NSW farmers continue to suffer as green grind drives rural extinction

By MICHAEL SLOVANOS

THE NSW Labor government, backed by the Greens, is targeting the state’s farmers for extinction by making land holding and farming increasingly beholden to edicts issued by environment and land management departments.

Private property and food production is not a factor in the thinking of the green bureaucrats, who have been indoctrinated in environmentalist ideology since primary school and have gone on to earn their “environmental management” degrees from universities.

Their latest weapon in their decades-long war against rural NSW is to strategically sprinkle the state with so-called pink zones that involve increasingly strict prohibitions on access and “vegetation protection”.

Even mainstream media can see the injustice in the imposition of this latest regulatory regime, as our featured video reveals.

These departments have not learned the lesson from 2014, when 79-year-old farmer Ian Turnbull shot dead 51-year-old environmental compliance officer Glen Turner on a property north of Moree, in Croppa Creek.

Turnbull was accused of clearing 3000 “trees” in a case that reached the Land and Environment Court. He would have faced fines in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

At the time Moree Shire Plains Mayor Katrina Humphries said she was “not surprised this has happened”. “Because I know people have been pushed and pushed and pushed. This is their life and this is their livelihood,” she told AAP.

The hypocrisy of environment departments that issue protection orders on trees on and around farmers’ properties while turning a blind eye to widespread destruction of trees for wind farms, roads and coal seam projects fuels the deep resentment that is continues to boil across the rural landscape.

An example of the bureaucratic disdain for the farming community was recently seen near Albury where cattle farmer John Carter was arrested by NSW police for attempting to attend to his herd, which had been confiscated by the local office of Local Land Services.

Carter was accused by the Rural Crime Prevention Team, a division of NSW Police, of illegally using stock reserves to graze his cattle, neglecting treatment of the animals and fraud for allegedly unpaid money owed to Local Land Services. Carter denied all the charges.

The farmer hit the nail on the head when he told Avi Yemini of Rebel News: “A lot of these people (in government departments) don’t want cattle grazing around the world – they think cattle are the enemy to people.”

There are about 60 Local Land Services offices across the state enforcing a multitude of land use rules and regulations, such as the new pink zones, created by the use of a so-called “transitional native vegetation regulatory map” that identifies areas of land containing “category 2-sensitive and vulnerable regulated land” to which restrictions for clearing native vegetation apply.

“You may own areas mapped as sensitive, vulnerable or category 2 (regulated) land, which are natural capital assets that could generate economic benefits,” the NSW Department of Environment states on its website. “These areas can potentially provide economic opportunities, including: 1. biodiversity credits:generating biodiversity credits.”

We don’t know of any farmers who wish to generate “biodiversity credits” but we certainly know a lot of farmers have had a gutful of meddling green bureaucrats taking control of their land.

According to a report in the West Wyalong Advocate last month, senior officials from the Department of Environment, Climate Change, Energy and Water (DECCEW), Local Land Services and the NSW Department of Primary Industry and Regional Development, visited the Bland Shire to “assess firsthand the concerns raised by local farmers” over pink mapping designations.

“Farmers in the region argue that these classifications are based on outdated and inaccurate data, leading to unjust limitations on land management practices essential for their livelihoods,” the newspaper reported.

The delegation included Steven Cox, Director of Forestry, Land Use & Marine Policy at the DECCEW and Liam Hogg, Director of Policy at Local Land Services, NSW Department of Primary Industry and Regional Development.

The bureaucrats fronted farmers at the Bland Shire Council chambers, where farmers showcased the discrepancies between the ‘pink mapping’ classifications and the actual on-ground vegetation, and then visited several district farms – all great PR for the big boys from the city.

At Gaye Wheatley’s Arcadia property she described coppicing and rolling regenerative rolling practices, which are misclassified as ‘clearing’ under existing legislation.

One of those meeting the bureaucrats was Annabelle Davis, founder of the Bland Landholders Right to Farm Group, who wants coppicing recognised as a legitimate land management tool.

“The delegation left West Wyalong with a clearer understanding of the on-ground realities and the challenges faced by farmers. Discussions are set to continue, focusing on the vegetation and rectifying mapping inaccuracies, recognizing sustainable land management practices, and ensuring that landholders’ rights are upheld,” she told local media.

“The farmers of Bland Shire remain committed to working collaboratively with the NSW government to achieve a fair and accurate representation of their land, ensuring its sustainable use for generations to come,” she added.

Cairns News would caution Ms Davis that “working collaboratively” with land and environment departments will likely ensure the current policies set under the UN Agenda 2030 framework continue.

That overarching policy is to depopulate rural regions and move people into big cities or what the UN calls “Human Habitat Zones”.

Global planners have already designated 14 major regions called “Biomes” that are made up of 846 “eco regions”, of which Australia provides 10.

Under this system agriculture will likely be turned over to corporate factory farms that, in accordance with global climate policy, will gradually phase out livestock and churn out artificial protein or very limited real meat supplies designed for the elites.

Ms Davis and the Bland landholders would be advised not to elect their traditional National and Liberal representatives at the next election and send a very strong anti-globallisation message by voting One Nation, which has pledged to dump the federal monstrosity known as the Department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water.

This federal department and its NSW counterpart of almost exactly the same name, reflect the idea of total government control of people, land and natural resources.

This system is being sanctified by including “indigenous peoples” as “partners” in land management, for instance, the Queensland Government’s Indigenous Land Use Agreements (ILUA), which are “voluntary, legally enforceable agreements between Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islander peoples who hold or may hold native title, and other parties, such as mining companies, pastoralists, or government entities, regarding the use and management of land or waters.”

As of July 2024, ILUAs were registered across 51.5% of Queensland, with 915 registered agreements for areas and body corporates.