REMEMBER WHEN

GOLD COAST BULLETIN Friday, July 30, 2004

DEPUTY Premier Terry Mackenroth delivered a blunt message to developers: “Keep your hands off the northern cane fields.”

As land dried up on the rapidly expanding Gold Coast, developers believed it is inevitable that the cane fields would be opened up to housing, despite acid sulphate soil and flooding issues.

Canefarmers were also keen to sell up because they said they couldn’t make a decent living.

But Mr Mackenroth, who was speaking at an Urban Development Institute lunch, said the cane fields had been identified as a buffer zone between Brisbane and the Gold Coast, and Brisbane and the Broadwater.

He said in discussions with farmers they had said their farms would be sold, referring to them as their superannuation.

“No one has the right to change the zone on their land just to make money,’’ he said.

“I live on a residential A property in Brisbane, and that’s what that development is.

“It is residential A. No one has a right to change that.”

Rocky Point canegrowers’ official Peter Kaddatz said Mr Mackenroth’s comments were ’an unreasonable approach’.

He said canefarmers had no water or irrigation and they couldn’t diversify because nothing would grow on the back of poor weather, including frosts and drought. ”Believe me, we’ve tried,” he said.

“The Rocky Point mill can’t survive on dwindling load capacity, and the way things are going this Government is going to inherit an industry that is gone, and a lot of unemployed farmers.”