8,000 trees will die today!
G'day Agmates,
Before we start I'll like publicly to say goodbye to a great little guy who passed away today. It really is a sad thing when you lose a great mate. We love you Yoda Manton. Goodbye Yodi.
Choke back the tears and down to business.
Well it's day three of the "National Chop A Tree day" and Agmates estimates that up to 6,000 tree's in QLD, NSW, VIC and SA Died today. Today it will be a further 8,000?
What was interesting was that NSW Minister for Climate Change and the Environment Phil Koperberg when interviewed on ABC's AM radio program this morning about the "Chop" civil disobedience told listeners that he would not take "a big stick" approach to farmers involved in the "Chop" action in NSW.
This is a new side to the minister dubbed "The Face of Evil" (the evil is the NSW Vegetation Management Act) after he ordered his departments goons to conduct what farmers have dubbed a "jackboot farm Invasion" of the Hudsons property at Moree.
Click here to read how the Hudson's have been treated by the Minister. Their property is unrestricted freehold, zoned by the local council for cropping and had the proper CMA plans in place for cleaning up an invasive weed called Lipia that had overrun the property (Lipia is a Lignum type invasive woody weed that grows 2-3 metres high and chokes out all other plant life and wrecks the entire biodiversity of the area).
The Hudsons maintain they did the clearing to those plans. Yet after WWF's Reece Turner conned ABC Television into believing that the clearing was done on Ramsar Heritage Listed Wetlands the Minister has ordered them to remove all livestock and vehicles off their property and threatened them with a 1 million dollar fine if they can't prove their innocence within 12 months).
Agmates can confirm that some of the groups members are currently taking legal advice with regard to suing Mr Turner for millions of dollars in damages for the "unmitigated damage" his deceptive and dishonest actions have caused to the rural industry.
Minister Koperberg also said that his door is always open 'to talk' to farmers about their issues. Is this really the case. Agmates knows that up to now despite attempts by CPPA to open a dialogue with Mr Koperberg and his office he has ignored them.
If Minister Koperbergs "door was always open" 10-12,000 trees may not be lying dead around Australia with the number growing each day. Only the minister has the ability to stop this carnage on trees in NSW, he either has to do it with dialogue or by "using a big stick", which one is it to be?
Now onto todays comments then onto Part 2 of Suri Ratnapals paper "Constitutional Vandalism Under Green Cover"
YOUR COMMENTS:
ANON CHARMER said
Agmates:
"i think that all members of agmates would be better off chopping thier own heads off , what a stupid lot they are , do they also think the world is flat and the moon is made of cheese , and i not a city folk but a green farmer who nurtures his land not rapes it !"
Note from Agmates: "Mate if your a farmer I'm George Bush. Agmates encourages intelligent and informed comment, but my friend you are neither".
PETER SPENCER said
Agmates
"Lets get to the point here - if persons came onto your land and took the use of 3/4 of your house and property, destroying your business and livelihood in the process, but left you with the mortgages and devalued asset debt at the bank, would you not feel utterly dismayed.
But that is not where it stopped. To add salt in the open wound, after years of pleading for help in a civilised way and not being heard, would you not say this was an unreasonable way for civilised society to treat you. Aboriginals know all about this and so do farmers.
The true depth of the moral depravity and utter confusion in this Nation - Australia, can be measured in today’s call by the Greens Kerry Nettle in a typical display of his parties hypocrisy, demanding the Australian Government pay compensation to those 247 persons illegally imprisoned.
YET the Green movement actively said NO to compensation when their sponsored legislation - the Native Vegetation Act destroyed the lives of over 30,000 farming families across Australia. It is selective morality - how privileged, how pathetic.!
The Greens as with most Politicians do not understand morality. They understand Media grandstanding. The Media cannot even see they are being used.
We Australians, members of the electorate, sons and daughters of Anzacs are apparently of no value, when outsiders get total privilege, help and compassion, and yet we the inheritors by birth of Australian protection, Australian rights, Australian Constitution, GET absolutely NO consideration at all.
We have, as a Nation lost the plot.
The media appear totally oblivious to the reason of the National Chop concept and even though it is in progress, they are more interested in a picture/photo of it happening then the injustice it is highlighting.
The Media’s totally apathy is so institutionalised they cannot see the forest for the trees."
PETER GARGAN said
Agmates:
"What you are doing is what Ghandi did to free India from British Rule. The British would not allow salt to be sold to the Indians, unless they paid a tax on it, and Ghandi, in a monumental act of civil disobedience, that rallied the Nation marched to the sea to take from god, what man had forbidden.
What we are fighting is government by lawyers, who tell us it is illegal to make a tree into firewood, and then sell that firewood, but not illegal to mine coal and sell it to the world. Bring on Gilbert and Sullivan. They would make a great Light Opera on this one. Chop Chop. ( The Mikado and Pooh Bah) You can take the boy from the farm, but you can never get the farm out of the boy."
