IPA: Let farmers do what they do best

By Vivienne Crompton
First published [here] by the Institute of Public Affairs
Cross posted under the terms & conditions of IPA's copyright


The Colac Otway Shire council has faced local outrage over the proposed new laws that will place “draconian” restrictions on how farmers manage their land.  The council encompasses some of the great Western district farming areas of Colac, Cressy and Beeac, including the popular coastal destinations of Wye River and Apollo Bay.




The Shire has brought in the new laws to keep it in step with the Department of Environment and Primary Industries plans to remap the biodiversity and native vegetation maps across Victoria, leading some to warn that other councils may follow suit.

The Weekly Times notes that the proposed overlays on private property “can restrict ploughing of native grass, removal of fallen tree limbs for use as firewood, timber harvesting from purpose-planted native trees and even removal of rocks.”   What is perhaps the most galling about the proposed rules is that it in fact punishes farmers who have striven to be good conservationists by planting and caring for native species on their properties, and yet those who have stripped the land back will have no restrictions placed on them at all.  Local Beech Forest cattle breeder and business man, Ray Cooper, explains that farmers have been less considerate in their treatment of  the land “won’t end up having these overlays because they don’t have the native trees.”
Beeac farmer and former president of the Colac Shire, John Daffy, states that this is a prohibitive intrusion into private citizens’ lives.

What it means is they’ve got control of your property…Their fines are so prohibitive that you could be nearly forced off your property…

Concern has been so great that Daffy has formed a local action group to try and prevent the changes.  Yesterday’s deadline for the public outcry to the proposed changes illustrated that

Agriculture is the primary economic driver [for the Shire]. Why would you crucify your farmers?

Furthermore, it will affect the local economy, as farmers and businesses will be driven to trade in different areas as the new law will make it “very, very difficult for people to do business.”  The Institute of Public Affairs has written before on the impact that native vegetation and environmental laws have: please read them here and here.  The end result of making the good conservationist practices that Australian farmers are renowned for prohibitively expensive and overly regulated, will be to actively discourage the preservation of native species.  Perhaps more importantly though, it will decimate local farming communities, as people flee to make an easier, less micro-managed, career and businesses elsewhere

About Vivienne Crompton

Vivienne Crompton is a Researcher for the Legal Rights Project. Undertaking her Bachelor of Arts at the University of Melbourne, she majored in both History and Archaeology, focusing on Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Furthering her studies, Vivienne undertook the Juris Doctor, the University of Melbourne’s new graduate degree in law.

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IPA : Anti-Discrimination Bill

There has been some worrying comment about the Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Bill that the Federal Gillard Labor government wishes bring into effect. A series of articles in The Australian newspaper and elsewhere has given a number of reasons to be concerned.

Today the Institute of Public Affairs has released its submission to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee. Printed below is the Executive Summary from IPA’s submission. To read the entire submission go to the following web address http://ipa.org.au/library/publication/1356055327_document_211212_submission_-_anti-discrimination.pdf 

The exposure draft of the Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Bill 2012 [“the draft Bill”] represents a dramatic and radical attack on Australians’ fundamental freedoms under the guise of reforming anti-discrimination law.

The draft Bill makes government the arbiter of behaviour within a substantial range of private political and personal activities. The draft Bill would politicise and regulate private interpersonal relationships in a way they never have been in Australia.

In a very real sense, these laws are not anti-discrimination laws. They are laws designed to give the government authority over our lives in completely new and unjustifiable arenas. This is an excessive and indefensible increase in state power.

The proposed laws give the government explicit power to interfere in almost all facets of human interaction including eighteen areas of public and private life, such as political opinion, religion and social origin. The government is also required to decide what falls into these categories, making the state the total and final arbiter on our most fundamental liberties.

By redefining discrimination to be anything which “offends, insults or humiliates” the proposed law will extend the infamous provisions of the Racial Discrimination Act that led to the Andrew Bolt case to almost every area of public and private life. By expanding the grounds on which people can claim to be discriminated against to include areas such as “political opinion” the law will stifle genuine discussion on almost every topic for fear of legal consequences.

This draft Bill has deservedly been criticised from across the political spectrum as a massive overreach and an unjustified curtailment of individual freedoms.

Democratic governments rely on the free exchange of opinion for their legitimacy. This draft Bill, if enacted, would dramatically limit freedom of speech in Australia.

This submission also raises other concerning elements of the draft Bill. The draft Bill substantially reverses the burden of proof onto the defendant. It introduces a large amount of uncertainty and ambiguity into anti-discrimination law.

The draft Bill introduces a subjective test for decisions about whether the law has been breached. Subjective tests are impossible to comply with and should never be used by the courts.

There is no justification for such a dramatic overhaul of anti-discrimination law, and no place for such extraordinary limits on freedom of speech.