” him. I think he intended to go higher, but apparently he’s at about 15 metres, where you’d need a crane to get him down.
Voxpop @ 246, Spencer bought the land with the expectation of being able to clear some of it and presumably that was in the price.
On carbon, Spencer claims that storing carbon in trees was discussed at a COAG meeting in Brisbane in 1994 and that ABARE prepared a report recommending that carbon be sequestered by the revegetation of marginal lands. I suspect that Spencer’s farm could be described as marginal.
I think he’s right about the ABARE report, but haven’t been able to find it on the net. Sequestration in trees and soils was very definitely in discussion in the years leading up to Kyoto, but it was recognised that more research needed to be done on soils.
The whole Kyoto strategy was to nix it’s effects as far as Australia was concerned so that it would be BAU for us. Luckily 1990 was a peak year in vegetation clearing, so it provided a high base year. The numbers were worked out by ABARE in a report that was roundly criticised later.
Including vegetation in Kyoto for Australia, along with a concession of an 8% increase when the norm was a 5-8% decrease, stuck out like the proverbial dog’s appendages, and was passed at 1.42am when Hill dug his heels in. As the UN works on consensus Hill was prepared to blow thew whole deal if he didn’t get his way. This adversely affected relations with the Europeans for years.
So there’s a story there, and but making it stick legally would be the problem and probably required legal resources unavailable to Spencer to have any show at all. I’d like to see in detail what Spencer and King had to say, but we’ll probably never know.
BTW there is also evidence that Howard didn’t agree with productive land being alienated through vegetation laws. You have to remember that there were various currents of opinion in the Howard Government. On climate change Hill and Minchin were at opposite poles, and mostly, I think, Minchin prevailed. The Kyoto strategy was a climate change deniers strategy to preserve our CO2 emitting industries.
This is like a chambe of commerce meeting. A gathering of under-achievers all bleating around the edges, as they secretly gloat at the misfortune of someone who has had a go.
From reading the above it is oh so clear that very few have any idea of the cost of the amount of sweat & tears that it takes to clear land. Or how costly and difficult it is to keep cleared land in a cleared state.
One comemnter is like a blue heeler with lockjaw, and can’t cease harping about how much distaste they have for Peter Spencer, finding all sorts of minutae from his past, as if that has ANY bearing on the matter.
He bought rural land, at great cost. Enough land to make a living from has always been VERY expensive, requiring the big end of a lifetime to pay it off.
Then the government changed the law, to make it illegal for him to produce from that land.
The landholder was expected to just “suck it up” over a stroke of a pen destroying a life’s work. No compensation.
It is that simple.
Any analogy on the theme of any property or work being appropriated without compensation is an adequate analogy.
He is going to starve himself to death over this. Hmmm…. To the rest of us a somewhat fringe act. Clearly an unothodox and determined character. Farmers are too conservative. Instead of shooting themselves over insane vegetation laws, why hasn’t one first taken out the cause of the problem?
SATP: Special pleading turns to special baa-ing in some cases. There are intermittent comments on this thread which attempt to paint the cause of landowners as deserving of special consideration because of the honourable nature of their employment. These attempts go beyond the legalities of the matter and beyond any concerns for equity and justice. They paint rural landowners as members of some distinctly heartland group whose unending manual toil is somehow more worthy than that of others. Moreover, nobody else could possibly understand the matter because, well, because they haven’t cleared a paddock, sired eight kids, drenched the cows, broken a horse, fixed the truck and then, god help us, shored up the bastions of national identity on the internet and all before breakfast. Oh puleeeze. I don’t know how you buggars manage to breathe enough air to work at all the amount of bloody whingeing that goes on. It is precisely this sort of man from the snowy mythologising that loses political support that has otherwise been garnered through rational dialogue.
Steve,
Most people in life struggle to look after themselves and their 1/4 acre block and mostly stuff it up.
All they do well in life is wash the car and brown-nose.
No these people would not have a clue what it takes to farm and create something.
Half
“From reading the above it is oh so clear that very few have any idea of the cost of the amount of sweat & tears that it takes to clear land. Or how costly and difficult it is to keep cleared land in a cleared state.”
Thanks for empahsising what is actually a fairly crucial point. Do you know if Peter Spencer was aware of the amount of sweat and tears it takes?
With your expert knowledge SATP, why don’t you give us a rundown of what it would take in that particular ecosystem? It’s interesting that you should highlight the issue, so we’re all ears, waiting for you to educate, as always.
Half, do you have anything at all to offer other than your petty insults?
I think we might be loosing the thread.
It’s about property rights and their loss or theft. It applies in cities and in the country. While we bicker amongst ourselves about who toiled the hardest etc, the governments continues to legislate our rights and property away.
I’ll repeat this again:-”Nonetheless, the fact remains that s 51(xxxi) is directed to ‘acquisition’ as distinct from deprivation. The extinguishment, modification or deprivation of rights in relation to property does not of itself constitute an acquisition of property [90]. For there to be an ‘acquisition of property’, there must be an obtaining of at least some identifiable benefit or advantage relating to the ownership or use of property.”
Governments are enabled by current legislation to remove whatever common law right they see fit, and you will get no compensation. If this is a law your happy for governments to have without reservation thats up to you.
I’m sorry but I’ll never agree that this state of affairs is satisfactory.
Good point FB #260 “Thanks for empahsising what is actually a fairly crucial point. Do you know if Peter Spencer was aware of the amount of sweat and tears it takes?”
I do not know of what it takes in a purely grazing culture, but I did a study in the 1980s of who persisted in dairying (with some grazing) in Gippsland where I come from; in a fertile area with good rainfall. What I found was that much more than ’sweat and tears’ was needed to persist. But deeply cultural things, like:
marrying an educated local girl who would not divorce you and who would work off farm to supplement income in hard times;
not litigating but negotiating. There was a deep distrust of lawyers and belief that there could be no winning via litigation, because even if you won you lost in terms of trust and cooperation whether against a neighbour, the local council or government;
not giving up control to a hired hand or manager but staying on the farm to manage everything. There was an idea that your shouldn’t get too big to be able to manage it all yourself;
understanding that persisting in the long term meant dedicated efforts of several generations. Bigger landholding required sons (or daughters and son-in-laws) to earn money off farm: on off shore rigs, Dubai, WA or Queensland mines, professionals as lawyers or doctors, and investing back into the land;
it was expected that the return from farming would be lower than they could earn in the town or city, but they did it for the life style.
One thing I noticed that on the surface two adjacant farmers may look equal. But by digging into their past, their level of equity, their familial relations, the history of each farm and associated activities, you can see that one is doomed to lose control, while the other has some chance of holding on if discipline in all things continues. One divorce and you are struggling. Two marriage breakups and you are out.
That harsh regime applied on good country. Not this marginal hard highlands country.
Anthony @ 258, farming is a bit different from many occupations. I left school after what is now Year 10 and worked for two years on the family farm before returning to school. There were many reasons for this. One was that I wasn’t as good at practical things around the farm as others, but was quite good academically, so decided to follow my strengths. Another was that I didn’t like the uncertainties provided by the weather.
Farmers often feel their contribution is special because they produce food (at least many of them do). Sure you can just buy it on the market now, but food security is going to be an issue in the future.
Secondly in many areas they contribute to export income for the country, and perhaps see themselves as enabling our consumptive life-style to some extent. I’ll leave economists to comment on that.
That’s not all, but the community needs to consider whether and how much farmers should get support. Economists often favour no support at all.
If you decide, as some conservationists have overtly suggested, that we should cease all dry-land farming, then just letting it ‘return to nature’ without any human input is not really an option.
