Certain rural landholders are trying to make land tenure an issue in the 2010 federal election.
These landowners are upset at state restrictions on their ability to clear land of native vegetation and hold an erroneous belief that the Australian Government has 'stolen' their ability to take advantage of any carbon credits this land might produce.
This drive to roll back state law by making the Federal Government politically uncomfortable in an election year may not be as easily undertaken as it first appeared, when the initial reaction to their announcement of a lead-off campaign rally was rather underwhelming in a regional area which has an established rural component in direct competition with a growing residential sector for occupation and use of coastal lands.
On 2 February 2010 The Daily Examiner published this editorial:
Farmers and land use
THE notion that farmers should be allowed to do whatever they like with 'their' land needs to be debunked.
The issue was highlighted during the past two months by Peter Spencer, who went on a hunger strike trying to get a Royal Commission into government policies preventing him from clearing vegetation from his land.
Without going into the rights and wrongs of his case, there are broader issues at play.
Forget vegetation for a moment and look at water.
If a water course runs through a farmer's land, does that give him or her the right to take whatever they like and leave other landholders downstream with nothing? Of course not. Water is considered a community resource and does not belong to any individual.
If a farmer or landholder proposed a toxic industry on their land, should no-one have the right to question that industry? Again, of course not.
All landholders, urban and rural, have to abide by local, state and federal government decisions that affect what they can do on 'their' land because what they do on 'their' land has an impact on others.
It is the same with land clearing.
No landholder should be able to clear swathes of vegetation from their land without first determining what effect that has on others around them.
That said, if a farmer buys land and the guidelines for the use of that land change, the community via its government should adequately compensate them for any commercial losses they suffer as a result of those changes.
But to suggest the community has no interest or right to determine what happens on private property is erroneous.
What farmers do on their land affects others.
And this letter to the editor in the same edition:
Giving credit to switched on farmers
A RECENT letter to the editor (January 23) asserted that Australian farmers don't receive any compensation for carbon credits sold here or overseas.
Now, I don't know what the writer had been told but this is not correct. Here is a simple explanation of the issue at hand.
"Carbon credits are a financial reward for activities that reduce the levels of carbon dioxide accumulating in the atmosphere. There are a large number of different carbon trading schemes in the world, some of which date back to as early as 1995. A carbon trade can simply be an agreement between two parties. For the term 'carbon credits' to be used, the emission reduction or biosequestration to which the credits apply must be subject to verification by an accredited certificate provider." [Dr Christine Jones, March 2007]
There are many registered Australian companies offering carbon credits for sale and some farmers on freehold land are participating in creating these credits and getting paid for their efforts. The farmers who are taking advantage of emerging markets in relation to national and international greenhouse gas abatement targets are those who have done their research and decided to involve themselves - not just sit back and whinge about how bad things are.
When it comes to any carbon sequestration total which is credited to the national ledger by the United Nations under the Kyoto Protocol, neither the Commonwealth nor Australian states receive any saleable credits from this at all because this particular total is a simple inventory accounting device to measure the nation's adherence to its international undertakings, however, government entities can buy existing carbon credits on the open market to offset their own activities.
As for the NSW Native Vegetation Act also mentioned in that same letter, a little diligent research will show that the matter is not as straightforward as any speakers at the Lismore Cooee Meeting might have suggested.
This year is an election year and it behoves us all to be careful of the political aims and aspirations of vested interests.
Judith M. Melville, Yamba
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