Menzies House

Laws of the land create an unjust environment

Menzies House Contributor John Mikkelsen, writing in The Punch, has another good piece on the erosion of private property rights: 

Justice may be blind, but many Australian farmers find the scales are tipped against them as they struggle to come to terms with a growing minefield of environmental regulations on top of other natural enemies.

They are not fighting the concept of land management, but the way in which their properties can be ‘locked up’ or confiscated without proper compensation. They can be prosecuted for something suddenly illegal under frequent amendments to vegetation laws which can be applied retrospectively. The farmer is virtually presumed guilty until innocence can be proven, often at great expense.

Those who live in cities and urban areas might find this difficult to comprehend. The following events are more suited to a communist dictatorship but they happened in our “free country” …

A former New South Wales grazier tells of how a helicopter zoomed low over her property, startling cattle and horses, including one ridden by her teenage daughter.

She claims this was part of intimidation and threats stemming from a legal clearing permit over a small portion of the land. This conflicted with a later wilderness nomination over part of the property bordering a national park.

Eventually the family lost their costly battle to keep the place they thought was paradise and last year she gave evidence under protection to the Senate inquiry into native vegetation laws.

In her own words:

I had high conservation on my land, endangered ecological communities, threatened species, the biodiversity jack pot! 
I had a legal clearing permit that did not interfere with any of the biodiversity.

I had a productive property, good income. Then I had a Wilderness Nomination over my land. This assessment identified where my family lived and worked. It was on public display for every green extremist group to comment on - but more than that - to physically threaten my children, my spouse, to ring and threaten to burn us out in the middle of the night, out of our home, hover over our children in a helicopter and have our young daughter dragged on her horse.

Why? Because we had a legal clearing permit, but we also had a Wilderness Nomination; two legislations at loggerheads, with a family, and an environment that we looked after actively, caught in the middle.

We were forced off our property, which is now a national park. We lost $2.4 million for ‘the good of the environment’.

Click here to read the rest.

John Mikkelsen is a long-term journalist, former regional newspaper editor (Gladstone Observer) now regular columnist and freelance writer. 

Farmers fight droughts, floods and lengthy legal battles

Menzies House contributor John Mikkelsen, writing in ABC's The Drum, discusses the violation of farmers' private property rights:

Floods and droughts are accepted enemies of that special breed of Australians who make their living from the land, but now they face a more insidious threat to their livelihood.

They can cope when flood rains wash away the first decent crops in years and erode fertile fields once parched by drought. But when their basic rights are eroded in the form of harsh environmental laws, many are driven to bankruptcy, forced to leave the land, or in extreme cases, take their life.

That may sound melodramatic but it’s a stark reality to a number of rural Australians who have found themselves facing costly and prolonged legal battles over claimed breaches of a growing number of vegetation management and other “green” regulations.

Some cases have received national recognition, such as former ACT farmer Peter Spencer who drew international attention to property rights with his 52-day Tower of Hope hunger strike. Two years on, his court hearings continue.

West Australian farmer Maxwell Szulc, last year was jailed for 90 days after clearing 40 hectares for fire breaks on his own property. On his release, Szulc said his stint in jail had strengthened his resolve to fight for landowners' rights. Another WA couple, Matt and Janet Thompson, invested millions of dollars in their feedlot property before coming under siege from receivers attempting to evict them and their four young children after a long-running dispute with the Department of Environment and Conservation. 

Click here to keep reading

John Mikkelsen is a long-term journalist, former regional newspaper editor (Gladstone Observer) now regular columnist and freelance writer.