PRA 2014 Conference - Proactive protection of your rights

Property Rights Australia media release:

Proactive protection of your rights – Coal Seam Gas & beef roundtables  

Property Rights Australia is offering those who attend their 11^th annual conference a couple of opportunities seldom available on their own let alone packaged in the two day event in

Roma on 12 – 13 June 2014.

 

 

Speaking about the conference theme of, proactive protection of your rights PRA chair Joanne Rea said, “a field trip and presentations will give practical insights how you can be pre-emptive in protecting your rights. The main subjects covered at this conference will be the resource sector especially coal seam gas impact on landowners and also the proposed Global roundtable for sustainable beef.”

Day one has a full itinerary of property visits including a full scale developing coal seam gas field; not usually available for the general public. Connecting infrastructure for CSG fields such as high voltage Powerlink transmission lines will also be covered on the field trip. Attendees will be able to view infrastructure and talk directly to the landholders about their experiences.

On day 1 visit to Brett Griffin’s property “Sydeva”, north of Yuelba which has over 100 coal seam gas wells under development

Day two is the full-day conference with expert guest speakers including from leading legal firms. Mrs Rea said that, “PRA has endeavoured to bring together law firms who specialise in representing landholders and have an active hands-on presence in the Surat Basin. This creates the opportunity for attendees to access the combine expertise rarely gathered together at the one venue.”

 Member for Warrego Howard Hobbs will open the conference and Senator Barry O’Sullivan, proposer of the “Square Table” for beef will be the keynote speaker.

There will be one session of three speakers and a question & answer time devoted entirely to the crucial underground water resource. “Even if you are totally unaware of any imminent resource projects there are simple practical measures the landholder can undertake now with property bores that will give some protection to water supply in the future.”, Mrs Rea said, “This conference is planned to cater to provide knowledge from the absolute novice to those experienced in negotiations with resource companies with targeted talks by high calibre speakers.”

The conference is open to all and the cost has been reduced as far as possible so as to be affordable. Considering the access throughout the day to leading law firms the conference offers high value for money.

Please contact Property Rights Australia 07 4921 3430 to book your place.

2014 Field Trip & Conference/AGM Online Registration

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WWF: Seductive songs of sustainability

 

Last week the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef met in Brisbane and in various media leading members were at pains to give assurance that there was nothing to fear. It is interesting how the language has changed from the original roundtable meeting in Denver 2010, to the presumptuous launch of the Australian Roundtable [ See: here & here ] at Beef week 2012 that failed after grassroots resistance, to the current day. All in the effort to entice Australian beef producers to the GRSB sustainability principles.

In last week’s issue of the Queensland Country Life Ruaraidh  Petre, Executive Director, GRSB, in a lot of feel good words carefully avoided any mention of the roughly 15 other commodity roundtables both active and proposed and the instigator of them all WWF. Petre repeats the current GRSB mantra that its critics are fearful and adds the charge of conspiracy theorists.

 

Senator Ron Boswell on the facing page strongly warns against involvement with GRSB. Boswell is at the end of a long distinguished career. He has no need to whip up any fear campaign for re-election; this is more a question of legacy, a deep felt desire that an agreement perilous to the long term future of the beef industry does not slip in at the end of his watch. Boswell, as has Property Rights Australia, has done research beyond the confines that Petre and Cattle Council Australia would like to keep our attention. Our warnings are based on real data.

Then on the opinion page of last week’s issue are the words of incoming Senator David Leyonhjelm. He outlines the familiar course used in creating a commodity roundtable; once in place fees introduced, standards raised and governments pressured to make the code mandatory. Leyonhjelm writes that the beneficial promises made for sustainability certification will be mere noise and the downside of not participating, bluff.

 PRA urges beef producers to be very sceptical of the assurance that WWF is but one voice on the roundtable. WWF had gained ascendancy over the major players even before it was convened. The last resistance was supressed in the lead up to the soy roundtable. [See: here, here ]The campaign against soy was based largely on production in Brazil. Nowadays the environmental groups have so much control that Jason Clay from WWF’s Market Transformation Initiative can blazingly state in public that WWF will instigate a finance roundtable which will include principles for sustainable lending in Brazil first because, “that is where we have the most traction.” It appears the traction is so complete in Brazil that Greenpeace was recently reported as directing beef processors including JBS where they could or could not buy cattle from.

Beware that our industry does not become shipwrecked listening to the sirens singing seductive songs of sustainability.

Previous published related post
Are they awake?  

Are they awake?

 

In May 2012 Donna Laframboise, journalist and author from Toronto, Canada, declared in a blog article, The World Wakes Up to the World WildlifeFund.  

Donna Laframboise sights two recent articles, the first by Christopher Booker the veteran, well known journalist for the UK newspaper The Telegraph called, How climate change has gotWorldwide Fund for Nature bamboozled. Very kindly the second article recommended was by myself and called, Can producers trustWWF to be accountable? 

Christopher Booker writes about how far WWF has come from its formation in 1961 “for the admirable purpose of campaigning to save species endangered by human activity, it has morphed in the last 20 years into something very different, more akin to a multinational corporation.”

