Coming only days after he had been singled out by African negotiators at the Barcelona pre-Copenhagen talks as one of the leaders whose action does not match his political manifesto, you have to admire our PM’s gall for blaming the lack of global and domestic action on sceptics who, frankly, are not in a position of real power. Sure, the sceptics make a lot of noise. Sure, they make life annoying and difficult. But a real leader would stand up, sweep them aside, and do what it takes.

Unless, of course, that leader is also a sceptic – of a sort.

There has been a lot of discussion recently about the different kinds of climate change sceptics in our debate. The PM joined the fray in his Lowy Institute speech, defining three kinds of sceptics as follows:

The opponents of action on climate change fall into one of three categories.

• First, the climate science deniers.
• Second, those that pay lip service to the science and the need to act on climate change but oppose every practicable mechanism being proposed to bring about that action.
• Third, those in each country that believe their country should wait for others to act first.”

As far as it goes, that is quite a useful analysis. But it leaves out the fourth, and, in my opinion, by far the most dangerous category of sceptic: those who profess to take the science seriously, seek to hold the moral and scientific high ground, and then utterly fail to take the kind of action the science requires.

Those who claim to care but do too little are far more worthy of scorn and derision than those who profess not to care at all.

Let me put forward a scenario to help us decide who is most culpable.

A child swimming at a surf beach starts waving frantically from out in the waves. Corey Bernardi says “he’s not drowning, he’s just waving.” Nikki Williams says “oh, the poor dear, but I really couldn’t do anything to help, it’s just beyond my stength.” Mitch Hooke says “he might be drowning, I’m not 100% sure, but we’d be far better placed to wait for the lifesavers to get here and deal with it.” That’s Kevin’s three categories. But what does Kevin himself say?

Kevin says “this is a crisis on a grand scale. Look at all these people milling around on the beach and cravenly refusing to do anything. We have a moral obligation to act.” He starts wading in. Everyone else breathes a sigh of relief because they think Kevin’s got it under control. But Kevin never gets anywhere near the child, as he only wades in 5% of the way. The child drowns.

The fourth group of sceptics are by far the most dangerous because, through their protestations, by continually talking about how serious the issue is, they convince a great many people that the issue is under control. I believe, for example, that recent polling results by Lowy and others, which show an apparent reduction in levels of popular concern about climate change, are due in large part to the Rudd approach. Certainly, the growing chorus of scepticism helps, but far more insidious is the feeling that it is under control, that it is being taken care of. That is the power of  greenwash, which corporations (”Beyond Petroleum”, anyone?) have long understood.

The core of this problem is that Rudd presents “two stark choices – action or inaction”. That is the point he made in his speech on Friday, and it’s his main rallying cry for the CPRS.

But “action or inaction” is the kind of false dichotomy that can only be supported by the shallow, spin-over-substance brigade that is so powerful in this highly political, incredibly policy-cautious government. For those of us who are actually concerned about outcomes, about delivering something meaningful – in this case a safe climate for us and for all those who come after us – the choice is very different.

The truly stark choice is “do we do what needs to be done, or do we fail?” Will we pull out all stops and do everything we can to protect the climate, or will we deny, faff around, equivocate or, worst of all, dissemble until it’s too late?

Mr Rudd attacks sceptics as gambling with our future.

Do you feel lucky?

Is it about trading emissions permits? Is it about technology policy? Surely it’s not about arguing over who can support polluters more! Is it even about reducing emissions, then?

While you can mount arguments for all of these, fundamentally, in my opinion, the goal is none of these.

Fundamentally, the goal must be to make sure we can pass on a safe climate to our children, and our children’s children. If our legislative action doesn’t play a key role  in delivering that safe climate outcome, then it’s not really climate action.

With that in mind, the Greens have spent the last many months putting together a legislative package entitled the Safe Climate Bill which, taken together, would see Australia play its responsible role in delivering a safe climate.

