PRA: Regional Queensland deserves better

Minister for Natural resources & Mines, Andrew Cripps
photo sourced Courier Mail

Regional Queensland deserves better. Agricultural producers did not deserve to be labelled environmental vandals under the previous government and they don’t deserve the slur made by Minister Andrew Cripps when he said [page 3010] that those who did not support the Mineral& Energy Resources (Common Provisions) Bill were:

 “influenced and misled by green groups or certain law firms whose main interest is to generate community concern and discontent.”

This is clearly quite ridiculous, this polarising of the debate is very unhelpful and the Minister should take the time to read the transcript to the Mackay hearing where landowners took the trouble to point out that they have a legitimate view under no influence from any other sector.

At 4 minutes to midnight Tuesday night September 9^th the Queensland Government sold out rural landowner’s property rights with the passing of the Act complete with amendments [page 3104]

The lead up consultation was a pretence and the parliamentary committee report a farce on a Bill that was so bad that it had the potential without considered and responsible modification to be second only to the notorious vegetation management act of the previous government. But then the last minute amendments presented in block with no scrutiny realistically possible, rammed through on party lines delivered a disastrous outcome that deserves equal notoriety of anything landowners suffered under the Beattie/ Bligh era.

  Across the board in submission and at the hearings [here& here] rural organisations and individual landowners outlined their grave concerns about the Bill and offered constructive suggestions to how improvements could be made. The parliamentary committee chairman, the LNP member for Lockyer, Ian Rickuss failed to make recommendations which took account of these serious concerns.  Numerous submitters and witnesses at public hearings gave personal accounts of the difficulty of securing a satisfactory Conduct and Compensation Agreement (CCA) and the gross imbalance of power. Mr. Rickuss seems to think they were all just whinging. In the debate on Tuesday night Mr. Rickuss displaying his insensitivity to the submissions made said: [page 3061]

Ian Rickuss, member for Lockyer
photo sourced ABC

 

“What I can say about the conduct and compensation agreements for the landholders is that some of the landholders have to grab these and take control of the agenda. This is what it is about. If they sit down and think about what they have to do with these conduct and compensation agreements and get the appropriate advice, these will be a real win-win for the landholders.”

“I ask landholders to put in a lot of effort into these things.”

Mr. Rickuss is urging landholders to get the appropriate advice and yet the Government has left in a primitive clause in this Act which was meant to “modernise” the resources Acts where landowners can “opt out” of conduct and compensation agreements. This will catch out many landowners who lose their ability to access the Land Court and is binding on future title holders. Landowners need to seek legal advice and not to agree to this option as you lose the ability to call on the umpire, the Land Court, which does its best to be fair.

One would wonder who the minister, Andrew Cripps, believes is appropriate to give advice as he repeatedly slandered legal experts experienced in representing landowners who at their own expense wrote submissions and gave evidence at the hearings.  Under parliamentary privilege Minister Cripps stated that certain legal firms were scaremongering lawyers; legal profession with vested interests; encouraging conflict; attracting and/or protecting their business and were irresponsible.

Property Rights Australia believes that it is the Minister that has been highly irresponsible. Not only are these allegations patronising and insulting but plainly untrue. It is negligent behaviour for the Minister and the Government to discourage landowners to trust experienced legal professionals who are essential to protect landowner rights in negotiations.

The Minister has been misleading in his statements not only before the Bill was passed but in defending it afterwards. Most notable was throughout the debate stating clearly that even though the Bill removes objection rights to small mines that objections can still be made on large mines. In his speech introducing the Bill for its second reading Andrew Cripps did foreshadow the later introduction of further amendments but any informed person would have thought what he was talking about was quite different to what he ultimately introduced. Despite his earlier assurances amongst the amendments was one that effectively has removed the right to object to a large mine as the Coordinator General’s conditions will be considered to address the environmental concerns and therefore almost no one will have the right to object to the Environmental Authority. In effect the Coordinator General will be judge and jury without access to appeal of new resource projects.

Small alluvial gold mine north Queensland

 For the government to talk about small mines as low impact mines is nonsense. There are large mines that affect a large number of people, even entire communities right down to small mines that affect fewer landowners. The impact on the few can at times be severe.

