Backing farmers instead of bashing them would provide a far greater benefit to the Great Barrier Reef and local jobs.
I have written to both the Prime Minister and the Queensland Premier, asking for taxpayer funding to be pulled from the Reef 2050 Water Quality program. Millions of dollars have already been wasted on studies and projects that do nothing but demonise farmers. All they do is tell us that greenies hate farmers and we don’t need a multi-million dollar study to tell us that. If a fraction of that money was used to back farmers, there could be immediate improvements in water quality on the reef and more jobs in regional Queensland.
I recently met with farmers Graham Blackburn and Allan Parker to discuss how fallow crops can help regenerate the soil and, at the same time, prevent run-off from their farms. But fallow crops are no longer economically viable due to high costs for water and electricity.
State and Federal governments have failed farmers by allowing electricity and water prices to skyrocket while billions of dollars were thrown at the reef without any positive outcome. If we are going to KickStart Queensland coming out of this pandemic, we won’t do it by wasting the $2.7 billion these governments have committed to the reef. We keep throwing buckets of money at studies and all we get back is farmer-bashing and recommendations for more money to be spent on studies.
Crops like soy and mung beans are great fallow crops for the soil and the reef but they are only economically viable with plentiful water. If the Queensland Labor government stopped ripping off farmers with electricity and water prices, farmers would not only provide better outcomes for the reef but would provide more employment in the local community. Farmers not only provide food for the nation and for export but put food on the table for themselves and their local community.
When a farmer grows a crop, the majority of the money goes around the local community and that is exactly what we need if we are going to KickStart Queensland in 2020.
It’s time for all the freeloaders on the Reef 2050 gravy train to get off at the next station and let taxpayer dollars help taxpayers. As yet another $12.6 million was thrown at the reef last week, it is time State and Federal Governments and their hangers-on are held to account. We’ve had $2.7 billion of taxpayers money thrown at the reef and in return we get policies demonising farmers and regulations designed to drive them out of business. We’re seeing millions and millions of dollars being poured into research that produces recommendations to send the Gravy Train back for more taxpayer money. It’s time the perpetual Reef 2050 Gravy Train was ground to a halt and the focus shifted to sustaining industry and jobs.
The amount of money being spent as part of Reef 2050 is absolutely disgraceful when ordinary Queenslanders are suffering so much stress and hardship. I don’t think Government and their ‘hangers-on’ have any idea just how much bitterness is felt out here in the community at the unequal manner in which the COVID-19 lockdown has adversely impacted only certain sections of the community. It has been the elderly and the young, the ordinary workers in private industry, the sole traders, small business owners, regional and rural workers, who have borne the brunt of this. It’s not the Government, not the public institutions and not the public service sector that has copped the rough end of this pineapple.
The one thing the government could have done to actually help people in a practical way would have been to properly fund the QRIDA concessional loan facility. The Queensland Labor government promised to support small business and they spectacularly failed to do so with the facility suspended only weeks it started because it ran out of money. The amount they made available for small business was just $500 million in a crisis of a scale we haven’t seen since the Great Depression. Meanwhile, the State and Federal governments are throwing $2.7 billion at the Great Barrier Reef with no result and no accountability.