I’m very conscious of not simply using Rooted as an outlet for spruiking the Greens and our initiatives, but given that the mainstream media gave our Safe Climate Bill, which we launched yesterday, diddly squat coverage, it needs every opportunity to get an airing through other media. We need to find some way of holding the Government to account for their climate failure, if the MSM won’t do it (and the Opposition clearly won’t). We need to show Australians that there is an alternative if they want serious, meaningful climate action.

You can read all about the bill at www.safeclimatebill.org.au or via the text links in the post, but in summary it is a collection of 12 linked bills based on the pillars of a safe climate target, renewable energy, energy efficiency, clean transport and protecting green carbon, supported by a real polluter pays emissions trading scheme.

The 12 bills are:

The Safe Climate (Emissions Trading Scheme) Bill 2009

The Safe Climate (Renewable Energy Electricity) Amendment Bill 2009 [Renewable Energy Target]

The Safe Climate (Renewable Electricity Feed-in Tariff) Bill 2009

The Safe Climate (Renewable Energy Infrastructure) Bill 2009

The Safe Climate (Energy Efficiency Access and Savings Initiative) Bill 2009 [The EASI household energy efficiency scheme]

The Safe Climate (Energy Efficiency in Non-Residential Buildings) Bill 2009

The Safe Climate (Energy Efficiency Opportunities) Bill 2009

The Safe Climate (Energy Efficiency Target) Bill 2009

The Safe Climate (Sustainable Transport Infrastructure) Bill 2009

The Safe Climate (Fringe Benefits and Fuel Credit Restrictions) Bill 2009

The Safe Climate (Native Forest Carbon and Biodiversity Protection) Bill 2009

The Safe Climate (Green Carbon) Bill 2009

You can download them from our website.

The Safe Climate Bill is intended, in its parts and its whole, to be an exposure draft and we strongly invite public comment and discussion. We’ll be developing it further over time and plan to campaign strongly around it as a counter to the Rudd Government’s claim that its CPRS is a reasonable response to the climate crisis. [By the way, did everyone hear Prof Garnaut refer to it last night as "has been one of the worst examples of policy-making we have seen on major issues in Australia"? Yet somehow he still reckons it's worth supporting.]

As I’ve written here recently, climate campaigning has been damn hard recently because it has had to be so negative, that being the only responsible way to react to policy failure that is the CPRS. We very much hope that the Safe Climate Bill can give us all a boost with something positive to rally around!

Please read the detailed briefings, download the bills and give us your feedback!

There’s a lot of burn-out in the climate movement right now. A lot of tired people, a lot of grumpy people. I know – I am one!

I can completely understand why – we’ve had a year of not only hard campaigning, but also a particularly distressing one. Dashed hopes aren’t easy to bear, a split movement is difficult to deal with, and too much of the year has been spent campaigning ‘against’ something instead of ‘for’ something else.

But, hard though it may be, Id argue that now is the time when we need to pull out all stops and start campaigning stronger, louder and better!

The CPRS has gone down once, but it’ll be back soon, followed swiftly by the Copenhagen Conference.

We all agree (even the Government) that the CPRS is not good enough to seriously deal with the climate crisis, but the voices saying that it is “better than nothing” are growing louder. And, disturbingly, there seems to be a feeling almost of resignation growing in parts of the rest of the movement – a feeling that this is going to happen and we might as well not try to stop it. But for all those who argue that it should (or might as well) be “passed now and improved later”, I have one critical question:

How?

We cannot sit back now and assume that, if the CPRS passes in its current form, we’ll simply be able to improve it further down the track. If we agree it is not good enough, we must lay the groundwork now to improve it later. We need a strategy, not just a vague hope.