Restricted areas have been severely curtailed and will not exist for most infrastructure unless it is negotiated in a CCA.  Again the minister has been misleading on this subject talking about landowners being left with isolated infrastructure; a Swiss chess affect, he called it. The reduction of restricted areas is of benefit to the resource company rather than the landowner who not only loses protection over important essential infrastructure on their land and privacy around their houses but also loses a very real bargaining chip for the landowner during negotiations. 

No reasonable or responsible person, company or government can expect a landowner to accept damage, loss, contamination or interference to their established business to benefit a resource company.

Property Rights Australia believes that at the very minimum landowners with impacts identified in the EIS should be notified by mail, have the ability to make objections and unimpaired access to the Land Court.

Queensland cannot afford to have property rights of landowners to be sacrificed to ensure the prosperity of the resource industries. 

Property Rights Australia submission

Previous related post

PRA: Hearing into new Qld resources bill .

New bill denies natural justice

PRA: Hearing into new Qld resources bill

Qld parliament AREC Chair Ian Rickuss & deputy Chair
Jackie Trand. Photo sourced Qld Country Life

  

On behalf of property Rights Australia, chair Joanne Rea appeared before hearing at MacKay 20th August  into the Mineral & Energy Resources (Common Provisions) Bill. The following is Joanne's opening statement to the Agriculture, Resources and Environment Committee






Property Rights Australia believes that this Bill severely erodes many of the protections and rights of landowners for the benefit of resources industries. In fact we believe it to be one of the greatest abrogations of landowner rights since the Vegetation Management Act 1999.

Some of our concerns are outlined in our submission but it is not exhaustive. They are concerns that are shared by many landowner representatives and by legal professionals specialising in representing landowners. PRA highly recommends the submission by Shine lawyers.

We have heard the Premier and Ministers say, when asked about landowner concerns that the resources companies and related infrastructure will create very many jobs and the royalties will fund infrastructure. Such statements imply that resource development and landowner concerns are mutually exclusive. This is not the case.

 We are constantly told of the billions of dollars in revenue which will benefit the state and we are well aware of the above average wages and conditions paid to mine workers and contractors. However, landowners are approached with an attitude of penury and meanness.

If resource companies want a relatively trouble free path they should approach landowners with a fair offer of recompense from the beginning, negotiate in good faith, not waste their time, apply pressure, bully, ignore concerns, renege on agreements and use various other bluff and deception tactics. They should also be mindful of local knowledge. Lobbying Government for changes to legislation which erode the rights of landowners because they are getting resistance to their unfair tactics is unacceptable.

Landowners feel that they have been thrown to the wolves with the lack of protection of their property rights under pieces of legislation like this. Commercial agreements alone are not possible without built in protection when one party to negotiations is an unwilling party whose time commitment is a cost and the companies who have full time paid professionals. This factor is frequently taken advantage of.

The balance of power in negotiations with resource companies has always been in favour of the resource companies and changes to legislation including those in this Bill have eroded almost every bargaining chip landowners may have had and handed the entire box and dice to the resources companies.

The superior fire power of the resources sector has won the day with this proposed legislation and the property rights of landowners are being disregarded. This is not the treatment that we expect from any Government which should be should be concerned about private property rights which are the cornerstone of our free market system.

All in all there is too much left to regulation rather than in the legislation, there are too many things which are not defined and landowner’s rights have been severely curtailed. This legislation should be deferred and taken back to the drawing board. It is entirely inappropriate that resource companies have damaged their own reputations as honest and good faith negotiators and then ask the government to fix their problems by legislation which damages landowner’s rights to the enjoyment of their property. It is very obvious that this legislation was “industry directed” for the benefit of resources companies and that landowner rights will be severely damaged. PRA does not support the further erosion of property rights by yet another government. It would appear that there are no major parties whose philosophical principle is to uncompromisingly to protect private property rights, a valuable and recognised cornerstone of our society and the ability of businesses to operate securely.

Powerlink may listen; but do they hear

By Kerry Ladbrook

First published as a letter to the editor, Queensland country Life August 14 2014

 

Image sourced [here]



Reading the CEO of Powerlink Qld Merryn York’s Letter(QCL 31^st July 2014), I must agree Powerlink do listen but do they hear?

