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 Does Howard still have it, or has the bush really been let down? 

Does Howard still have it, or has the bush really been let down?

THE election campaign is almost four weeks down, with two to go for political leaders to ram home why they should be charged with leading the country.

While Rudd presses the flesh up and down the east coast of Australia, John Howard has been working to outline his government's competency as an economic manager, which is better able to manage interest rate rises.

In an interview with Rural Press last week, a still energised Mr Howard said it would be a mistake to say all of rural Australia was facing economic hardship or difficulty, when in fact there were many regional areas "doing very well".

But Mr Rudd has revealed to Rural Press that the Coalition has watched over a decline in services to the bush and let farmers "blow in the breeze" in the challenge to adapt to climate change.

While Mr Howard appears to "still have it" when it comes to passionately believing in the future of rural Australia, Mr Rudd is firm in his belief the bush has been let down, and said rural Australia is very much a part of Labor's social and economic agenda.

But farmers will be carefully watching to see whether Mr Rudd's talk relates to action, because there has been little heard from the Opposition until now to suggest agriculture is a headline event at Labor's show.

Roads have been the major area for regional commitments by Labor and the Coalition, with a series of announcements (and largely re-announcements) about road funding priorities for the next decade and beyond.

Live exports, while considered to have been an unlikely election issue, have dominated the agricultural election headlines this week, with Labor's admission that negative public opinion could shut the gate on the massive livestock trade.

But Labor has yesterday accused the Coalition of "hypocrisy" with WA Liberal backbencher, Barry Haase, conceding any evidence of animal abuse in the industry in either Australia or the country it exports to could see the Liberals move to close it also.

How do you think the campaign is unfolding?

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Date: Newest first | Oldest first
The best thing the newly elected Rudd government could do for country people is to ensure that genuine and urgent action is taken worldwide on global warming.

We have not even been sitting at the table for the past few years and China and India have used our refusal to ratify Kyoto as an excuse to do nothing.

We need to take a world lead and hopefully that will start happening in a couple of weeks.

Posted by Richard Jones, 9/11/2007 6:40:57 AM
No political party "has it in the bush" and none would have it in any urban area, if only people could hear the message we've been trying to get out to them [in NSW] for 13 years.

The freehold right is the oldest law known to history and now it has been treacheroulsy trashed by all governments Federal and State.

Howard's way is no better yet no one in that sphere of Government will respond to our pleas and the dreadful alternative is to put RUDD in and to seal the lid on our REGULATED future.

Tresspass and an invasion of freehold property rights, is constantly going on; and law abiding good citizens are falling for the oppression and subversion of their rights every day of the week because they believe the propaganda being poured down their necks.

No one believes, that in the Lucky Country any free and so called democratic government [either side] would be so politically determined to bring us under globalised rule and domination that they would take away the right for people to manage their own investment.

Getting rid of Freehold LAND and returning it all to the State has been part of the Labor political agenda for decades.

Like a thief in the night, State Governments have progressively stolen our inherent birthright away until now, we are mere slaves to discriminatory and regressive REGULATION.

Farmers are the most directly affected but its only a matter of days until urban residentials and urban commercial buildings are REGULATED out of existence. When that penny drops all hell will break loose ..... but by then it will be all too late.

As it is now, we are a defacto REPUBLIC, because in the "fee simple" being broken, the direct Constitutional link between a Nation and its inherent Crown-protection is the LAND.

With the management of all 14% freehold land returning to the STATE the State .... if Labor wins Government, the treacherous bastards will have very cleverly severed all ties with the Crown and we will be completely under fascist dictatorship.

Elsewhere what hasn't surfaced is that the Governments have developed a legal cartel no different to Visey Board.

The legal profession has its own 'union' and protects its own through legislation so that getting into Court [in the normally expected sense of being able to put forward a 'case' to be argued] -- that ones' self-determining management rights have now been taken away. is now "politically" impossible.

Getting TRUTH and JUSTICE out into the public arena is like trying to enter the COURT ALCATRAZ CARTEL.


Posted by does Howard still have it in the bush, 9/11/2007 4:00:23 PM
The Coalition will just win.

If they don't and Labor get into power it will

be a sad day for the future. Every one will pay a big price in the future with escalating prices and interest rates. The country will go back into recession.

