Per­rett calls for ac­tion

The Western Star - - RURAL WEEKLY - Tony Per­rett LNP Shadow Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter

QUEENS­LAND’S Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter, Mark Furner, is adopt­ing the three mon­keys ap­proach to La­bor’s pro­posed dra­co­nian veg­e­ta­tion man­age­ment changes.

He sees noth­ing, hears noth­ing, and def­i­nitely says noth­ing. When Queens­land farm­ers are up against the wall, their key rep­re­sen­ta­tive in the La­bor Gov­ern­ment is miss­ing in ac­tion.

While th­ese laws will se­verely im­pact farm­ers’ abil­ity to sus­tain­ably man­age and de­velop their busi­nesses, the min­is­ter is mute and hid­ing some­where in Bris­bane. It’s his job to sup­port Queens­land’s hard­work­ing farm­ers and gra­ziers, who have their liveli­hoods on the chop­ping block over this is­sue.

Yet on this cru­cial and wide-rang­ing is­sue, the min­is­ter has not ex­tended the same courtesy to Queens­land farm­ers with no reg­u­la­tory im­pact state­ment car­ried out to as­sess the dam­age th­ese laws will in­flict on agri­cul­ture.

Furner should be fight­ing for the more than 26,000 farm busi­nesses di­rectly em­ploy­ing 60,000 Queens­lan­ders and sup­port­ing more than 315,000 jobs through­out the agri­cul­tural sup­ply chain.

His­tory will harshly judge this fee­ble min­is­ter for re­fus­ing to stand up in the Cab­i­net room and chal­lenge green-con­trolled min­is­ters like Jackie Trad and Steven Miles when so many ru­ral fam­i­lies have their necks on the line.

The LNP is stand­ing with farm­ers to fight La­bor’s cam­paign to win green votes at the ex­pense of ru­ral Queens­land.

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