As a directly impacted landholder by PQ development and a Board Member for Property Rights Australia, I hear many things both current and in the past on the antics of PQ and the outcomes.

It is fortunate for Powerlink the Woodduck Landholder Group’s independent inquiry by McCullough- Robertson  Lawyers(QCL 24^th July 2014), did not expand into the entire affected North West Surat Basin.  The inquiry would have been more reflective of Powerlink Qld’s pressured and often dishonest consultation practises commonly used in their process.

Jump back in time and there are stories eerily similar to Woodduck where landholders  with powerlines already constructed  are continuing to be ignored by PQ for appropriate compensation payment.

The Acquisition of Land Act 1967 encourages this type of arrogant behaviour when resuming land and easements.   Resumption for commercial activity must be negotiated on a commercial basis with negotiated landholder access(S15 Resumption),  not as compulsory acquisition . Landholders are reluctant sellers and should be compensated as such.  Annual payments should be mandatory, not associated with the dangling of a carrot as is currently occurring with Santos and Origin.

PRA hear continual trouble with the ALA 1967 beyond Powerlink’s activity in the NW Surat basin; Sunshine Coast with Powerlink & SEQ Water/The Ipswich Motorway with Main Roads/ the Gallilee Basin with Rail corridors and  which will also have future development from Powerlink. 

Merryn York, consultation requires much more than just listening and no amount of external reviews will address this unless PQ can be trusted and made responsible for what they say and agree to.  People should not be going through such a difficult process to find a fair outcome.

Ideally Government Owned Corporation Shareholding Ministers Seeney, McArdle & Nichol need to implement changes for which ministerial designation must occur under the Sustainable Planning Act that is more rigorous  than that just the timely supply of infrastructure, in addition to improving the process of deriving a Conduct & Compensation Agreement (CCA) for the project.

As an urgent first step, where the project is for private profit, the State Government needs to at least implement a change to the ALA to ensure that landholders can negotiate both access conditions and compensation(CCA)  in a similar way to the P&G Act, and as a requirement before the Notice of Intention to Resume (NIR) is issued.

Previously published related articles



Powerlink update for the PRA conference field trip

It's time to recognise time  

Petition against abuse of power by Powerlink

Power price rise link to Powerlink 

Scrutiny needed for Powerlink projects

 

State Corporation, Powerlink vs Woodduck Landholder Group

Russian sanctions are the least of our agriculture sector's problems

By Mark McGovern, Queensland University of Technology

First published at The Conversation 

Australia’s dairy sector will lose out due to Russian sanctions,
but there are bigger issues in play. Anatoly Maltsev/AAP

Russia’s targeting of $A400 million of Australian food exports and the government’s muddled response are just the latest setback for a sector struggling under failed policy approaches.

Agriculture is Australia’s only “strongly competitive industry”, according to recent reports from consulting firm McKinsey and the Business Council of Australia (BCA). Yet, the industry is today characterised by high levels of debt, low farm income, depleted reserves, increasing levels of insolvency and rising poverty. Why the mismatch?


Productivity is high in agriculture. Indeed productivity performance has been outstanding. Yet profits and incomes have been miserable for years. To top it off ABARE reports current Queensland farm incomes as the lowest for 37 years (which is when their figures began).

We’re measuring the wrong things

Measures of both competitiveness and productivity can increase when an industry is in decline. Today, agriculture is not where we hoped it would be. Existing policies and thinking have not delivered gains for agriculture in real terms (as evident in the graph) or Australia (as rising net overseas obligations demonstrate). Continuing them is folly.

A rocky path of questionable returns.
McGovern, M. (2013). Repositioning Rural Australia. Choices in Agricultural Policy: Rationalise or Reconstruct? Merredin WA, Muntadgin Profit Farmers.

Disappointingly, this failed stance sits behind the “new“ veneer in the BCA’s “Building Australia’s Comparative Advantage”. Under its dated take on comparative advantage, economies of scale still rule. The productivity mantra is repeated regularly but profit is never mentioned by the BCA, and incidentally mentioned only twice by McKinsey. Yet profit and sustainable incomes lie at the heart of sound business and investment servicing.

