Labor’s attack on farms
THE Palaszczuk Government is a serious threat to the future of agriculture in Queensland.
In March the Government released a discussion paper: “Enhancing regulations to ensure clean water for a healthy Great Barrier Reef and a prosperous Queensland”. Behind the warm fuzzy title is another attack on Queensland’s agricultural sector by the Labor/ Green alliance.
Labor’s Environment Minister, Steven Miles, is proposing an expansion of the unfair reef regulations originally imposed on sugar cane farmers and beef producers in the Wet Tropics, Burdekin and Mackay/ Whitsunday catchments by the Bligh Government in 2009.
The discussion paper states the regulations will be expanded to include the horticulture and grain sectors and the regulations in place for the sugar cane and beef industries will be increased.
In addition, these regulations will be extended into the Fitzroy and Burnett/ Mary catchments and the east coast of Cape York Peninsula. The discussion paper seeks to justify the wider and enhanced application of these regulations by suggesting improvements in water quality outcomes have been too slow.
I recently attended the Australian Society of Sugar Cane Technologists in Cairns conference. This year, there was a focus on nitrogen use efficiency and water quality outcomes.
Given Labor is proposing stronger regulations on sugar cane growers, you would have thought it may have turned up to ensure it was aware of the good work being done by the industry to minimise its environmental footprint.
No one from the State Government turned up to learn about the practice changes that have occurred voluntarily over the past 25 years and the huge gains made in the past decade.
The two most offensive aspects of Labor’s 2009 reef regulations were they imposed an inflexible template on diverse agricultural systems across the sugar cane and beef industries and redefined farming as an environmentally relevant activity ( ERA). This lumped farmers in with other ERAs, such as sewage treatment plants and heavy metal refineries.
The additional regulations proposed in the 2017 discussion paper centre around two additional mechanisms – the setting of so- called pollution load limits in each regulated catchment and the creation of a framework for water quality offsets. Both of these proposals are a slippery slope to farmers and industries being forced to accept production losses.
I submitted a Question on Notice to Mr Miles in March to flush out the intentions of the Palaszczuk Government with respect to these two new regulatory mechanisms.
Firstly, I asked what action the Government proposed if a catchment pollution load limit was exceeded under existing land use conditions? Secondly, I asked if Labor would rule out imposing minimum practice standards that led to sub- optimum productivity and/ or profitability for individual producers or industries?
The Minister confirmed catchment load limits would be used to guide regulatory efforts to reduce nutrient and sediment catchment loads, including compliance activities. Mr Miles stated catchment load limits would also be used to trigger the requirement for agriculture to offset impacts on water quality. This will be a cap or pay trap for farmers in each regulated catchment.
Furthermore, he failed to rule out imposing minimum practice standards that resulted in sub- optimum productivity and/ or profitability outcomes for individual farmers, or for an industry as a whole.
Queensland’s farmers can’t be complacent here. The expansion of the 2009 reef regulations is another step towards the Labor/ Green alliance objective of shutting down agriculture.
ANDREW CRIPPS MP, Member for Hinchinbrook.