By John Bell – Callide Dawson Leader
Country Queenslanders have been warned of threats to rural industries and to primary producers from sweet-heart deals between the Palaszczuk government and the extreme left-wing Greens Party.
Former rugby league international, Queensland State of Origin player and Mackay cane grower, Martin Bella, (or Marty or Bella as he prefers to be called), believes that ‘secret deals between Labor and Greens Party will be negotiated help Anastasia stay in power’.
“This will supercharge very unrealistic and biased new anti-farming regulations,” Marty declared.
Bella’s warnings are based on predictions that former Deputy Premier, Jacky Trad may lose her Brisbane seat to the Greens Party and leave the Palaszczuk government with a dangerously narrow majority of one in the Queensland parliament.
Political commentators also suggest that normal swings against the Palaszczuk government and the loss of further seats will empower the left’s Greens Party to force numerous new anti-farmer and anti-business regulations.
“Farming communities have formed their own ‘Green Shirts’ positive organisation to oppose actions by former Deputy Premier, Jacky Trad and the extreme left-wing Greens Party which had crippled some farming enterprises.
“If Anastasia Palaszczuk does a deal with the extreme left-wing Greens Party to stay in power, then there will be private sweetheart-deals done to impose ideologically driven government regulations which will force some farming businesses to collapse.
“One has to question why the Palaszczuk government is suddenly offering to halve irrigators’ water prices, or is it half of the increase in water prices, for irrigators?
“There must be an election coming that they are frightened of losing.”
Bella added that ‘the Greens Party’s socialism is wonderful until they run out of other people’s money.
“It hasn’t dawned on the Greens Party politicians and left-wing Palaszczuk Government Cabinet Ministers that there would be mass sacking of Brisbane’s public servants, without billions of dollars a year a year paid to the state government in coal royalties.”
“Plus, bureaucrats in the environmental wasteland of Brisbane don’t understand that country businesses and farmers must make a profit to survive.
“For example, government regulations, written by Brisbane desk jockey wilderness seekers, have prevented farmers from clearing regrowth on previously cleared land, so grass can grow to feed our cattle.
“So instead there are lots of suckers from trees that grow-up and these public servants have prevented us from clearing and farming our land.
“We had open grasslands until Queensland Government environmentalists caused this problem.”
Bella added that bureaucratic wilderness huggers now use satellites to check on farmers’ land clearing.
“If they see activity, then they come out to our farms and they can record whatever we say, deny that they are doing it and still use it against us.
“Even if farmers can prove that what they did was lawful, it costs a fortune to prove this in court, while bureaucrats have unlimited government funds to prosecute us.
“As a result, farmers are not game to clear their land, as they are terrified and intimidated by the cost of challenging desk jockeys’ bureaucratic regulations.
“But even when we get permission to clear out land, they won’t let us use tracked vehicles or bull dozers.”
Marty said government compliance costs had already limited our farming incomes.
“For example, a one percent drop in fertilizer application for cane growers creates a one percent drop in income.
“Now Brisbane’s desk jockey wilderness seekers have demanded that if I don’t cultivate my land three times in 10-years, or once in five-years, then I am forced to make a development application to farm my own land.
“Desk jockeys don’t understand that they can’t have a blanket management regulation for Queensland’s 13 different bioregions with different soils, rainfalls and environments.
“Next Palaszczuk public servants will want to start to tell us what to grow,” Bella concluded.
Image: Marty with Mary O’Brien from ‘Are You Bogged Mate?”