It’s 1997 thinking. Then, Minister for Primary Industries John Anderson convened a Rural Finance Summit in Canberra. The thrust was similar. Scale was the saviour and the message was that over a quarter of farmers must go. We overachieved - more than 40% or 103,000 farmers went during the Howard-Anderson era.

The reality is economies of scale require enterprises to increase operational size, utilise the latest technology (such as limited till farming and GPS navigation), employ advanced managerial systems and so on. Increased farm size requires larger machinery and equipment to replace labour intensive farming. All this takes money, yet financial considerations have been essentially absent.

Farm sector reforms have now created a sector with 20% of farmers producing around 80% of output from an increasingly untenable financial basis. Aggregation costs were neglected.

As asset inflation was thought never to end, debt-to-equity loans were not designed to be repaid from income. Capital gains would pick up any shortfall. But as stresses built and the GFC unfolded with pervasive capital losses, the economies of scale arguments and poor lending collapsed. Untenable loan-to-valuation ratios ushered in a financial crisis in national food production.

Large highly mechanised “efficient” enterprises were suddenly expected to repay multi-million dollar debts from insufficient income. Foreign buyers acquired most significant Australian food manufacturers and many farms.

What next?

Untenable financial arrangements need restructuring. The sector needs recapitalisation, new institutional arrangements and, for a time, a hands-on approach from government.

Today, the numbers of bank foreclosures and bankruptcy proceedings challenge the mantra makers. Financial numbers that don’t add up, and often never did, trash empty pseudo-economic rhetoric. Incomes going nowhere will not service the recent debt run up, as is evident in the graph below. Systemic failures allowed this development.

Debt has outpaced the ability to service it.
Ben Rees (2013) Reconstruct or Rationalise Agriculture? Compiled from: NVFP, ABARE, Commodity Statistics, Rural Debt , RBA online, Table D9

Yet, despite Foreign Minister Julie Bishop stating “the Australian government will do everything in its power to minimise the impact on Australian farmers“ of the $400 million disruption from Russia, Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce “would hope that we’re able to manage it without direct assistance”. Ongoing "do nothing (but hope)” emptiness is destructive. Why is abject market appeasement still the first preference in Canberra - but not elsewhere?

The real structural reform needed is in industry, governmental and BCA thinking. Scale and competitiveness policies that have failed to deliver need to be discarded, not re-veneered.

Real solutions require substantial considerations of income, investment and profitability under uncertainty. Finance matters as do market and supply chain realities. Policy makers have avoided these things for too long, to the great cost to agriculture, other infected industries and Australia.

Ironically today, the despised low-productivity small farmer with household off-farm employment may be more solvent than the aggregator or the competitive.


Mark McGovern is an active member of the Rural Finance Roundtable Working Group.
This article was originally published on The Conversation.
Read the original article.

Carbon Dioxide is a Weather Wimp and a Climate Pygmy

The Sun and Solar Cycles rule the Climate;

Wind and Water rule the Weather;
Carbon Dioxide is a Weather Wimp and a Climate Pygmy.
by Viv Forbes



Rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is blamed for every weather emergency, but as a weather maker, water is far more important.

Without water, Earth’s weather would be dramatically different. We would have no clouds, no rain or snow, no rain or hail storms, no hurricanes, no seas, rivers, lakes or ice sheets – just cold, cloudless nights and hot, clear days with dry winds and fierce dust storms; a dead planet like Mars.

Water has many weather effects. It cools Earth’s surface by evaporation, and transfers that heat to the upper atmosphere as it condenses into drops of rain, hail or snow. Water forms the wispy high cirrus and stratus clouds, the fluffy fair-weather cumulus and the ominous nimbus thunderheads that can produce rain, hail and storms as well as cyclones, hurricanes and tornados. Some high clouds help to retain surface heat while lower clouds shade and cool the surface as they intercept and reflect incoming solar radiation.

Where there is no water in the atmosphere we get hot deserts like Sahara or frigid deserts like Antarctica. And when solar energy wanes, as in ice ages, it is water, not carbon dioxide, that creates a real climate emergency with life-killing sheets of ice.

Carbon dioxide exists in the atmosphere and the oceans as a trace amount of invisible, non-toxic, non-flammable gas – quite a boring unspectacular gas really. But it gets the gold medal for feeding the biosphere – it is the gas of life and increased carbon dioxide is responsible for the recent measurable greening of the planet.