WWF now, Booker writes, “is the largest, richest and most influential environmental lobbying organisation in the world.” WWF is gaining increasing revenues from partnerships with governments; using its iconic panda logo undertakes commercial activities and by emotional appeals to the public for funds to solve dire environmental problems as Booker says the “most fashionable and lucrative of environmental causes, the “battle to halt climate change”. 

The opinion article, Can producers trust WWF to beaccountable, was published just days before Beef Expo 2012 in Rockhampton during which the Sustainable Beef roundtable seminar was held chaired by Guy Fitzhardinge, who also as a WWF Australia Governor is charged to “use their expertise, influence and networks to enhance WWF’s ability to achieve its programs in Australia and the region.”  Those attending the seminar made it clear that there was little trust by beef producers of WWF’s involvement in the proposed formation of the Australia Roundtable for Sustainable Beef (ARSB). There was also the admission by WWF Australia sustainability manager Rob Cairns that not all of WWF’s campaigns in the past that impacted upon Australian beef producers were science based. An Agforce representative expressed their reservations and NT Cattlemen’s Association executive director Luke Bowen made some poignant observations.

 Photo sourced Beef Central of Guy Fitzhardinge

The debate over the need for an Australian roundtable for sustainable beef and should Australian beef producers accept the involvement of WWF raged for most of 2012 starting in February when WWF placed an advertisement in Rural Press’s Queensland Country Life (QCL) for the position of Sustainable beef project coordinator. There were a number of articles in Australia’s online beef production publication, Beef Central and there was only a rare week when if there wasn’t an article about this issue, there was a letter to the editor in the QCL. Property Rights Australia (PRA) was very active providing well researched information into the debate and took the strong stand of no involvement with WWF. Senator Ron Boswell, retiring next election after a 30 year “remarkable career”, made two strong speeches to the Senate and was published twice on this topic at Quadrant Online which was subsequently published at QCL. Senator Boswell’s endeavours were not missed by prominent national opinion columnist Piers Akerman who wrote [this article] fully endorsed Boswell.  

All this time the national organisation that is supposed to represent the interest of Australian beef producers, Cattle Council of Australia (CCA) ignored all criticism of its unreserved engagement with WWF and did not try to answer factual information presented into the debate that clearly showed the need for great caution. The one time that CCA did consult with beef producers about its future operations with the online survey, Your say beef 2015 and beyond; the highest number of responses was to the question about engagement with WWF with the overwhelming majority saying no.

In February 2013 Senator Ron Boswell wrote,

“primary producers and their peak organisations needed to take a united stand against plans by environmental non-government organisations (ENGOs) to influence their production methods.

"If environmental activists get their way, farmers will be paying thousands of dollars a year to get a 'green tick' just so they can continue marketing their products," he said.

"Groups like WWF and Greenpeace want to force all our primary producers into expensive certification schemes.

"They have started with timber and seafood and are moving into beef, sugar, cotton and other commodities as well. Grassroots producers and their representative organisations must fight these schemes or they will cripple primary industry."

"One of the ENGOs' most successful tactics has been to pressure companies occupying strategic positions in the supply chain, such as dominant buyers," he said. "For example, WWF is sitting at the head of the table in talks with the likes of McDonald's, our largest single buyer of Australian beef, and JBS, our largest meat processor, at the so-called Australian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef. WWF convenes roundtables, such as that for design standards, which are ultimately certified by an independent third party. The participants then have to publicly commit to producing, buying and selling within these standards, to be part of the commodity roundtable, forming what WWF calls 'a chain of sustainability'.

"For farmers, it adds up to a lot of money. These are schemes that cost individual producers thousands of dollars for the initial certification process and then regular, ongoing costs for auditing.

"It's completely unnecessary because our primary industries already work sustainably, but it produces a river of gold for the ENGOs and their mates doing farm inspections and auditing.” 

Central Qld cattle producer and PRA board member, Ashley McKay, in the March 7^th issue of the QCL had a letter to the editor, featured as, Issue of the week. Ashley McKay congratulates Senator Ron Boswell’s “excellent and accurate denunciation of the WWF’s sustainability schemes” and gives examples of the multiple times WWF have been proven to have made grossly exaggerated, emotionalised claims in what Booker called the “most fashionable and lucrative of environmental causes, the “battle to halt climate change”. Donna Laframboise wrote that the world is waking up to the WWF but it appears not Australian farming industry bodies; Ashley continues:

“How much more evidence is needed for CCA and Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA) to wake up and accept the Greens and WWF have promoted policies and actions damaging the cattle industry for some 20 years and cost us uncountable millions of dollars in lost production and diminished asset value.”

On the same day Ashley McKay’s letter has been published both CCA and ARSB chair and WWF Australia Governor, Guy Fitzhardinge issued separate media releases. They can be read in [this article] at Beef Central. Turns out to be a good news, bad news scenario; plans for the Australia roundtable for sustainable beef has been scrapped. This could be seen as a small victory for beef producers. However CCA are now joining the Global roundtable for sustainable beef.

If Cattle Council of Australia are awake they certainly aren’t listening. Why? Well you tell me and you can do so by commenting below. I have a theory but that will have to wait to the next installment.