As part of the effort to find a way forward – the best path for us, as a movement, to ensure that we get strong, ambitious, science-based climate policy – here are the options as I see them for what may conceivably happen in the Senate in the coming months:

• The CPRS fails again because all non-Labor Senators oppose it, leading to a possible early election;
• The CPRS becomes law with the Government working closely with the Greens to make it environmentally effective and economically efficient, securing Senate support through bringing to bear their moral authority with a bill that matches the scale of the challenge;
• The CPRS becomes law with the Government browning it down even further with the Liberal Party, and the Greens supporting it because it is better than nothing;
• The CPRS becomes law with the Government browning it down even further with the Liberal Party, but opposed by the Nationals and Greens for different reasons.

Let’s take these one by one, looking at the implications for any campaign to achieve ambitious action.

In the extremely unlikely event that we face an early election on climate change and the CPRS, the implication for us all is clear: we need to be ready to run a powerful campaign calling for the strongest possible action from the next Parliament. We need to make it abundantly clear that there is an appetite in the Australian community for meaningful government action on the climate crisis, and that the community will not accept the CPRS or anything worse. If we fail to deliver a mandate for strong action and a rebuke to the CPRS, we cannot believe that we will see anything stronger than the CPRS actually implemented.

On the second option, if you don’t believe that the Government has no intention of working with the Greens to green up the scheme (and I can tell you from personal experience that they don’t have any such intention), you will at least acknowledge that the Government has no political reason to do so in the absence of a strong public campaign calling for them to do so. It is just imaginable that, if such a campaign were to build this month and grow to a crescendo by November, the pressure on the Government would be such that they would at least consider their options in the Senate. With silence and division in the climate movement, it is absolutely guaranteed that they will not do so.

Taking the third and fourth options together, it seems pretty clear to me that, once the CPRS passes, the heat will very swiftly go out of climate debate in Australia. Mainstream opinion will be that something is being done. It will be incredibly difficult for us to bring the issue back to the boil in time to deliver a safe climate.

If the Greens, and the climate movement more broadly, fall silent now, or, worse, support the CPRS now as ‘better than nothing’, I believe that it will be simply impossible to rescue the situation and strengthen Australia’s climate response in the little time we have left. We will have allowed the Government to frame the CPRS as action on climate change, the best that can be achieved at this time, and we will have given away the only thing we have: the fact that we are right.

However, if we campaign hard against the CPRS now, highlight its flaws and promote a positive alternative, it may just be possible to continue and build on the frame that this is a polluters’ paradise that must be swiftly replaced with something meaningful. The stronger our opposition now, the more clearly articulated our alternative, the more likely it becomes that we can succeed down the track.

The clear lesson from this analysis is that we must strengthen our resolve and work now to build the strongest possible campaign for ambitious climate action. Now is the time to provide a counterweight to the continued and accelerating rent-seeking of the polluters. We need to throw everything we have at this – from details critiques and analyses to NDAs and other protests, from continuing letters to editors and calls to talkback to doorknocking campaigns.

We can debate for months (as we have already) whether the CPRS is better than nothing or worse than useless, but one thing is clear: if the CPRS passes and is not rapidly strengthened, it will legislatively ensure that Australia’s emissions cannot and will not start heading downwards until 2013.

I am convinced that, if we reject that bill to lock in failure, we will be able to achieve faster emissions cuts sooner than the CPRS could ever deliver.

But, within an hour, Minister Wong had thumbed her nose at the Senate and the planet, telling CE Daily that the Government “had already undertaken the largest economic modelling exercise in Australian history. Given that fact, the Government does not intend to undertake further modelling, and believes it is now time to get on with the huge job of reducing Australia’s emissions.”

What is with this Government’s studied ignorance? Why do they consistently refuse to even model 40% cuts, which the Greens have asked for repeatedly over many months? What are they afraid of?

We can be guaranteed that the Government will not consider moving to 40% cuts if they haven’t modelled the economic impact. So of course they will continue to refuse to do that modelling.

But how can the Government expect the Senate to be willing to pass their deeply flawed CPRS if they thumb their nose at the Senate’s request for this modelling?

While this might be a superficially attractive comparison, it is as far from reality as Minister Wong’s statements about economic transformation are from the reality of the scheme her Government has designed.