Posted by wishy, 9/11/2007 5:06:24 PM
re WEMA - So Mr Howard says that he will maintain the single desk , apparently regardless whether WEMA will be able to get the finance or not.

He says 70pc of farmers support Single Desk marketing according to the Ralph report.

If that is so, why has the report not been made public until now ?

Isn't it the case that only about 30pc or so of farmers submitted any views to the Ralph commission? Isn't it also a fact that even the 70pc of that 30 pct supported the single desk only with heavy qualifications?

This coalition created a mess of wheat marketing and their policy is to perpetuate that mess into the future.

All the evidence and various reviews have clearly shown that the Single Desk is costing farmers money, is expensive, prone to corrupt practices and has no effect what so ever on subsidies in other countries !

Why does the Coalition want to cling to such a system ?

regards

Posted by Michael Hein, 9/11/2007 9:32:18 PM
Re:- Election '07: Feds were involved with clearing bans

Well, bully for the Liberal/National Party Coalition.

They have managed to achieve in a short space of time what the left wing of the Labor Party has been trying to achieve for the past 50 years. The painful irony for many private land owners and farmers is in the fact that they voted for this mob, as did I.

To have forever decreased over 350 years of Land Law, that being an estate of inheritance at Common Law, is an achievement that will long live on and is perhaps irreversible.


Posted by Bob, 10/11/2007 12:04:41 AM
I am surprised that the media in general have not questioned Mr Turnbull and Mr Garrett more closely on the subject of “clean coal technology”.

The phrase, Clean Coal Technology, must by definition be categorised as an Oxymoron. It doesn’t matter how you treat coal, gassify it, liquefy it, however you burn it, it still produces prodigious amounts of CO2.

It is an insult to our intelligence that the politicians would try to ram this unproven, untried, theoretical pseudo-science down our throats.

Check out the ABC Catalyst website and others. There is no great amount of support by independent scientists for clean coal technology. Even geosequestration has an amazing lack of support in the science community.

To consider separating CO2 from flue gasses, liquefy it and burying cubic kilometres of it under pressure more than a kilometre underground is to ignore the risks of major break-outs in the future. There would be no escape from suffocation of most life forms over huge areas.

Governments should be investing in known and already proven technology such a wind, wave, geothermal and solar energy as well as bio-fuels. If the coal companies want to continue to sell coal, they have the money to invest in so called mythical clean coal technology. Don't throw hundred of millions in taxpayers money at this. Put it into known clean renewable energy.


Posted by trugger, 10/11/2007 3:54:47 PM
The Howard government and Qld State under Beattie now Bligh both have been strict on landholders and producers of our food to follow the guide lines of little or no land clearing, whilst giving the green light to mining.
Posted by pamea, 11/11/2007 9:35:45 AM
Don't ask Howard or Rudd. Just ask John Anderson former Deputy PM and Leader of the Nationals and supposed champion of the bush.

To quote from his interview with the Australian (November 8, page 7), he said: “there's a little bit of a tendency to ignore what's happening with the third party [the Nationals].”

It seems out of sight out of mind.

Posted by Bush let down, 16/11/2007 6:06:09 PM
I agree wholeheartedly with Richard Jones.

I draw your attention [and the politicians, even] to an Associated Press report of the action taken by President Sarkozy of France. Despite their per capita 1.64 tonnes of C emission, [compared with UK-2.67 and US-5.61] he has embarked on an ambitious program of deeper carbon reductions.

I'm about to send a copy to both Peter Garrett and Malcolm Turnbull. It's certainly a waste of time sending anything of this nature to John Howard or Peter Costello, as they are both Climate Change deniers, along with their mate, Mark Vaile. Any noises made by any of them recently have nothing to do with belief, but everything to do with an election.

Posted by Ron Tuckwell, 19/11/2007 8:20:36 PM
Global Warming is a con! Why do you believe the UN, they are just a bunch of old retired politicians appointed by the current crop of politicians and yet for some reason the UN has become the new "God" and we believe every word they say.

WAKE UP PEOPLE IN THE BUSH YOU ARE BEING CONNED!

Posted by Iced Volvo, 19/11/2007 10:07:52 PM
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Lucy Knight is the Rural Press Canberra Bureau chief based in Parliament House.

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