Apparently the Greens can see a way for Australia’s farmers to be rewarded for good farming management. That stands to reason, most of Australia’s carbon-soaking trees live on farms. However, as far as I can find, the Libs and Nats haven’t addressed this issue other than to say they won’t tax farm carbon production.
Like protectionism which has no practical hope of re-implementation in a globally connected World, simply saying farmers are not going to be carbon-taxed at some stage just won’t hold water in the long term if other groups are being taxed -the other groups won’t stand for it. So, we have to address the issue in commercial terms or end-up with a Howard and Costello, “Read my lips, there will be no GST!”, -type situation where it is done without rural involvement and lands on us like a bag of bricks. Which makes reward from the Greens not sound too silly, doesn’t it.
In addition, farmers have been campaigning to keep miners off their good farm land. Have the Libs and Nats addressed where this sits with the Mining tax?
As for Mr Abbott claiming that Australia’s rural producers would support processing of their product overseas rather than here, hasn’t he ever heard of “Buy Australian Made”!? My guess is that unless we address the adding of value pre-export, our production is going to continue to be compared to the labour forces of Brazil and China, whether quality is involved or not!
I think in 2010 we need to be a bit smarter and look at just how Australia’s producers really will be affected by each of the parties.
Tony Abbott says Labor and the Greens, “..will introduce a carbon tax, and mining tax and there will never be offshore processing.’’ After many, many years of not looking after the bush, it seems Mr. Abbott is relying upon the good ole support of the good ole boys yet again!
Perhaps this latest political hiccup is the wake-up call we needed to think along truly independent lines for the good of the bush and Australia in general. Perhaps if we can act a bit smarter than the old knee-jerk vote along party lines that has become expected over the years without the Bush ever achieving anything significant like true broadband access, we might actually achieve something.
What do you think?
Please comment below.