Certainly, there are some similarities between the republic and climate change. In both cases, we see a strong public desire for radical change that is not reflected in the Government. In both cases we see a serious lack of bipartisanship. In both cases, we see a Government whose heart is not in it put forward a minimalist option that disappoints and disempowers the people.

But there is one fundamental difference which makes a mockery of the whole attempt to draw a parallel. Urgency.

There is only one reason why the Republic was on the agenda in the 1990s, after a century-long campaign – because Paul Keating and a few other determined individuals put it there. While there is and was broad public support for a move to a republic, the fact that we did not make the change last decade and may not in the next decade is a great pity, but it is no tragedy. John Howard’s undermining of the referendum took the wind out of the sails of the republic push in a way that is deeply unfortunate, but nothing disastrous will happen if the push does not increase again rapidly. No-one will die for lack of an Australian republic.

Climate change, on the other hand, is on the agenda because it is a scientifically demonstrated threat which is increasingly impossible to ignore or sideline. If we do not act fast, we invite social, economic and environmental catastrophe on a scale most of us find hard to imagine.

If the current proposal falls over, as it should unless significantly improved, we have no choice but to try again in the very near future. Public pressure will only grow stronger as the threat becomes ever clearer and as the globe begins to act.

The strongest parallel between the republic and the climate is that in both cases the Australian people are being presented with a dodgy, ‘take it or leave it’ option that they are unwilling to accept. In neither case should they be forced to accept it because it is the only option at the moment. In both cases, accepting the minimalist approach effectively shuts off the option of making the radical change that is necessary.

Let’s reject the minimalist approach in this case, as we did with the Republic, and tell the Government to come back with a better option. This one is unacceptable.

In a speech to the Lowy Institute today (not yet on her website, but will be here), in which she bravely painted a picture of a fictional world quite unlike our own, Minister Wong set out for her audience the history of emissions trading plans in Australia. She raised the original proposal put to the Howard Government a decade ago, discussed Peter Shergold’s report in the Howard Government’s final year, and detailed her own Government’s Green Paper and White Paper process.

But she completely failed to mention the Garnaut Report.

Excised from history. Oh dear.

Here is what Christine Milne had to say about the speech.

The report concludes that the old scientific and environmental target of constraining warming to 2C is now well out of date and that we must do everything we can to bring warming back to no more than 1C if we are to pass on a safe climate to those who come after us. It makes it clear that those who think we can get away with stabilising CO2 equivalents at 550 parts per million are knowingly condemning the planet to catastrophe.

Bill Hare’s excellent chapter which goes through the science step by step includes an excellent metaphor for the situation we find ourselves in:

The jet plane metaphor is again helpful. Faced with a dire in-flight emergency, it would be safest to be on the ground immediately. In the real world, however, it takes time to prepare the aircraft, get into a safe configuration for descent and landing, and find a safe runway to land on. Otherwise the outcome would be an unmitigated disaster— the plane would crash.

In other words, the only safe level of emissions is zero (in fact, below zero, as he goes on to explain), therefore the only truly scientifically justifiable emissions target is to get to zero immediately. However, we know that that is technically impossible to achieve (forget political or economic constraints, it’s just not actually possible). So we need to set ourselves on the pathway that will get us there as fast and effectively as possible.

That is why the Australian Greens have adopted a policy that Australia should target net zero carbon emissions as soon as feasible, and no later than 2050.

Other chapters of the State of the World report look into how this can be achieved, with an emergency shift from coal to zero emissions renewable energy sources and energy efficiency, electrifying transport with renewable power, changing agricultural practices to increase soil carbon storage, protecting forests and much more. One of the most interesting sections is about how global society can actually get to negative emissions which, as Hare explains, will be needed in order to suck carbon out of the atmosphere to get carbon concentrations lower than they currently are.

