Peter Spencer's background story Part 1 of 3

Peter Spencer with his oldest daughter, Sarah in 1980,
after he purchased his farm at Shannon's Flat near Cooma, NSW

In 1980, Peter Spencer bought 14,000 acres in southern New South Wales (near Shannon’s flats and on the ACT border). It had previously been significantly cleared during the 1930’s and 40’s, however, regrowth had occurred so that only about 2000 acres was uncleared at the time of purchase.

Throughout the 1980's Peter was involved in tourism in the Papua New Guinea highlands. He became close to Jiga tribesman Paias Wingti, who when he regained office as Prime Minister of PNG bought Peter to Port Moresby in the mid 1990's. Peter drafted a National Law and Order policy which dealt with corruption, which later may have been the reason an attempt was made on his life and encouraged a permanent return to Australia to begin work as a farmer on Shannon's Flat.

Peter returned to find the laws had changed and he could no longer manage the regrowth to return the land to productivity. In 1997, the Federal Government under John Howard decided to meet its Kyoto Protocol commitments with shifty accounting: they offset greenhouse-gas emissions with uncleared vegetation on private property. To avoid any obligation for compensation (under the Australian constitution), legislation to prevent land clearing was used at State level. NSW Premier Bob Carr introduced the Native Vegetation Act.

Peter attempted to use his land gainfully with a trout fishing enterprise – this ran into water problems. He set up a fine wool breeding program (in association with CSIRO) – the Canberra fires of 2003 destroyed surrounding national parks, driving dogs and kangaroos onto his property, killing many of his sheep.

In 2005, Peter commenced legal action for just compensation for the loss of his property rights.

Read - 'The war on farmers' by Peter Spencer, written in 2006

Further references for the above background information:

http://evacuationgrounds.blogspot.com/p/peter-spencer.html

'Farmers are pushed beyond limit' by Micheal Duffy

'White tribesman at home in a wild world', The Australian 

'Hunger strike up a wind mast is an act of tragedies', by Micheal Duffy

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Peter Spencer's background story Part 2 of 3

Peter Spencer's background story Part 3 of 3