PART 2 OF SURI RATNAPALA'S PAPER
What is a Constitution and what is constitutional government?
Agmates Notes -Part 2 is really just background information as a foundation, but it is useful for all to understand for the rest of the series and further discussion.
Constitutional government, or government under law, is a remarkable achievement of modern civilization, but it has been gained at a great price. Constitutional government enthrones the rule of law in the sense of the supremacy of known, general and impersonal laws over rulers and subjects alike.
Millions of people around the world have died in the establishment and defence of constitutional government. This is not an exaggeration when the human cost of the 17th Century constitutional struggles in England, the American Revolution, the Civil War, the two World Wars, the uprisings against Fascist and Communist rule, and present day democracy movements are accounted. Constitutional government is hard to win but not so hard to lose. It is always under pressure from seen and unseen opponents.
The term "constitution" once was synonymous with constitutional government that meant a particular type of political order in which the authority of rulers,
including their legislative power, was limited through appropriate institutional devices, and both rulers and citizens were subject to the general law of the
land. However, the term is now so debased that the most widely read encyclopedia, the Encyclopedia Britannica informs its readers that in its simplest and most neutral sense, every country has a Constitution no matter how badly or erratically it may be governed.
2 A Constitution in this simple sense refers to the official description of the Constitution or the paper Constitution.
There is another, more realistic sense in which the word "constitution" is used. It refers to the constitution as it actually operates. This is the constitution that lives in the experience of the people, that which economists call the "economic constitution". The constitution in this sense deviates from the paper Constitution, sometimes for the better but often for the worse. The Constitution Act of New Zealand reposes absolute power in a single chamber Parliament. Yet New Zealand enjoys a much greater degree of constitutional government than most countries with elaborate written safeguards.
The United Kingdom has a robust democracy and an outstanding record on human rights without a scrap of paper that can be called a Constitution. As against these shining examples, we find many countries failing to secure a semblance of the constitutional order proclaimed in their official constitutional instruments.
There is a third, philosophical, sense in which the term "constitution" is used. It is the classical idea of a constitution, which F A Hayek termed the "constitution of liberty" in his famous work bearing that name.
3 In The Constitution of Liberty Hayek set out to present a restatement of the principles of a free society. This restatement was completed in the three volumes that constitute the monumental intellectual defence of the rule of law and individual freedom, Law Legislation and Liberty.
4 These treatises together explain the logic and the institutional framework of the political order that sustains human freedom.
At the heart of the constitution of liberty is the supremacy of general laws over all authority, public or private. Its modalities include the rejection of
sovereign authority, even of elected assemblies, the effective separation of the executive, judicial and law making powers, and the geographical dispersal of power through federal arrangements. The constitution in this classical sense is a response to a perennial problem in human existence---that of creating power to coordinate collective action to secure essential public goods, while restraining the
repositories of power from abusing it.
The bedrock of the classical idea of a constitution is a particular conception of the rule of law, namely the subordination of all public and private power to
general norms of conduct. It is said that the rule of law is a necessary condition of freedom, but not a sufficient one. This proposition sounds logical, inasmuch as certain laws may diminish the liberty of all while ostensibly remaining faithful to the rule of law ideal.
For example, prohibition of alcohol consumption in some countries limits the choice of everyone. But on reflection it is evident that such laws eventually defeat the rule of law. Unreasonably restrictive laws are likely to be kept in place only by derogation's from the rule of law in other respects. Typically, prohibition laws are maintained by privileging certain religious or moral opinions as against others.
It is also claimed that abhorrent institutions such as apartheid and slavery can be implemented consistently with the rule of law, provided that the disabilities they impose are not the result of arbitrary discretion's of authorities. This claim is much more problematic. In such cases, the legislators themselves are acting arbitrarily in both establishing and maintaining the institutions.
The rule of law's prescription against arbitrary determinations applies equally to the legislature and to constituent bodies. Such laws are general only in a very perverse sense. Thus in countries where there is cultural diversity, the constitutional privileging of particular religions or languages creates serious
problems for the rule of law.
It is true that people's lives are more predictable where discrimination results from pre-announced rules rather than from the momentary will of officials. Much depends on the extent to which the discrimination diminishes the life chances of the selected group. The rule of law is maintained in the longer term not by coercive power but by the people's fidelity to the law. Hence constitutions and laws that pre-ordain selected groups to lasting deprivation are inherently unstable owing to the loss of fidelity of the disadvantaged groups, and can be maintained only by increasingly arbitrary projections of coercive power.
Hence these laws are as subversive of the rule of law, as laws that confer unfettered powers on rulers.
End of Part 2
_______________________________________________________
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Your Agmate - Steve
Agmates - 100% Pro Australian Farmers.
4 comments:
Peter Spencer is on the right track with his analogy about someone taking 3/4 of your house and property.