This report makes a mockery of the Rudd/Wong white paper. The day after the white paper was released, Penny Wong to ABC AM’s Lyndal Curtis that:

the Greens want carbon neutrality, that is, no net emissions by 2050, at the latest. Which is, frankly, I’m not sure how they propose to get there – to be carbon neutral by 2050. So obviously if we’re going to have a discussion with them we’d need to understand how on earth Bob Brown proposes to get there.

Well, Minister, this report backs the Greens to the hilt. I strongly recommend that you, and everyone else interested in the future of the planet, read this report.

*****

I’m going to be serious and quite frank with you here as the issues I am about to raise will be contentious not only amongst coalition MP’s but also my own party.

Every age comes up with a witch to burn, a sect that apparently if it is not succumbed will bring about the destruction of an empire, an issue that occupies the rigours of the day.

It is almost as if those in the position of power and their surrounding Illuminati with time to spare are terrified of the banality of daily existence and so search for an issue that demands blind obedience to conquer it.

The most dangerous place to be in these times of immense fervour is in the counter position that calls in to question the logic of the euphoria. Those who dare to question are held as heretics. There is a communal life fest in being part of the pack or staying silent.

It is hard for them to separate from the reality that the world is fairly constant and predictable and that things of the greater nature of the universe have remained beyond our control in the past and generally shall remain so into the future.

It was interesting to hear the recent discussion between Freeman Dyson, Emeritus Professor of Physics at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, with Robyn Williams, on The Science Show on ABC Radio National, when he rightly stated that the world has many problems but global warming is not one of the biggest ones. As Dyson said:

“Sea level rise has been going on much longer, long before global warming, and it probably has very little to do with human activities. All we know for sure is that sea level has been rising steadily for about 10,000 years and we’ll have to do something about that.”

I don’t pretend for one moment to be a scientist but in my role in the Senate it is implicit in my job to be a sceptic , to question and to consider all sides and be open to the views of many rather than one view.

My current concern with the emissions trading scheme is that a religious fervour has built up around the altar of global warming. Those who serve at the altar have become ruthless in their denigration of alternate views. This fervour has now received its imprimatur by reason of a new tax, or should it be tithe to be paid to the Rudd Labor Government.

The similarity in this newest forte of socialism can be defined by the ultimate purpose of divesting the individual of their asset or income stream on the premise of an apparent greater moral good.

But who becomes the benefactors of this divestment? The administrators and the traders. Their pockets are lined with the property and income of others.

I don’t remember anybody paying rural Australia for the vegetation that was divested from their asset, rural land, during the tree-clearing legislation so we could meet our Kyoto target and unfortunately I don’t hear any chorus of questioning as to why in the future rural producers, after trying to feed the nation and others, will have to be dragged into an emissions trading scheme that could make many of them unviable.

Where is all this heading?

The National Party has been at the forefront of saying this is all getting beyond ridiculous and becoming dangerous. They are also being supported by unlikely allies such as the Australian Workers Union who see their own members, who have been part of the process of delivering wealth to our nation from their labours have had their industries now termed ‘dirty’ by the new environmental high priests. In this new Orwellian frenzy everyone is looking over their shoulder.

Australia is going down a path of an ETS without the co-operation of the major emitting countries. It says that it is morally right to do so. The Rudd Labor Government and others say that unilateral action is a moral imperative. I look forward to that same fervour of moralistic rectitude as they approach the Mugabe issue in Zimbabwe. He is certainly in the wrong and it is on this new platform of morals that we await our dear leader to launch an attack in a very worthwhile and immediate practice of ridding our planet of this tyrant, Mugabe. That is something that would be of an exceptional benefit.

The government is currently honey-coating the fact that it will be collecting a vast amount of money from the Australian people. The ETS will collect $11.5 billion in its first year, $12 billion in its second, it will force up the price of goods and services, it will encourage industries to move to where an ETS is not present.

Australia generates 1.5 per cent of global greenhouse emissions and this ETS will reduce world levels by the smallest sliver, which self-evidently will have nil effect on global climate whether you believe in climate warming or not.

People will lose their job or their business because of the ETS. They will be the modern-day witches burning on the environmentalist fanatical pyre because their role in this new dynamic was unacceptable.

