Pavetto: demonisation of farmers must stop

The 25-year-old LNP candidate comes from a fifth generation sugar cane growing family and has worked as an economist for Canegrowers.

He was also a lobbyist for the Alliance of Electricity Consumers before the federal election campaign started seven weeks ago where he’s taking on veteran independent MP Bob Katter for Kennedy.

Mr Pavetto told Fairfax Agricultural Media land clearing laws and protecting the Great Barrier Reef were two core issues where a growing rural and urban divide existed which was prompting regulatory proposals targeting farmers that had more to do with politics, than pragmatic reality.

He said a view was developing across all political parties that the reef was in crisis and farmers were to blame but in reality “the reef is not in crisis and farmers are not to blame”.

“There’s a growing and overwhelming view that’s forming that the reef is under threat by farming in far north Queensland,” he said.

“That view has really come about by a very concerted push from the environmental lobby but it’s not based on fact and it certainly doesn’t take into any consideration the work that the farming community has done over the past few years addressing concerns that have existed.”

Mr Pavetto said it was easy to make scape-goats of the farming community and to keep blaming farmers instead of looking harder at the facts during policy development.

“A lot of claims that are being made about the reef are wildly exaggerated,” he said.

“The worst offenders are the Greens and they’re supported by groups like the World Wildlife Fund, the Wilderness Society and Australian Conservation Foundation.

“All of these groups make a profit from the misery of our farming community.

“They make quite a lot of money fundraising and playing on the heart strings of people in urban areas that have really no connection to the reef or any real understanding of what’s really going on.”

But Mr Pavetto said the Australian Institute of Marine Science had a different view to the ones held by “radical green groups” regarding the science of the reef, while he also supported an audit by James Cook University.

“The best way to go about it is to have a good audit of the science being used because at the moment a lot of wild claims are being made that aren’t being proved,” he said.

“Once the claim is out there it’s often perceived as fact but in reality that’s not the case and the science is being questioned.

“It all comes back to this urban push to blame the farming community for everything that’s going on without taking into account any of the work being done and millions of dollars invested by industry itself.”

Mr Pavetto said that investment into practice-change had led to significant reductions in nitrogen and chemical use on-farm which was driven by industry and not green groups based in urban areas.

He said land clearing was the next best example of the ongoing demonisation of farmers and double standards underpinning regulatory action.

Mr Pavetto said wall-to-wall land clearing seemed to be accepted in urban areas to build houses or it was “completely fine” to bulldoze a koala habitat.

But he said if you wanted to manage land for cattle grazing in regional areas or go into cropping, or to manage existing cropping land with regrowth vegetation, “you’re demonised for it”.

Mr Pavetto said the Coalition’s policy announcements for the reef during the election campaign were focussed on incentives while the ALP’s funding or regulatory proposals supported penalties and controls.

But he said overall, “it’s all about large sums of money being spent on protecting the reef from the farming community when there’s no clear proof that the farming community is what’s causing the problem”.

He said the issues with the reef largely related to cyclones and subsequent physical damage but farmers were still blamed.

“This isn’t a political partisan thing, this is a regional Australia versus urban Australia issue where we’ve got this push to blame our farmers for everything but that’s not the case,” he said.

During the election campaign, the WWF has demanded all political parties strengthen their policies to act on global warming and “local farm pollution” to secure the reef’s future and the $6 billion it generates in tourism and 70,000 tourism jobs.

An alliance of 40 environmental groups including Greenpeace, WWF, the Wilderness Society and the ACF say the Coalition should support an independent national environment protection agency, like the Opposition and Greens do.

Labor Shadow Climate Change Minister Mark Butler has promised, in the first 100 days of forming government, an elected Shorten Labor Government would convene an expert reference group to work with industry and environmental groups to develop the detail of new environment laws including retaining federal government powers of approval.

But the Institute of Public Affairs says major project developers, in agriculture, mining and other productive sectors, need swift and uncomplicated environmental approvals so they can “get on” with investment and job creation.

The IPA says the economic cost of regulation stands at $176 billion - or 11 per cent of GDP - with environmental regulations accounting for a major part of that total.

Last week, IPA Senior Fellow Dr Mikayla Novak said centralising environmental approvals would serve as an invitation for activists and lawyers to slow down the onset of major projects through frivolous yet costly litigation.

 “For a more agile Australian economy we need to reduce green tape costs on new ventures, rather than worsen them for the sake of an ideological mission to hand all policy control to Canberra,” Dr Novak said.

Environment Minister Greg Hunt said the Coalition had committed to an additional $1b for an existing $2b in funding for reef protection projects including $460m in grants for farmers and authorities to reduce run-off, sediment and nitrogen.

“All the things that should be happening are happening and this is what the scientists say needs to be done to reduce the sediment, to reduce the nitrogen, to reduce the pesticides, to repair the gullies, to work with groups such as Greening Australia or Conservation Volunteers Australia, to work with AgForce or the Landcare groups, to work with the Wet Tropics Management Authority and others on the physical repair and recovery and reducing emissions,” he said.

“The two great things that we have to do.”

Mr Hunt said the government had also provided $40 million expressly to focus on nitrogen reduction by working with farmers on an incentives basis.

“I understand there are some groups that demonise farmers, I’m not in that view,” he said.

“I think farmers are great environmental stewards.

“They hate this notion of where some of the groups that do no physical work but simply campaign politically, but never lift a finger personally, attack the farmers who are out on the land everyday repairing riverbanks, ensuring the gullies are filled in, that we’re making real progress.

“So I’m voting for farmers, not for some of these groups that physically never actually do anything, they just talk and talk and attack people on the land.”