Nanu has indicated the findings of her study in Gippsland. Not sure how typical that is. I’m sure the culture is a bit different with cane farmers of Italian origin, for example.
Anthony, up thread you made a comment that you would partially support compensation if productive capacity is lost through government legislation.
It seems to me that you can look at the question from two perspectives. From one perspective Queensland has decided that 30% of all ecologies should be preserved in the interests of the sustainability of those eco-systems. The percentage preserved if your prime focus is production may be different.
Clearly farmers should not be compensated for retaining what is desirable for optimal sustainable production.
But say the percentages are the same and one farmer has got in early and cleared 90% of the land, which then necessitates another farmer being limited to 50%. Should we then extract more tax from the farmer who has done excessive clearing and give it to the one whose land is locked up?
Sounds logical, but probably not practical.
Channel Seven did a segment on Peter Spencer. I missed it but the transcript is here.
Well well well. The plot thickens!!!
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/family-financial-dispute-helped-send-hunger-striker-peter-spencer-up-the-pole/story-e6frg6nf-1225817155039
Anothony Nolan #258, one of the distasteful and shameful aspects to Australian culture is the public persecution of our farmers.
This is unique, it just isn’t seen elsewhere. Other countries do indeed have their Marxists, and their sour types who are jealous of any material or financial success/well being. But only Australia has a widespread attitude such as the one you exhibit, where a significant chunk of the population subscribe to the “special case whingers” doctrine.
Australia’s rural sector will just settle for a “fair go”. They can never expect “special case” treatment, as is given in most western economies.
Getting the hell out of Sydney reduces stress, as the metropolitan hustle & bustle fades inner peace resumes. Similar is the feeling one gets by going to another country, consuming print & electronic news media, and realising the unique Australian persecution of farmers is unknown in this (whichever) country.
Again, not a specific comment about Spencer’s case. But I’d still like to contribute to the general discussion.
There’s a lot of cross-purposes discussion occurring, which is obscuring some interesting information on general principles and rights that is in this thread.
Regarding, ‘property rights’, I take the point up-thread that property rights are an inherently conservative concept, with feudal origins. Even though property rights precede the advent of human rights theory, they are subordinate to human rights in my ethical code. It’s funny that some people who sneer at ‘human rights’ as being some kind of intellectual con take very seriously the concept of ‘property rights’. If rights aren’t inherent in the individual, how can they be inherent in the land? What kind of woo-woo animist thinking is that?
But I digress. Again, taking human rights as a starting point, one of the things that urban-based folks take very seriously among their suite of human rights relate to work, and the ability to earn an income that will support and sustain them. The thing is, in the urban setting, one’s income-earning ability is not contingent in any way on land. If you’re an accountant, you can earn the same salary whether you live in a rented apartment or you own a half-acre block with a swimming pool. Even if Council screws with you about your trees and fences, you don’t suffer any indignity to your working rights.
But in the country of course, the human rights relating to work and income are critically linked to the land. I think that’s why land laws provoke more passion in the rural areas. Although constitutionally and legally, it’s a discussion about ‘property rights’, we have to consider that the rural setting brings about a nexus between property rights and human rights (relating to work) that doesn’t pertain to urban dwellers.
I hope that sets the discussion in a better explanatory framework, regardless of the particular details of Spencer’s case.
SATP, regarding your claim about ‘persecution of farmers’, I’d like you to think about how respectfully and earnestly you consider other people’s claims of ‘persecution’ – you know, intellectuals, Aboriginals, asylum seekers, teachers, etc…and you can expect the usual treatment you dish out to be returned to you, in spades. Cheers.
Nana Levu # 265
Well its hardly surprising some dirt has been dug up & I’m certainly not surprised that you have grabbed it with both hands. There are greater implications of bringing to the Australian publics attention an injustice perpetrated on many landowners that may have unwanted consequences to the establishment. The call will be made to pay for something that has been taken away.
There is always some dirt to be dug up on most people as seen in this article.
I have never maintained that this man was a saint & romanticize about the current situation. I have no doubt that this is a difficult, hardheaded man; no normal person has the ability to carry through their belief to this end. Your harping on Spencer’s character is about as tiresome as those on talkback radios who grab a small piece of information & make ignorant comments connected to their pet conspiracy theory.
This is what it is about, as John M has said in comment 261
IT IS NOT about what personality someone has, it’s not about family history and it’s not even about how the land was managed. It is certainly not about city v’s country.
IT IS about a fundamental right under law, that if the nation as a whole deems to change for the greater good; then the loss of that right must be compensated. This is about justice & treating people fairly.
That’s well said, still@downfall. I can’t see that what happened in 1970 has any relevance at all. Nor can I see that who he owes the money to is relevant.
Nana Levu #265
Funny that the following 2 statements in The Australian attributed to Graham Spencer:
“Graham Spencer, Peter Spencer’s brother, criticised the politicians, reporters and activists who have turned his brother into a cause…” lines up with what Minister Tony Burke is saying, and which has been aired previously by Senator Bill Heffernan
ALSO “while Australia’s Kyoto obligations and legislation such as the Native Vegetation Act had restricted his brother’s use of the land, they were not his only problems.” lines up with the line Bill Heffernan is running
Strange bedfellows….
AND NONE OF THIS RELEVANT TO THE SIMILAR EXPERIENCES SUFFERED BY THOUSANDS OF FARMERS IN NSW AND QLD WHO HAVE BEEN SIMILARLY AFFECTED
Maybe the relevance of what happened in 1970s is the deeply intrenched nature of Peter Spencer’s mental health issues.
fb @ 260, in the Qld rangeland farming context I understand that Bill Burrows has said that selective clearing is just not economic unless the timber is being sold.
I understand that Spencer was proposing selective clearing, which couldn’t be done with a chain between two tractors and hence very expensive.
OTOH Spencer’s proposal to grow fine wool puts a different complexion on things. He claims he was getting $600 per sheep for the wool and had 4 out of 5 of the top bales in a sale one year.
I’m still thinking that his biggest mistake was to waste all that time, effort and no doubt money on legal ventures that had a low chance of success.
Mercurius @ 267, good comment, which does put the discussion of rights in a more appropriate framework IMO.
Nanu, clearly you don’t like Peter Spencer, and everyone concedes he is an unusual character. I’ve heard him speak under the duress of the current situation heaps of times now. I can’t detect any mental health issues.
I suggest we stop playing amateur psychiatrist.
Brian: as I read back it is clear that the principle of compensation for losses incurred by landowners for not clearing are compensable. After that the details of how it might work are beyond my competence. In general though it appears that there is a common good obtained from native vegetation retention and where this reduces productivity and profitability it looks to me like an open and shut case for compensation because the limitations on clearing were imposed by statute.
Spencer needs to come down now. The task of bringing attention to the issue is done. At a political level, the article linked above in the Oz is significant, I would say, merely because it was published by the Oz which suggests that bigger and more powerful conservative political and economic agents have decided to go him. The people with special grievances, it appears, are the ones whose economic viability has been severely impacted by this legislation. Agribusiness doesn’t fall into this category but my guess would be that it is agribusiness behind the decision to publish Spencer family matters in the press. This is writing on the wall big time.
Now, as to the way that culture wars have spilled across this thread. There is a long standing antipathy between the city and the country in western culture in general in which the city has been represented as the site of moral degeneracy and the country as the site of moral virtue. It is nonesense of course but it persists. I think it is linked to feelings of authenticity that arise from having a direct relationship with nature through the production of food and through labour. When I was a kid growing up in a heavy industrial city there were plenty of people who kept chooks, a goat or a sheep for purposes of feeding themselves. This doesn’t happen any more, more’s the pity because for the vast majority of Australians the loss of direct contact with some form of nature equates to a loss of sense about our mutual dependence on nature. That loss, however, does not rob us of our authentic identity as Australians.