For regional Australia we look forward to the ridiculous prospect of 34 million possible hectares of forest to take the place of farming land, formerly the backbone of so many regional towns and generations of good, honest working Australians’ lives.

The history of human civilisations has the disturbing trait of devising ways to put themselves out of business, sometimes through no more than their own excesses and belief structures of their governing bureaucracies. The only protection against these excesses is the capacity of the general population to question, to doubt and to disagree.

I have no doubt that as a world we must become efficient with the utilisation of our resources. We must give the greatest number of people the greatest access to the highest standard of living, it is only fair.

Efficiency, more than emissions, must become the trading scheme that brings a cleaner, fairer future. Encourage efficiency and keep the government’s hands out of people’s pockets and off their assets and that will bring a greater propensity to a long-term broad-based better world for all of us.

END

Barnaby Joyce’s article received overwhelming support from the Agmates community.

Here’s a video that expresses what a lot of us are starting to think – that all those who voted for Kevin Rudd thinking he’d be better than John Howard on climate change were sold a lump of coal.

If you’re angry, come along tomorrow and join us at the rallies listed here and below the fold.

Click here to view the embedded video.

NSW
11AM – Commonwealth Government Offices, 70 Phillip St, Sydney
Contact John Kaye (02) 9230 2668

Victoria
12PM – Cnr of Collins, Spring and MacArthur Sts, Melbourne
Contact Alison 0402 075 306 or pc@vic.greens.org.au Vic Facebook Event

ACT
12.30PM – Parliament House, Canberra
Contact Simon on 62476305 or office@act.greens.org.au

SA
11AM – SA Parliament House, North Terrace, Adelaide
Contact Tammy (08) 8212 4888 or tammy@sa.greens.org.au

TAS
12.30pm – Tasmanian Parliament House Lawns
Contact Karen 03 6236 9334 or 0417 555 309 or networker@tas.greens.org.au

WA
12PM – Wesley Church, cnr Hay & William Sts, Perth
Contact Rachel 08 9225 5799 or rachel.pemberton@aph.gov.au

During the past 8 years just on 11,000 Australian farmers have left the land. Today just 130,000 farmers or 0.6% of the population not only feed 21.5 million Australians but export enough food to feed double that number.

Australia is one of the world’s major agriculture exporters not because we are a major producer on a world scale, but because we have a small population. Our population is exploding whilst each day our policy makers work hard at reducing the number of farmers and their capacity to produce, in the name of ‘free trade’ and the environment.

As the Australian anti-farmer Federal and State Labour governments continue with policies that shrink our farming sector, world experts are urging them to pour money into ag & water research to avoid world wide food shortages and civil unrest.

“THE director-general of the International Water Management Institute, Colin Chartres, has warned that Australia, along with the other developed nations, needs to invest more in research into agriculture and water management and in international aid.”

The Rudd government is doing the exact opposite with huge cuts to CSIRO ag research funding including the closing of a number of world renown research facilities.

One of the first things the new Ag Minister Tony Burke did in coming to power 12 months ago was to scrap the very successful Farmbiz program which subsidized training and ongoing resource management education for our farmers.

The QLD Labor government has followed up with an announcement it will close more Department of Primary Industry research facilities in that state.

Chartres says the food crisis of the past year was an important warning sign. “We have to heed the warning. Otherwise the ultimate outcome is, if we have millions of people starving in the developing world, much more social unrest, much more fertile ground for terrorists and extremists and the whole world becomes a lot less safe.

There is whole lot standing on it in terms of social security, as well as food security.”

Australia leads the world in Agriculture free trade, to the detriment of our own nation’s food security. Still the federal and state government’s attacks on our farming sector are unrelenting.

Exceptional circumstances drought relief is the only assistance the government offers our farmers and they are considering scrapping that. Our drought ravaged farmers received approx $1 billion dollars through this assistance over the past 8 years. Compare that to the great ‘free marketers’ of the world, the USA who have paid grain subsidies (not drought assistance, just a subsidy) to their farmers totalling $128 billion for the same period.

