A Fair Go

The Government in action

The Government in action

The farmers and landholders of the Murray Basin have spoken of a “Fair Go” in regards to new initiatives giving water back to the environment. One quote I heard this morning and have almost forgotten asked when in the history of the world had productive land been laid to waste in such a manner (I cant remember the exact lines)

I was driven to answer that because of the naive bullshit that flies about in times of crisis. Australian farmlands were disappearing almost as fast as Amazonian rain forest until quite recently when it stopped simply because all the prime land by our cities was running out. They were rezoned as residential and industrial. Their immediate financial value took favor against the need for life-giving food should disaster or war limit our overseas imports!  In recent years we have come to believe those farmers made a motza and got off the land with handfuls of grubby cash. Many did in recent times but often enough it was considerably different.

Various merchants, land developers and professionals are prone to acting as though they are entitled heirs to the term “fair go” and all of the many mateship “isms” but traditionally they have been known for their bastardry against the people they considered to be lesser worthies. It is in the stories of Ned Kelly, “Mad-Dog” Morgan and the Eureka Stockade where we see disastrous attempts to fight back back against their cruelty and selfish corruption. Most of the histories have been written by the ruling classes however and much has disappeared beneath their myopia or as in the cases of Kelly and others been shown in a light where much of the fight has been rewritten as criminality. A natural outcome in the hands of the demographic his anger was aimed at. It must have been galling for the Police and magistrates to see the bush-rangers feted as heroes by much of the population at the time!

I am able to speak from experience about the 1970’s land grab by developers and corrupt shire councilors. There were no big pay-outs going to farmers or original landholders I am aware of at the time. The developers didn’t want to have pay the real cost of the land even though it was far less than when the boom actually got going later. These were large blocks of prime land with orchards and dairy farms and so-on.

The council would rack up the rates many times, even thousands of times, by re-zoning the land as industrial. A small dairy with a few hundred cows might be paying the rate equivalent of ten or twenty successful industrial factories. Many of the farmers fought in court, I believe some were driven (purposely?) to suicide. I was told (by the farmers themselves) there were caveats placed on some land so the farmers could not sell it and thus raise the prices the developers would pay to get it. The final grabs were on the back of non-payment of rates. Some of the guys I spoke to had hundreds of thousands of dollars of rates outstanding after just a couple of years. They had no chance of meeting the debt outside of a ruling by a court!

Because the rates were deemed to be worth much more than the land values when council set the values the final grab often included the land, the home and other land owned by the family and even the car. People were left paying debts of many thousands of dollars while council and the developer businessmen got the land for nothing. Rates are, after all, just a notation in a book and in this case based on nothing but air and greed!

In the end the shire president was arrested for his lack of discretion in accepting large brown bags full of money in public and there was a small purge of the less cautious businessmen who got a fright rather than being charged. Not one tree or millimeter of land was given back to the families it was stolen from however. Many of them had been descendants of the original settlers of the areas they inhabited and all were prepared to sell land in sensible packages as development was applicable.

There was purposeful sabotage of those farmers and property holders who fought too well and had the weasels worried about their presence in a courtroom. There may even have been murder although who knows. Much went on in those days as today and a murder may have been about anything or may have disappeared altogether as the police were not innocent in the land grabs either. We talk about the police corruption of the blue-murder period and the Underbelly “Golden Mile” but these things were business as usual and had been since the days of Kelly. It was the plethora of honest cops and anti-corruption bodies that was new in the 1980’s bringing light on their activities and making it appear notable.

The government has already shown either a naivete or a manipulative streak in not understanding the fury by people at the public meetings in places like Deniliquin. I would disagree that they were unaware of the possibility. To my mind the possibility of a backlash was impossible to miss and the government is again playing the media to use public opinion to aid it in avoiding having in implement tough measures. They will blame their inactivity on the backlash by the public in the media. One they have engineered! It is the same process they used to bury various difficult schemes over the past couple of years. They get people scared by being brutal about outcomes and letting the media run. We hang ourselves and support the opposition who are opposing anything they think we are worried about! Quite a useful team!