BTW: the first corpse ever burnt in the crematorium at Rookwood, according to a mate of mine, was that of a goat that had been stolen by her grandmother and had to be disposed of quickly because the coppers were on her tail over it.
There is a sense of resentment from some respondents about conditions in the bush and a presumption of ignorance of the realities of bush living that irks me. Some of us, including me, have knocked around a fair bit and worked in the bush. There isn’t much difference in the actual experience of work or class relations between the city and the bush. A good boss is a good one and a crumb a crumb no matter where you are. Poverty, also, has the same bitter taste whether you wake up to the sound of birdsong or Parramatta Rd. If there is a difference anywhere it is that the anonymity of the city allows a greater degree of dignity in poverty than in the bush because the level of social surveillance in the bush is considerably greater.
Nana #271 agree 100% with what you have said throughout this topic. Sadly others seem to want to gloss over the facts as they emerge. Forget the land clearing/compensation issues for the moment. It is obvious that when things aren’t going his way Spencer will do whatever he thinks necessary to gain attention. Police standoff’s, hunger strike (whereby you put your own children through hell) all starting to sound like a very arrogant & selfish man who likes his own way, also possibly one who is suffering some sort of mental issues.
To put it some balance here…how many of you would resort to the tactics that Spencer has resorted too? Common sense must prevail.
Brian, I believe this statement from Peter’s brother quoted from today’s story in The Australian” is highly relevant :-
“Mr Spencer said his brother’s background was not in farming, but in business and public relations. He said the Shannon’s Flat property consisted of marginal land of limited farming value, a fact that had contributed to Mr Spencer’s financial problems.”
He essentially says that he doesn’t consider his brother to be a farmer and the land he bought was poor value anyway. It’s looking more as if Peter has made some bad business decisions and poor investment choices and is now looking for a way to bail out. May as well try to seek a little glory if he can’t get anything else out of it.
275 and 276
YOU ARE BOTH PLAYING THE MAN – look at who is making the statements in the Australian and finally a journalist from that newspaper comes out from under cover (who pays the bills at the Australian?)…
there is obviously a family problem and the brother has aligned himself with Bill Heffernan and Tony Burke who is running point for Rudd… all playing the man
and NONE OF THIS IS RELEVANT TO THE FUNDAMENTAL ISSUE OF THE EFFECT OF UNFAIR STATE LAWS IMPOSED WITH THE COMPLICITY OF THE COMMONWEALTH, COMBINED WITH THE DEAD HAND OF BUREACRACY AND THE GRINDING OF THE LAW RESTRICTING THE LAND USE RIGHTS, AND THE ABILITY OF THOUSANDS OF FARMERS TO MAKE A DECENT LIVING FROM THEIR FREEHOLD LAND
Steven, my impression is that Spencer has been quite innovative in developing money-making schemes in realtion to the trout fishing project (it’s the wisdom of hindsight that sees the extended drought), fine wool production, wind farming, sustainable mountain ash harvesting and a number of other projects not yet mentioned. These show business entrepreneurship beyond the norm of your average farmer, I suspect. His brother’s opinion of him as a farmer has no special status, it’s just another opinion. We really don’t know and can’t know whether he would have made a fist of it apart from the intervention of the natural vegetation laws, Howard’s reduction of support for the MRET etc.
Macca, everyone accepts, I think, that Spencer is a special personality. But it’s not a case of “forget the land clearing/compensation issues for the moment.” It’s the main issue. the other issues go to his motivation, his style. They affect the support and sympathy he might attract are not a reason why he should be deprived of justice.
I’m ruling a line on the mental health business on this thread. Any further comments will be deleted.
Anthony n @ 274, I think I agree with most of that. Of interest I just yesterday saw a small goat in a Brisbane backyard (about a standard 26 perches or so) chewing away at the presently abundant grass.
Not having studied political science, I have a standard university text on political isms. The chapter on Conservatism identifies property as one of it’s “central beliefs” along with Tradition, Human imperfection, Organic society and Authority.
The second is interesting as, it is claimed, all other philosophies see human nature as essentially good or capable of improvement. Conservatism sees this as hopeless dreaming. We are imperfect and imperfectible.
Property, amongst other things, seems to be associated with special virtues, obligations and responsibilities. I’ll leave it to academic sociologists to work out whether these beliefs persist today and if so to what extent. But it seems to me self-evident that wealthy people in cities demonstrate their status if not presumed differential worth through the ownership of fine houses, expensive cars and other external signifiers.
It’s also self-evident that there are many people on the land who do not subscribe to or exemplify these beliefs. And many are battlers. I’m willing to state that Spencer’s current situation and what he aspired to has produced some dissonance in relation to his self-concept. But I’m not willing to go to the next step and suggest that this amounts to mental illness.
As to powerful political and economic agencies, who can say?
Cater Edwards on 2SM suggested this to Spencer in relation to the wind farm company said to be hovering. Spencer himself put it down to opportunism rather than a conspiratorial fix.
Mercurius #267 I believe your comment is a worthy contribution to this thread. A milestone in this convoluted journey.
anothony # 274 Don’t agree with evertthing you have said, but these are two good points.
“as I read back it is clear that the principle of compensation for losses incurred by landowners for not clearing are compensable.”
“When I was a kid growing up in a heavy industrial city there were plenty of people who kept chooks, a goat or a sheep for purposes of feeding themselves. This doesn’t happen any more, more’s the pity because for the vast majority of Australians the loss of direct contact with some form of nature equates to a loss of sense about our mutual dependence on nature.”
Brian: it really does appear that the rural battlers are the most disadvantaged by this legislation having no capacity to offset their losses in other ways (unlike agribusiness).
On the antipathy between the bush and the city left: some old boys of my acquaintance, now all deceased, thought after the ‘54 floods that they’d do the right thing and volunteer to assist affected people recover so they spent a day shovelling mud from a spud farmer’s house on the flats outside Maitland. Apparently it was above the window sills in some rooms. As the day wore on it became obvious to the farmer that they weren’t mere city unionists but in fact members of the communist party. They sensed his irritation rising so elevated their praise for Uncle Jo until, unable to contain himself any longer, he gestured at the huge pile of mud in the backyard and roared at them to “Put it back, put it all bloody back”.
Brian: “If you decide, as some conservationists have overtly suggested, that we should cease all dry-land farming, then just letting it ‘return to nature’ without any human input is not really an option .” [my emphasis]
I agree with this [although I’m glad you said “some” conservationists, which is why I object to the notion of “compensation” for simply not clearing, it is likely to lead to very poor outcomes. As I have, rather clumsily, been trying to reiterate, we need to find a mechanism that supports landholders to manage their land well. To me the idea of managing land for agricultural purposes and for conservation purposes are complimentary, and both require active engagement.
To return to the example earlier of the Heritage Agreement that John Michelmore raised. Fencing in landscapes where weed densities are high, can result in a negative outcome for conservation. If I were in charge, in the region I work in, there would be more grazing of land that is currently not being managed, with more effort being placed on intensive management of high value conservation assets.
Brian @ 264, that post if food for thought, but I really think we need to get beyond describing land as “locked up”…..this is important, restoring the landscape is a different approach to land management, to say “locked up” in that context is pejorative and unhelpful, in my opinion.