There is no doubt that if the government scraps drought assistance we will lose more farmers.

Whilst News Corp boss Rupert Murdock applauds Australia’s Agriculture Free Trade policies, the reality is that ‘free trade’ has been disastrous for our farmers.

A combination of cheap imported pork and sky high grain prices has seen 40% of pig farmers leave the industry in just the last 12 months. In a good indication of what is to come, there will be shortages of hams in shops this Christmas. Actually when you can’t buy a ham this Christmas you can thank the ‘free trade’ coalition party polices for this one.

“THAT most succulent of yuletide traditions, a perfectly smoked and glazed Christmas ham, is at risk of becoming a delicacy only for the rich as the chronic shortage of Australian farmed pigs inflates the price of pork.

It is estimated 40 per cent of pig farmers have left the industry in the past year, squeezed off the land by prohibitive grain costs and record volumes of subsidised pigmeat flooding in from Denmark, the US and Canada.”

The Rudd government’s emissions trading scheme is the greatest threat we now face to our food security.

It is estimated that under the scheme approx 10% of our productive farm land will be turned over to growing trees over the next decade. Not to mention that by 2015 when Agriculture is scheduled to become a covered industry that Australia’s leading economist Brian Fisher has predicted that Australian livestock producers will be completely lost as an industry.

Let’s not forget that the nations food bowl, the Murray Darling Basin is also under extreme pressure from past and present State government over allocation of water to irrigators and now the drought. The federal government is buying back water allocation and turning it into environmental flows. As this plays out over the next 10 years we will see even less food produced.

One of the most critical factors is water. “Water is getting extremely scarce because of demand in many countries.” He says there are problems with lack of water in Africa, and declining groundwater in India and Pakistan.

Chartres says with water becoming scarcer, there is no simple answer.

“We can’t make inputs cheaper, so food will probably be more expensive. But the critical thing is we have to grow a lot more to feed the extra 2.3 billion mouths that are expected by 2050.”

The State Labor Governments of QLD and NSW are major contributors to our dwindling farming sector. It was they after all that legislated the Draconian Native Vegetation Legislation laws that has locked up millions of hectares of productive farm land for eternity.

That legislation treats any farmer who dares to cut down a tree to grow more food as a criminal. The legislation was designed to do two things, win green votes for inept state labor governments and secondly to secure funding from a federal coalition government that used the carbon credits as a Kyoto ‘free kick’.

This was done regardless of the fact that it stripped the property rights of 1,000’s of private individuals and permanently capped the amount of arable land available for food production.

All the while the inept State Labor governments of NSW and QLD continue to allow prime farming land within a few hundred kilometres of major populations to be destroyed by coal mining companies. All in the name of coal mining royalties for cash strapped state labor governments. Examples of this are the 32,000 acres of prime farming land at Haystack on the Darling Downs, land at Felton and Kingaroy in Queensland and on the Liverpool Plain in NSW.

Lastly lets not forget the deregulation of our export wheat marketing. For the first time in a number of years Australian wheat farmers are harvesting a good crop that is supposed to pull them back from the brink of financial ruin after years of failed crops due to drought. However, now thanks to the Rudd governments deregulation they are being offered cash prices by ‘free market traders’ that are way under the cost of production. This will force 1,000’s of wheat growers off the land in the next 12 months.

We will see a day in Australia when we will have food shortages. We won’t be able to import it all as most countries already consume everything they produce.

The day that reality hits home as we are starting to glimpse with this years Christmas hams, the Australian public can look back and curse the names of those short sighted Politicians that lead Australia into the food shortage abyss we are surely headed into – Paul Keating, John Howard, John Anderson, Mark Vale, Warren Truss, Kevin Rudd, Tony Burke, Peter Costello, Peter Beattie, Anna Bligh, Bob Carr – the list of culprits goes on and on.