The historic vote in last week’s Parliament to reject the Palaszczuk government’s proposed vegetation management laws was an important moment for people living in the bush.
It was a victory for common sense. It showed that good policy can overcome bad politics.
It showed what can be achieved when our industry unites and sends a message to politicians that ‘enough is enough’.
Thank you to everyone who came to one of the rallies, who drove for hours to speak at the Agriculture and Environment Committee hearings, who contributed to the fighting fund, who told their personal stories to the media and got the voice of farmers out via social media.
This definitely had an effect on the politicians with a lot of stories about the individual impacts on producers mentioned during the debate in Parliament.
I’d especially like to thank all the LNP MPs, the Katter Party and the Member for Cook Billy Gordon for voting against these laws.
AgForce has always said we are willing to work through a science and evidence based process on this legislation.
Unfortunately, the Queensland government has been more interested in green politics than developing good policies and the way some Ministers ramped up the Reef rhetoric before, during and after the debate was completely over the top.
Let’s hope now that we can all step back and come up with a process that will lead to laws that have bi-partisan support, that stand the test of time and provide certainty to landholders.
We all care about the environment we live and work in every day, and we manage vegetation so we can provide food for Australian and overseas consumers.
We won’t be resting on our laurels and thinking the job is done now these laws have been defeated in Parliament. While we may have won this round, the battle is far from over.
We’ll keep working hard on your behalf to ensure all Queenslanders understand that all we are asking for is fair laws for farmers so we can grow our businesses to produce more food and create more jobs.