SATP, we’re still waiting on your treatise on the amount of “blood and sweat” that Mr Spencer didn’t invest to keep his land productive. His brother described the land as marginal – and as I suggested earlier, I should think the price he paid for it reflected that, ie: his ‘compensation’ was implicit in the sale price. Do you disagree , SATP? Or do you think that those farmers that paid a premium for cleared, productive farms with a history of return on investment were just too lazy to invest the “blood and sweat”?
Oh, and may I add. Mr Spencer should have done a basic investor risk profile assessment. I’ve never done one that came out as comfortable with “high risk” so I don’t know whether “suck it up” is part of the advice to such investors for when things go wrong, but I doubt they suggest a hunger strike either.
Okay Brian let us say that “Spencer’s current situation and what he aspired to has produced some dissonance in relation to his self-concept” rather than a mental illness.
and
“that Spencer has been quite innovative in developing money-making schemes in realtion to the trout fishing project (it’s the wisdom of hindsight that sees the extended drought), fine wool production, wind farming, sustainable mountain ash harvesting and a number of other projects”.
Branching out into innovative schemes is okay when your fundamentals are firm. But when one grand scheme follows another, and none has paid back your debts, you cannot expect even family members, who have invested in those schemes, to sit back and watch without reaching a point where they say ‘enough is enough’.
I think, rather than muck rake and try and find fault with those whom have had their property rights removed, or attack those on LP that would rather try and discredit others as an argument on a specific issue, I might just add few other examples.
Irrespective Peter Spencer has had his property rights removed; whatever else has happened in his life doesn’t matter, in relation to the property rights issue that should concern us all. Peter has 14,000 acres and should be able to make a living from it; it is not a National Park; legislation has removed this right and devalued his land.
Another BAD example from Queensland
“1 QLD lady in her late 60’s – Mrs Burns – who wanted to develop 23 acres and sell it off in order to build a home for her retirement. All land around her had been developed with the exception of a parcel that had a restricted animal order over it – for the Mahogany Sugar Glider. Her land had been checked previously and was not included. At this time, she was refused the right to develop in case the animals wanted to visit her land. Judge White of the Planning and Environment Court in Cairns stated – : I just find this astounding. Soviet Russia would be proud of these laws.” Yet he upheld them.”
This case has been in the Qld. Courts numerous times; even the judge understands what is happening to our rights based on his comments above. However he is bound by Qld. Laws and hence there is no other legal avenue for the widow Mrs. Burns.
It’s surprising that no-one has mentioned climate change, drought, salinity and soil erosion in this saga. Salinity and the anthropogenic causes were recognised in Australia in the late 19th century. Successive governments failure to address this dire situation now costs Western Australia some $800 million/annum and some 300 million/annum for the Murray Darling basin. No agricultural area is immune from salinity – including the Cooma/Monara region. The white death is agriculture’s greatest blunder and I think the deserts are winning – certainly in Western Australia!
Self-regulation in agriculture has been a catastrophe. Responsible governments must now conserve what’s left of Australia’s ecosystems and placing restrictions on freehold property as a conservation measure has occurred in the past.
Mr Spencer may be entitled to compensation, however, let’s face it, the gentleman purchased his property in 1980 and truthfully, he has barely maintained it. In addition, there is some conjecture over how much of his land is freehold and how much has been leased.
Now spare a thought for Australia’s environment since “two thousand” farmers (Mr Spencer included) chopped down thousands of trees in July 2007 out of spite over the Native Vegetation Act (in force in NSW from 2005).
You seek justice for Mr Spencer? I seek justice for Australia’s fragile environment. I ask why weren’t these eco-vandals prosecuted?
“OTOH Spencer’s proposal to grow fine wool puts a different complexion on things. He claims he was getting $600 per sheep for the wool and had 4 out of 5 of the top bales in a sale one year.”
If this is in any way accurate Spencer was doing Ultra-fine wool,less than 16 micron.
Saxon based sheep Ledgerton, Hillcreston or older Tasmanian bloodlines.
These she don’t cut much wool because of fibre diameter , small frame and the actual fleece is small with a low weight.
As i pointed out the Chinese stuffed the prices for s/f and u/f growers very deliberately.
What is know as a PPP will yield $100/kilo or more if you have the right connections into the wool cartel.
Super fine prices are still on average about $10 or less/kilo for 16 micron wool.
If Spencer was in fact doing ultra fine his area is fairly ideal, climate wise.
But the problem is contamination from the regrowth /pasture. He might have some nice clean paddocks?
Having farmed ultra-fine sheep i can vouch for the level of difficulty.
When all goes right it is worthwhile.
Meaning if the prices are good , if the dogs don’t kill your sheep. if the don’t get stolen , if you have reasonable levels of veg’ contamination from your pasture and if the neighbours stray sheep don’t spread lice through your flock.
Many just opt for the easy option of a huge framed Merriville Merino that won’t die on you , cuts a huge fleece and lambs well.
One poster thought my post petty because i did not agree in total with what was said .I present a view from my own experience , similiar in respects to Spencer’s , it can be an uphill battle for those on the land
Bad luck.
I take the pragmatic point from the farmers view and i object to the almost intellectual stand of some who fail to see the larger issue issue beyond Spencer which is the carbon credits show is just a fraud.
Spencer is a remarkable person and has a very functional family , so i feel he has done some things right . By contrast most people create very little in their lives and struggle to understand those who passionate or out-side the box.
Beyond Spencer is the whole issue of small-medium sized agriculture being abandoned , the muti-national monopolies creating policy which determines the direction we move in as a planet and for us here a society.
Spencer rightly has had a gut full of desk jockies interfering and changing the rules at whim.
Half
Don’t get too carried away stating your case flower. I do know the situation in Qld is a far different reality. Throw around enough rampant vilification leads to the natural progression of the justification for the removal property & then human rights. Problem is that if you remove someone else’s rights what is stopping the justification of your rights being removed?
half @ 287, what I recall Spencer saying is that he was getting 11 microns and that he had specially bred the sheep with advice from scientists at the University of New England.
Flower, I wonder whether you have been paying attention. Spencer was apparently obliged to do a farm development plan, which he says cost in the order of $300,000 because of the variable nature of the vegetation and terrain. Others have questioned whether it should cost so much, but i don’t think Spencer actually tells lies.
He says he continued working in PNG to earn the funds. Selective clearing of the undergrowth as he’d proposed is expensive. Possibly he was under-capitalised and had his priorities wrong in building a big house.
But whatever the story, the right to clear the land would have been part of the equation and the potential productivity therefrom no doubt included in the price.
The interruption of this expectation for development, which Spencer claims was more environmentally sensitive than what’s happening now because the vegetation is thickening beyond what would have been there pre-settlement, is the guts of the issue.
half @287: the more I learn about the political economy of rural production the more interested I become. What you’ve stated is incredibly informative about wool. I could probably learn some of what you’ve stated from reading agriproduction economics but I find economic journalism heartless and uninformative in human terms. The story you tell is very different and based on direct experience. Therefore actually interesting and informative.
still@downfall and half (still): I’ve changed my view about matters and not think you and others are correct to identify the rights attached to individual properrty ownership as the key political issue. Modernity and demcoracy broadened a frorm of individual rights and exclusive rights to the use of land. Exclusive tenure of land pre-existed modernity but they were narrowly held rights amomg a select few classes. So individual property rights are fundamental in a liberal democracy which is what we inhabit. Corrosion of those rights, which is what this legislation has done, really is an attack on one of the fundamentals of liberal democracy. Thats what might be called a world historical sized challenge to the foundations of our political economy.