Imagine buying a 4 bedroom home, then one day the government comes along and tells you to stop using 3 of your bedrooms. They tell you it's "in the public interest" because there are homeless people wandering the streets who need somewhere to sleep.
Not only do you no longer have the use of those bedrooms for say, your children, but when you come to sell, you’re faced with selling it as a 1 bedroom house that provides free accomodation for the homeless, instead of a private 4 bedroom home.
No-one would accept that without a fight.
Yet this is precisely what is happening to owners of freehold land affected by the native vegetation legislation. They are being forced to give up an activity which produces income – primary production – and instead engage in an activity which produces no income – carbon sinking. This is the type of stuff we used to read about happening in communist Russia or China. It completely undermines and overrides the concept of private ownership, and has no place in a country founded on principles of freedom and justice.
Those who piously suggest that landholders should reason with the government are being patronising or foolish or both. Thanks to the enormous tax revenues they help themselves to each year, governments have now become so powerful that they are no longer our servants, but our masters, expecting us to meekly obey every edict they issue, no matter how unjust or how insidiously it undermines our freedom. They no longer listen to reason, but to might – the might of popular opinion informed only by talkback radio or the popular media, or the might of money. Principles and justice mean nothing to them.
It is long past time for us to reclaim ownership over our own lives and property. That includes trees.
Hi there redneck Neanderthals. Typically we see farmers, the great destroyers of our environment, showing Australia just what they think about tress. I’m sure you’d like a landscape denuded of all vegetation except for genetically modified crops.
This action just confirms for me and thousands of other city dwellers that farmers are not capable of caring for our land and in fact rejoice in its destruction and degradation. I bet you celebrated after John Hudson destroyed 700 hectares of irreplaceable wetlands on Yarrol Station. That mentality is what tells me that farmers don’t a toss about the environment and have no understanding of modern land management procedures. You just want to keep farming like we live in England, as no doubt your families “have done for generations” as you are all so fond of telling us.
So what about responsibility for salinity, helping to kill the great barrier reef through fertiliser runoff, producing crops like cotton and rice that have place in this country, and stealing water from wetlands.
What I see in these photo’s is a vandal at work on a tree, not “woody weed” as you have so conveniently labelled it.
Still, I can’t see you rural dwellers ever caring at all about the environment. All you’ve ever cared about is the continuation of Agrarian Sociaism where you can socialise your losses and capitalise your profits all provided for by Australian tax payers. You are not a protected species, you are in business – but of course you see yourselves in terms of some mythology of the “outback” which of course is total BS, but it suits you to trot it out and claim you need special treatment.
If I ever had any sympathy for farmers, it’s gone totally now. I hope they fine and gaol the lot of you.
I would like to suggest that the so-called green fanatics and farmers have similar objectives and that more can be achieved by working together than by slandering each other.
Greens and farmers want sustainable farming practices. Greens want the conservation of biodiversity and the preservation of Australia's remaining native vegetation for future generations. Farmers want productive and profitable farms and can benefit from maintaining remnant vegetation as windbreaks and as protection from salinity and erosion.
The problem seems to be that farmers are being asked to shoulder the burden of preserving native vegetation.
This is clearly unfair and unworkable. Farmers should be rewarded for sustainable land management.
The Native Vegetation Act attempts to make both greens and farmers happy with the result that neither is. but we should not be fooled by the government into thinking that only one side can be pleased. The government benefits from the standoff and the environment and farmers suffer.
Many greens are campaigning hard for carbon trading and such a scheme should reward farmers for holding onto native veg. Many greens have fought for better incentives for farmers to encourage sustainable land management practices. And things such as property vegetation plans have mechanisms to provide financial incentives as well as technical support to farmers who agree to protect their native veg.
Many greens ARE farmers.
I believe there is more to be gained by uniting against the government and sending a strong and unified message than fighting over the scraps that the government throws to each side in an attempt to placate them.
Cutting down trees illegally is a desperate measure, much like standing in front of a bulldozer. Having stood in front of bulldozers, I can attest to the fact that it doesn't work and it just pisses off the loggers!
Restrictions on a farmer's right to do what s/he wishes with their property is not 'taking a common law right' under the law. All property rights are subject to legislation. And compensating farmers for prohibiting clearing is problematic for many reasons.
But farmers should not be left to shoulder this burden, particularly when all of society benefits from the restriction. That is, i think, the key message. So, why cannot greens and farmers sit down and have a chat and find a common ground? then campaign together to get a good result?
before you dismiss me as naive, let me say that I have worked with farmers of all ilks and understand their frustrations and challenges, especially with bureaucracy. But i have seen farmers turn their farms into models of sustainablity and watched them marvel at the results. Working together can work and i strongly recommend it- to both sides.
The folks in the city contrary to what they think are catching buses where they don't run.
Come 'round to my house, weigh the carbon out of my exhaust and show me the material evidence the impact.
Have you actually been to the country and inspected the vast land.....and the resources available.
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