The people of the Murray-Darling Basin are having problems finding a historical precedent for their predicament. I don’t know why Australian history is littered with precedent.They are equally confused because an Australian government set up the irrigation zone and they invested in it under commendation from that government.  In the 1960’s the government started the irrigation zones. Yes, the government set up the zone for exactly that purpose and even started towns. The same towns that now face oblivion if you believe the residents. Some residents are in near disbelief that the government which made the whole thing happen and caused immense investment by farmers and Australia is now taking action to shut them down and losing billions of infrastructure.

More naivete! If the residents knew anything of Australia’s recent history they would recognize that expensive backsliding is a feature of the Australian Government’s handbook.

Let me again go to my personal experience. It is better if I do that than rely on second hand information from unsteady sources and it should indicate the depth of the problem that I can name as many examples as I am able to although perhaps two or three will do.

The Grumman Tracker. Australia used to have an aircraft carrier called the Melbourne. Many years ago the government decided to decommission the Melbourne and save money. Interesting idea because at the same time as they were discussing the decommissioning and doing the paperwork they ordered a squadron of specialist anti-submarine aircraft built to be used aboard her.

These aircraft (I believe)were based on the American Grumman Prowlers used by their own aircraft carriers but advanced and designed for our use. They may have been the top aircraft of their type in the world and they arrived ready for use as the Melbourne was finally decommissioned. We will not talk about the useless Sea Sprites or the Subs that couldn’t stay at sea with out a constant supply of spares and repairs. Perhaps these things are not close enough to the subject being covered here although I cover them as examples of one part of a government spending billions and making promises with the only outcome being wasted effort and the loss to the taxpayer of said billions.

Lets talk about oranges. Up until the 1970’s Australia had a successful and thriving citrus industry along the east coast. In the seventies (compare the timing..much changed in the seventies) The Whitlam Government opened Australia up to free importation of oranges by dropping tariffs. Australian orchards were mainly supplying juicing oranges to companies like Berri but after a day on the shelves the juice became bitter.

Because Valencias lasted longer the processors asked the growers to research and then implement the use of these oranges in their orchards. The growers were concerned about the investment in time and money but were seduced by promises from the government which came with all sorts of guarantees. The new Valencias came into regular use about the same time the processors discovered cheaper oranges in Brazil and lobbied the government to allow their import. You should note that the research initiated by the growers created Valencias and other species of orange considered to be the best in the world! Unique to us!

Despite all their promises and all of the investment to be lost the government gave it’s approval to the unlimited import of Brazilian oranges and the Australian orchard was decimated. Many orchardists at the time were convinced that if they had not invested in Valencias as insisted on by the processors and government they could have survived. Every time some mutt has a wail about the number of unemployed in Australia they should remember their own government’s part in making it so difficult to keep them employed. And for every penny “wasted” on the employed there have been many dollars of investment left the country because of our own governments lack of ability in keeping it here.

Such betrayal and the destruction of entire industries is the norm in the history of Australia rather than an odd moment of shame.

For the farmers in Deniliquin and Griffith their best bet is that communications have made it impossible for governments to act without comment from their voters. At the same time we have 25% of Australian farmland damaged by bad practices and are saline. Entire river systems covering millions of sq kilometers are dying from water over-use and we are all going to suffer from the way we have left the changes we had to make until the damage was well and truly done! The best the farmers can expect is that the government will use public opinion to chicken out THIS TIME. It is inevitable that they will be brought to account. We cannot allow large parts of the country to become toxic wastelands no matter what deals people had in the past. None of us are going to avoid the fallout from climate change and by the time governments actually act, their limited vision, and political reality will make sure we suffer significantly! All of us who are unable to hide behind a wall of money anyway!

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