At the same time I agree totally with flower @286:
“Self-regulation in agriculture has been a catastrophe. Responsible governments must now conserve what’s left of Australia’s ecosystems and placing restrictions on freehold property as a conservation measure has occurred in the past.”
The tension exists arises because what is at stake is the development of necessary global tools for ecological management of the global ecological commons. This would never be pursued as a global project but as a multitude of virtually local projects. A guarantee of freedom needs to be offered to those whose individual rights of property under old forms of title (ie, our current forms) would be extinguished by new models of ecological management. This could be done through democratisation of decision making at an exclusively regional level; sole authority for decision makking about how to meet targets would rest with local residents who are affected by ecologicl management principles. Corporate stakeholders would have to be contained politically and economically.
Speculating, really.
Cheers
Damn. This:
“still@downfall and half (still): I’ve changed my view about matters and not think you and others are correct to identify the rights attached to individual properrty ownership as the key political issue.”
should read:
“I’ve changed my view about matters and now think you and others are correct to identify the rights attached to individual properrty ownership as the key political issue.”
Finally: it occurs to me now that what I’m getting at which is the current in this thread in which landowners have raised the general mistrust they have of the technical/ecological competence of government and bureaucratic decision making. What they’re saying is that the ecological outcomes have not been good enough or their have been negative impacts. I can’t judge but presume they’ve got a point.
My understanding, based on my own experience of government and bureaucracy, is that policy tends to be driven by quantifiable outcomes. The aim of policy is overcome by the need to produce quantifiable outcomes more than results. Policy thereby becomes an instrument by which bureaucrats can achieve measurable outcomes so they can justify their exec salaries and performance benefits. Measurable outcomes are different to results. So the policy we get can be quite bizarre in the way it operates and distorts people’s lives.
Stealth change operates by slow constriction and this appears to be operating here. What makes things worse is that the policy is generated by people who probably do actually know eff-all about the realities of rural production. Environmental policy writers proably do know that much and more about rural production but the final policy is always subject to modification to achieve quantifiable data and that profoundly distorts the actual applied policy.
I wouldn’t be too vigorous in pursuing a royal commission inquiry. You might get it and judicial recommendations can be totally loopy.
Some good artilces in today’s press
Rowan Callick, long time PNG watcher, at
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/white-tribesman-at-home-in-a-wild-world/story-e6frg6nf-1225817484415
Micheal Duffy after in depth interviews withPeter over last five yearsat http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/hunger-strike-up-a-wind-mast-is-an-act-of-tragedies-20100108-lyrc.html
Message from Peter’s siblings at http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/message-from-peter-spencers-family/story-e6frg6nf-1225817464020
and Christian Keer on the people using the hunger strike http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/farmer-on-hunger-strike-being-used-say-family/story-e6frg6nf-1225817484215
Flower @ 286,
If vegetation restrictions on agricultural land, alienated from the crown for agricultural production, is required there is a simple solution . The governments buy the land back from the landowner and look after it as a National Park as Crown land.
Just theiving it isn’t an option.
I spent good money purchasing a property for agricultural production and regulation and legislation removed that right by taking the water (only for three years luckily).
Yes . I agree we need to protect the remnant native vegatation, but we also need to be viable to look after that vegetation and be able to make a living from our agricultural properties.
Thank you Nana Levu #293, we are starting to get far more informative articles of quality in the MSM.
I wish to make further comment to one link you have refered us to – Michael Duffy has written an article called, Hunger strike up a wind mast is an act of tragedies, in today’s SMH, which I believe is the most informed article to appear in the MSM to date. It is an honest attempt, warts & all, to inform his readers of a situation not easy for most to understand. Michael Duffy is in a better position than most journalists to write on this issue as he first interviewed Spencer on ABC National Counterpoint in 2005, that has been up to now one of the best piece of reference material about Peter Spencer.
Duffy gives us some background information on Spencer that has been missing from the public arena. It’s well worthwhile to follow the link & read the article in full. The following quote goes to the core of this thread.
anthony nolan,
Spencer entered the of Ultra-fine wool prolly thinking it might be a little easier than it was . Wool prices are very variable .
Highlander at Manus and Ledgerton at the back of Yass get the best prices in the world. However near perfect 15 micron wool can on a bad day go for as little as $12/kilo, auction results per The Land.
11 micron is probably the lowest limit in paddock , shedded would get a little lower. 11 micron means 11-12micron fibre diameter range and it would take time to build up numbers even 50 that would reliably turn 11 mic in the paddock.
Normally if you were buying stud Saxon ewes you would possibly only get the odd one of this quality , unless you were family of those who hold the Holy Grail.
In short these are pretty special and valuable animals.
A Saxon Merino sheep might only cut a 2kg fleece, less than a 1/4 of a Merriville Type merino
Probably no animal exist that is so in-bred , so perfect and specialised ?
These sheep produce a quality of wool few people have seen and to see the wool on the sheep is to see absolute perfection when all things go right.
Spencer entered this world of difficulty with his eyes open, how could they not be? Most farmers aware of U/fine production don’t bother because of the level of difficulty and the risky economics,in part because the prices have been pulled down, global financial situation.
Had Spencer started earlier he would have been in the right place at the right time, it is a noble dream to say the very least.
Economic rationalism this is what all this is about and people making policy that changes the lives of many with regard to only some of the consequences.
Sitting at their desk the clerk in Canberra changes legislation that effects a farmer directly. The “admin clerk” thinks he is hard done by and doing it tough, he drove to work in his $70,000 car and his wife is having their Peugeot or 4 wheel drive serviced today, prolly a $700 service. Both work, a combined income of $150,000 the kids go to a private school in Canberra because the parents want to better themselves!
They have a cleaner and a nanny come in during the week as they are so busy.
Compare Spencer’s world to the above,please?
No person who farms sheep can be described as a woose!
It is all hard work. But then so few actually know.
Might ad that an earlier post of clearing weeds by the square metre …..
PMSL!!
Gives an insight into how hard and difficult it is to look after a farm?
Half.
the worst offenders for weeds and enviro neglect are the state.
Local councils do little to control weeds .
Parks are a haven for weeds and vermin
Farmers by contrast have an imperitive to keep their land clean.
Parks ignored the Fire Weed problem ,saying it was restricted to coastal land and would not spread inland.
How wrong!
Parks were totally responsible for the Canberra fires.
On the day the fires started at a spot near Kiandra a bloke with a bag and a knapsack spray could have put a small fire out.
I passed this fire and it was very small and smouldering, i didn’t have a bag in the car ,pity.
We saw 5-6 parks utes ambling towards the fire , none had any water or equipment!
The fire was a few hundred yards from the road, an easy walk.
Parks did nothing and it crossed the road into rugged country where it could not be fought.
Simple matter turns into a disaster!
How dumb is this?
I saw this with my own eyes.
No action was taken by these fools at all til it was too late then it was a matter for the rural Fire Brigade
Half
Yes, Nana thank you, you have provided much helpful background material, *however*, I agree with Brian that Spencer’s mental state and past behaviour are not pertinent to the issues under discussion regarding statutes which cause indignity to a person’s ability to sustain an income (be they persons on the land, or factory workers, or urbane professionals…)
Ethical governance requires that politicians give pause when a seemingly ambit claim exposes a legitimate grievance caused by their well-intentioned statutes.
One plus one still equals two, even if the proponent is stark raving…
Quite agree Mercurious@298. Politicians ‘giving pause’ however must grate with Federal Agriculture Minister Tony Burke whose missive to Spencer earlier in this stand-off got the rebuke that he wasn’t a sufficiently high enough messenger for Spencer. Only Rudd would do. I doubt that sort of behaviour, mental or otherwise, would cut much mustard with Canberra. And with this 48th sunrise this saga is going to climax soon I feel.
the 48th sunrise and coming temperature max of 36 Saturday, 37 Sunday, 37 Monday, and 39 Tuesday. The man will not survive the heat in his state. For God’s sake will someone please get him down.
There is starting to appear as there is some underhanded dealings going on with how The Australian newspaper is running any newsprint about Peter Spencer. Go to comment 265 where Nana Levu provided a link to the article they ran on Friday. Now newspapers are good at digging up dirt, that wasn’t suprising. Nor was I all that surprised that there was some dirt to be found. Peter Spencer does appear to be a larger than life character.
Today in the Weekend Australia there are follow up stories including an open letter from Spencer’s family. But was it. Steve Truman of Agmates has started this discussion. Within Truman’s discussion you will find links to the articles in The Australian & also correspondance he had with someone calling themselves “spence” who had placed the same information on Agmates yesterday. Steve Truman is in direct phone contact with the family & is easily able to verify the correctness of any information.
Read carefully the articles in the Australian, with the knowelege now that the immediate family didn’t send this letter you can easily pick up a clever ploy to defuse this issue for whatever persons/parties/groups or businesses that have something to lose.
The plot thickens!
The following link is a recording of Peter Spencer himself. It was made in response to the newspaper article on Friday. None of the other events outlined above were known at the time of this recording.
Skype-080110-Pspencer.mp3, 1.6 MB
half in Upper Brookfield, which I was talking about earlier, we have a road following the creek. All Council land and incredibly choked with weeds, with the creek as a natural distributor, subject to flash flooding in summer storms. Landholders wonder why they are being targeted when just over the fence…
Brian,
You highlight the problem that I raised earlier.
If the land is locked up and maintenance will be required to maintain the biodiversity; where does the revenue come from to do this?
The current legislation and regulation requires that the landowner should do this, but this is not sustainable unless the landowner has a viable income to support the maintenance. While government has given grants to help with this it by no means covers the full cost.
Basically the community cannot expect that landowners that have purchased land to farm, have then been denied the right to do this, should continue to spend money to preserve the biodiversity. Plainly the government ownership of land does not mean that biodiversity is also maitained by correct native vegetation management either. Government also need an income to do this.
Either way, now that we have changed the face of the Australian bush the community will need to start paying, if the farmers are not able to be viable, because their assetts have been used to fund Kyoto and/or placate the green movement. The idea that the bush will look after itself is a complete fallacy.
Driving to my piece of dirt I see the Cape Broom speading along the roadsides at a furious rate. This weed is capable of choking out most of the understory natives we have in the Adelaide Hills. I’ve seen the bush care people try and stop this plant to no avail. It can be controlled but it needs to be pulled or sprayed every year, if it sets seeds the pod throws seeds for up to twenty feet.
If the community ignores the fact that it takes money to fix these problems, and continues to prevent landowners from making their properties viable, then the community and the landowner will have no high quality bush with high biodiversity left.
Truth be told the current expectation on landholders to manage weeds is quite ridiculous and totally unreasonable. But when it comes to National Parks, in an attempt to appease the rural constituency, a significant percentage of environmental $$$ was spent on prioritising low conservation value private lands over the managing of our National Parks. Now rural landholders use this mismanagement, and it most certainly was both a mismanagement of lands as well as tax-payers monies, to complain about the impacts. There has been a definite re-prioritising of over here, I’m not sure if it is a national phenomena, but the planning is much better and more focussed.
John Michelmore – “If vegetation restrictions on agricultural land, alienated from the crown for agricultural production, is required there is a simple solution . The governments buy the land back from the landowner and look after it as a National Park as Crown land.”
What funding mechanism [tax] would you suggest to fund these purchases? What funding mechanism do you suggest to pay for the management of this land under such a proposal? Where is the workforce to manage the land going to come from? Also, are you aware of how closely this argument resembles the suggestion of extreme green enviro-advocates? You seem to be suggesting that all lands that is not useful for agricultural production be nationalised – do you really think this is a good outcome for rural communities? My guess is it would see the further corporatisation of farms, as well as the corporatisation of conservation.
It’s interesting to see in this discussion the de-volution of the nurturing, connection to the landscape dialogue to commentaries that suggest farmers are happy for the govt to buy their ‘unproductive’ lands – with the obvious implication that the management of these lands will be managed by a government bureaucracy. Does this really reflect how many in rural areas feel? I’m curious to know the answer to that, if the answer is yes, then I think I need to start thinking about a franchise…here was me, trying to factor in those human right’s issues that Mercurious speaks of, by advocating a mechanism that engages and rewards rural landholders for work they are currently expected to do for free. How silly and naive of me.
Just another point, there is an analogy with heritage listed buidings in Adelaide. Recently there has been an outcry about these buidings falling into disrepair.
The same kind of legisalation is in effect. Property viability is removed by legislation (heritage listing ) without the owers consent on many occassions. There are insufficient funds paid by government to maintain the buildings and they fall into disrepair, are are unoccupiable.
Basically the stick approach in the long term just doesn’t work, it may appear to work initially until economics over ride the situation and the original intent results in the reverse effect; destruction of the property trying to be protected.
fb@304,
My choice would be that governments get rid of legislation making properties non-viable so they don’t have to purchase (I didn’t say nationalise without payment)the properties. A landowner is more likely to look after his assett than the government. Thats one reason why land was alienated from the crown in the first place, to take that burden off the crown.
The communuty and government can’t have it both ways ie you can “occupy” the land , look after it, but there will be insufficient income for you to do this because of legislation and regulation for community and Kyoto benefits etc. In this situation the community needs to purchase the land and look after it. We have lots of people on website blogs that would be quite happy to purchase land and look after it without income.
JM – “My choice would be that governments get rid of legislation making properties non-viable so they don’t have to purchase (I didn’t say nationalise without payment)the properties.”
So that would mean, in this instance, you want the govt to get rid of legislation to protect Native Vegetation?
BTW: I didn’t say nationalise without payment either.
JM – “We have lots of people on website blogs that would be quite happy to purchase land and look after it without income.”
Are you serious? Do you think that approach is good for rural communities? I can’t believe some of the stuff I’m reading here.
Mercurious,
as you point out the higher moral ground,
“Ethical governance requires that politicians give pause when a seemingly ambit claim exposes a legitimate grievance caused by their well-intentioned statutes.
One plus one still equals two, even if the proponent is stark raving…”
I thank you for this .
Not one amongst us has behave perfectly at all times when we are being down-trodden or oppressed or when things go awry?
Spencer has had many grievances and the ineptness of those who have put barriers in his way should be accountable?
You jump up and down when nothing else works?
Half
Sorry fb @ 308,
My comment about people from website blogs was tonque in cheek. I suspect “they” are quite happy to have say in someone else’s equitable interests, but if you asked them to put $50,000 in to support their comments, they would be likely to run and hide.
@ 307
If we are to have native vegetation legislation and the other legislation that removes common law rights without the landowners consent, and there continues to be vitually zero monetary support from governments and the community in preserving the native vegetation then yes it should be removed completely. (The support that does exist often requires the landowner to give up equity to get the monetary support, as you are aware I’ve been there and won’t take that option now)
If government and the community want to use the benefits from the removal of property rights, then there should be just terms payment and the legislation can remain. Don’t misunderstand me I don’t want any money for the native vegetation that I bought and occupies 50% of my land (I purchased knowing full well there was legislation protecting the native vegetation.) I certainly don’t want to bulldooze it; I enjoy it and there is no other property in the vicinity that has the biodiversity I have. However if the legislation has changed since I purchased the property, and they have not asked for my written consent, and this results in loss of viability and/or devaluation for the community benefit I want the community/government to pay for this.
As the weeds creep closer via the roadways,etc etc,: unless the community start paying for the benefit (biodiversity) they so dearly want preserved, it will be gone.
The community IS paying, John. Every single landholder in this state is making a contribution to it. Just because you may not have personally benefited from it, doesn’t mean it’s not happening. If you want to increase the amount to ensure a better chance of success..well..good luck getting support for that, particularly amongst the constituency of the LNP coalition.
I don’t agree with you assessment that a HA equates to a loss of equity, quite the opposite, it is a mechanism to help land holders with land management. I would like to see a more robust process for the assessment of HA’s because too many people are getting money through them with very little conservation outcome, and in return for absolutely zero effort on their part.
If it is considered that compensation should be paid to farming enterprises to ensure that they actually practice their much proclaimed “stewardship” of the biosphere, then should not those same farmers be liable to pay compensation to the “population at large” for the “ecosystem services” which they have devalued or destroyed through the profit seeking behaviour of their enterprises ?
Logic and fairness would seem to dictate so.
Agricultural pursuits have historically been, and continue to be the single most destructive force acting on our ecosystems – with the possible exception of AGW.
oh, by the way, how does this float your ethical boats – My business is contract based, when land holders don’t fulfill their ‘in kind’ obligations the department seems to think it can withdraw my contract. Try planning a business with that in mind, eh? Landholders who do not fulfill their obligations [agreed to voluntarily] deny me the right to earn an income, should I sue them for compensation? or should I just suck it up, and add to the list of many things that I have no control over that I have to work around?
pterosaur, that point has been made a few times. The landholders here seem to have consistently ignored it. Never mind the fact that if native veg laws didn’t exist we’d see a level of destruction that would also render productive land useless, and no doubt some would be looking to litigate in that circumstance too.
pterosaur@312,
So just tell me how the extinct(dead) farmers that cleared the land to produce food in the first place are going to do this? Oh I forgot most of then were buried with their cheque books, so everything will be OK.
fb @ 311 I agree there is a lot of heritage listed land that shouldn’t be heritage listed because it regrowth and not original biodiversity.
HA’s are a direct impost on equity. I’ve had potential buyers come to me asking about my property, one of the first questions is any of it under HA. I’ve asked why that matters and they say if it were, they wouldn’t be interested.
You are talking about NRM levies I assume. I’ll do a test for you , I’ll go the the NRM and see what money I can get to help me with my native veg. protection and see what happens. I’ve got some lovely blackberries in almost vehicle inaccessible scrub, about two kilometres in total length up the valleys, will see what happens.
JM @ 315
your comment seems to assume that :
1. Agriculture = food production. This is clearly not the case. While agriculture clearly includes food production, (of which a significant portion is for export purposes), it also clearly includes a huge range of other activities, as I’m sure you are aware.
2. Bad land management practice is a thing of the past, and only practiced by those who were
“buried with their cheque books”.
Which also is clearly not the case – bad practice continues, very little seems to have been learned, and the destructive exploitation of our shared biosphere continues by various agricultural interests and individuals.
So what is your point ?
Perhaps you agree with me that the “compensation” coin has two sides ? Or perhaps
that you are interested in an equitable means of sharing the burden(s) and responsibilities of sustainable land management (which seems to be the exception, rather than the rule for agricultural enterprise)?
pterosaur,
My point was that most of the landclearing was carried out by people whom are now dead. Bad practices continue, I agree with that too, there is one up the road; where the land has been planted to a single species of Eucalypt and underneath is devoid of everything else.
I agree that I am interested in an equitable means of sharing the burden(s) and responsibilities of sustainable land management. However this isn’t what is happening at the present time. The burdens are mainly the landowner’s and the benefit goes to the community or the government(carbon) whom appear completely unwilling to carry their fair share of responsibilty.
JM – We’ll be working on over 5 km of creek-line this summer, targeting blackberry. It’s all on private land, and yes we do a lot of walk in stuff, amongst vegetation that is sometimes extremely difficult to move through. It’s hard work and it’s expensive. What’s your point? That if you don’t get assistance, it means that levy money isn’t being spent on high priority conservation sites on private lands?
AGAIN, Heritage agreements are voluntary, noone cares that you are not signing up for one, if you want to [wrongly] insist it’s a loss of equity, then you have to acknowledge that the landholder willingly engages in that process. I know many people with HAs and they ALL got them because they saw a benefit, if you don’t, you don’t *shrugs*.
That some people don’t want to purchase land with a HA on it is not particularly surprising to me, to be honest, but I don’t think it demonstrates a loss of equity. If it were a high quality native vegetation with no weeds, you may have some luck selling to someone seeking just that – they may think a HA is desirable. Prices for this type of land have been increasing dramatically. I’ve just seen a property go for an insane amount of money, I would have liked to buy it, but it was out of my league price-wise – amazing veg., little weed, great neighbouring properties, top of hill [ie reduced potential for weed invasion] – I’m a sucker for the Yaccas down on the southern fleurieu – it’s covered by a heritage agreement, except for the houseblock. Of course nearby productive land is also very expensive, but they are two entirely different markets and maybe the problem you face is that you have a little bit of both, therefore getting a HA is not the right choice for you. Do you still expect help to control the weeds that you are legally obliged to control yourself? was the blackberry there when you bought the property? was it a proclaimed weed at the time you purchased your property? has anything at all changed that makes you think your situation warrants public money, without any contribution from you, other than allowing tax-payer funded contractors onto your land? Yeah right, shall we get back to discussing the sense of entitlement? Blimey.
fb@319,
If NRM support is not available to help me, its an example of community benefit for the masses, and an impost on the landowner. I’ve been paying NRM levies on numerous properties for years now. Why shouldn’t I be a beneficiary of some of my own contributions to NRM on my property, without giving equity (HA) in my property to the government to get my contribution to NRM working for me and the community.
While I’d like to continue the debate, the post is about loss property rights in general and Peter Spencer. I should not be the focus.
#145 #152 PPS typifies Peter Spencer as a “stunningly well-connected/networked land speculator”
It does not go to the credit of PPS to descripe Peter as any of the above.
For goodness sake he does not have a website. Sure there a lot of well meaning people. I don’t know how many different Facebook and similar uncoordinated support groupes. Two high up would be supporters have tried to contact to offer support to be told “You are all the same you people” Diplomacy and Public Relations is sorely missing. Without organisation from agmates I see only well meaning supporters.
To describe Peter as a land speculator is odd. I have seen no evidence and the tone of “going on a manipulative hunger strike.” is uncalled for. There is truth that most communication between persons is for the purpose of one or both of those persons manipulating the other for personal advantage.
I am very grateful for the opportunity of reading this log. I think it would certainly aid a Commission investigating how Peter ended up the damn pole.
Fearfully Peter may have chosen to go up and not come down. I don’t know what to do to help him come down.
James Darby, you must deal with the facts as they are emerging. Spencer increasingly appears to be a troubled but typical vexatious complainant. The strategy of extortion is desperate and pathetic. Those who attach themselves to the plight of vexatious complainants however are frauds, brigands and charlatans.
Jm,
i dont think sympathetic land management is that difficult.
Twenty years back i was the first in the area to poison foxes, idiot locals never did this . I was laughed at the time, now they all do it.
RLPB people dont do much as the absentee landowners do nothing and you wonder why you do what you do at some times.
Land care is common sense?
Locals still alive cut down almost every single Red Gum, the trees are gone and these shitheads should get a punch in the face for their stupidity.
These local families did not have brains to leave for the next generation or repair of the fences.
Again not that difficult?
RLPB is piss weak and does nothing.
Just feckin seat warmers who get paid……..
Half
I’ve read in this thread the equivalent of a small novel. Of the correspondents, John Michelmore has made a wise and balanced contribution, and I am pleased to see participation by lifelong liberty advocate James Darby. We should be grateful to Alan Jones of 2GB whose Tuesday 8 December 2009 interview with Peter Spencer on Day 16 of the hunger strike focused public attention on the issues. Other broadcasters who have been strongly supportive of Peter Spencer include Grant Goldman and Carter Edwards of 2SM. Barrister Peter King deserves praise also. There is compelling evidence that Peter Spencer and many other primary producers are persecuted victims of the global warming cult which has directed that artificial confiscatory impediments to the production of food and fibre be exploited for the sake of “Kyoto targets”. There is a price to pay in terms of rapid erosion of our liberties, and there is a price to pay for Australian consumers who have difficulty affording the cost of a leg of lamb. There is also a price paid by Australia’s overseas customers. If Australia ceases to be a source of inexpensive good quality food, then more people at the margin will simply starve to death.
Starving to death is what Peter Spencer’s admirers DO NOT WANT for Peter. To encourage him to come down and obtain nourishment and medical care, we need to convince Peter that the struggle for property rights begun by him will continue under his leadership until successful. For Peter’s loyal friend Alistair McRobert and Peter’s loving family, the time to convince Peter is today. May God bless Peter Spencer and protect him from harm.
Michael Darby
http://michaeldarby.net
Finally there are some articles appearing in the MSM that are informative & have some depth; something that was non-existent when Brian first wrote this posting.
#295 is the link to an article by Michael Duffy that is very good in filling in some background to the Peter Spencer situation. In today’s SMH a very good article called, Lost Property: home in deed but not in fact.
I would’ve liked to copy it here in full but since as I believe it to be the case legally that’s not allowed, I’ll give you a small part & urge you to read the article in full.
A new SMH article by Chris Berg of IPA in SMH online. Wonder if ii will git published in the print version on Monday?
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/lost-property-home-in-deed-but-not-in-fact-20100109-lzs0.html
Another important aspect of vegetation managent laws is how the laws were written. The shift away from fundamental principles of how our laws have been structured in the past should be of concern for all Australians.
The follow quote, Tree clearing laws infringe rights, by well known civil libertian, Terry O’Gorman, was made in 2003 just before the Qld vegetation management laws were passed.
Thanks to all for the most informative discussion that I’ve found on this issue. One thing that I’ve been wondering is why Peter Spencer doesn’t simply run cattle on that part of his land that he’s not allowed to clear, and continue to raise his sheeep on the cleared portion.
I mean, isn’t that what his parents did, which was supposedly his motivation for acquiring so much marginal land in such an environmentally sensitive area?
# 328 From what I saw Peter was running cattle in the mid 1990s. Don’t know when or if he stopped.
still at 326
See also below open Email letter from Professor of Public Law Suri Ratnapala dated 3rd December 2009 http://loveforlife.com.au/content/09/12/03/peter-spencer-hunger-strike-driven-drastic-measures-australian-government-and-banks.
“Dear Peter,
I am in the US and then in Europe until the end of February on my sabbatical. I sincerely hope that you will not come to any harm and that the authorities will meet your just terms.
Your cause is the cause of many thousands of honest and productive persons on whose lives and labour the prosperity of Australia was built and whose property the government has now stolen.
Your cause is the cause of every Australian who cares about the rule of law, constitutional government and political morality.
Your cause is the cause of every decent human being who values fair play. Your cause is Australia’s cause.
I look forward to contributing to your cause when I return to Australia.
Hoping that you will have a Happy Christmas,
Kind regards,
Suri
Suri Ratnapala, LLB; LLM; PhD
Professor of Public Law
Centre for Public, International & Comparative Law
T C Beirne School of Law
University of Queensland
CRICOS Provider No 00025B”
Spencer needs to have his attention brought to the idea that it takes more courage to live in the face of adversity than it does to kill himself. That is by way of assisting anyone who may be trying to talk him into ending this hunger strike. That is the best I can do to aid, for what it is worth.
#322 Peter Spencer Sceptic
PSS In #321 I made comments about you that go against your credit as person who is likely to use truth in debate. I shall tell you that when you who make a statement:- To quote you “Spencer increasingly appears to be a troubled but typical vexatious complainant.” The use of the word ‘but’ divides the sentance into two parts divided by the word ‘but’. Socialists, apologists, and ‘it should not food on the lowlands’ people use this word ‘but’ as a contradiction to truth.
Truth does not exist for the likes of you. If it did you would have responded to my criticism of your lack of foundation in your #321 statement.
Had you listened to Peter Spencer’s last verbal transmission even you may not have claimed him as ‘Vexatious’. You will find no other to agree with you. Even describing Peter as “typical” has as much sense as describing Ramboo as ‘typical.’
Now that you have taken up the name ‘Sceptic’ I sincerely hope the Climate Change Sceptics will change their name to Climate Change Realists (or Actualists) as you demolished any credibility that the unfortunate word ‘Sceptic’ may had had.
So amongst you appauling advice to me by yourself about how I should conduct myself with regard to Peter Spencer I have seriously looked for something of value. After all I called and begged for advice. Peter endeavours to extort nothing. Peter is the one who has been extorted. I agree that there are aspects of desparation in the whole circumstance. As there is no extortion attempt the desparation aspect can only refer to the current horror. It is truely pathetic how a man such as Bob Carr with the credientials that he has and the cemetary that he has in his wardrobe could have the pathetic people of NSW vote him in to enact such Nationalisation Leglislation.
I am a member of Sea Sheperd (Interventionists), I feed fish, I don’t eat them. So I have the credit to ask you this. Do you refer to an anti-whaler person as a “Complainant” or as a “Protester”?
Seriously that is a rhetorical question on my part. As you do call them protestors. I also refer to Peter Spencer as a Protestor. You call him a ‘complainant’ So you can see that I hold you with the same contempt that I hold for Bob Carr. (And his supporters and appologists. That contempt also extends to Rudd and Turnbull and their supporters).
And then you blatently and with malice aforethought refer to me as being part of a groupe of supporters who are “frauds, brigands and charlatans”.
Carr & Kyoto, Rudd and Turnbull supported by Heffernan have been party to the fraud of removing Peter’s control over his ‘own’ land. A rip-off is only a rip-off if it compulsory. A bandit and highwayman a robber and a looter is what Robin Hood is. Robin Hood took from the rich, bribed the poor and partied with the rest. Sums up Rudd well. Bob Carr laughed like a charlatan (See him on youtude) as with slight of hand he rudded (robbed) NSW landholders, with consent of the likes of Heffenan.
“I also refer to Peter Spencer as a Protestor. You call him a ‘complainant’ So you can see that I hold you with the same contempt that I hold for Bob Carr.”
WTF?
James Darby,
great reply.
Changing world where words and reason count for nothing when people like Spencer want plain justice.
Then the system and others are offended when a person jumps up and down at the injustice.
For me i see defensive behavior on the part of the “system” instead of negotiation and the pursuit of justice.
When nothing works all you have left to do is jump up and down?
System clearly fails to provide justice, accountability and a fair go for those who are not rich and well-connected.
Half
I’ve put up a new post and closed comments. Please place any further comments there.