In theory, carbon dioxide can warm the climate by retaining surface heat. However, its so-called “greenhouse effect”, has never been quantified in climate records despite being given a key role in IPCC climate models. There is no evidence that carbon dioxide is creating dangerous global warming. Water vapour has a far bigger “greenhouse effect” over more radiation bands, and there is far more of it - Earth’s atmosphere has about 8,500 times more water than carbon dioxide. Earth’s water cycle also has a large moderating effect on any greenhouse warming from carbon dioxide. A climate tax on water makes as much sense as a tax on carbon.

In our great climate machine, the sun is the combustion chamber, the oceans are the stabilising flywheel and carbon dioxide is merely the temperature gauge – its concentration in the atmosphere rises as the oceans get warm and expel some of their dissolved CO₂.

The sun and cycles in the solar system rule Earth’s long term climate. Solar energy drives winds and water to create the complexities of the weather. Carbon dioxide is a climate pygmy and largely irrelevant in creating the daily weather.

We have enough real environmental problems on Earth without inventing climate crises supposedly caused by the relatively trivial quantities of carbon dioxide recycled by man’s industries and machines.

Water vapour and carbon dioxide are the gases of life – the biosphere needs more of both. We should stop all foolish attempts to capture and bury carbon dioxide and devote those resources to capture and store fresh water.

An original MEMBER of the Green's Party pulling Lee Rhiannon into line

It is time someone took Lee Rhiannon to task whom I consider to be a traitor to Australia.

It was posted on Lee Rhiannon's Facebook page and copied by others who have posted it on Facebook where I received it within a group on Fb.  on Friday 8th August.  I cannot say for sure when she posted the admonishing.

Marit Hegge knows the history of the Greens very well and explains when she last attended a meeting of the Greens.

 

New bill denies natural justice

Peter Anderson, Central Qld grazier, photo sourced PRA 2014 conference.

The property rights and principles of natural justice of landholders will be severely compromised by certain provisions in the Mineral and Energy Resources Bill tabled in the Qld Parliament on June 5. Quite simply, this Bill just once more pushes the balance even more in favour of the mining companies at the expense of the landholders.




Please click on [this link] to a letter from Glen Martin of Shine Lawyers for a very readable summary of some very worrying aspects of this new bill.

The submission deadline for this new bill is June 30. This is far too short of a time span set in the busy timeframe of the end of the financial year to understand a long, complex new bill and amendments to 5 other existing resources acts.

PRA urges all Queenslanders to contact their local member of parliament, write a letter to the editor and to write a submission to the parliamentary committee [link] if only to say nothing more than that before such sweeping changes are made wide public discussion should be allowed in a time frame more suitable to the length, complexity and grave implications of this new bill.

Newspaper article from the Chinchilla News May 15

George Bender farms in the very productive Hopeland district and this article was published in his local newspaper The Chinchilla News on May 15.

George was concerned about how close coal seam gas infrastructure could be build to his family farm as was outlined in a review the Qld government released in the lead up the very concerning new bill tabled on June 5.

George had every right to be concerned because in the new bill it appears that CSG & mining exploration and then following gasfields and mines will be allowed as close as 200m from
- A residence
- A place of worship
- a childcare centre, hospital or library;
- school
- a cemetery or burial place;
- aquaculture, intensive animal feedlotting, pig keeping or poultry farming

200 metres is the restricted distance; if you own anything that is not in the above list there are no restrictions. 

Peter Anderson (photo top of the page) addressed the PRA conference in Roma on June 13, 2014. Peter and his family run a vertically integrated cattle breeding, finishing and feedlot operation at Clermont and Alfa, Central Qld.
In recent times the Anderson family's cattle operation has become threatened by mining lease applications in the Galilee Basin. The concern to the operation in the future is the threat of mining operat...ions to underground water impacts on bores that have sustained their cattle operation for many years, especially in drought when they rely on bores after dams go dry. Attempts to strike meaningful Make Good Agreements with international mining companies that recognises this legitimate concern has seen land holders like us in an untenable situation.

The Anderson's and their neighbours were forced to take their very real concerns to the Land Court were they had a significant win that set good precedents for other landholders. Read more [here] 

If the new Mineral and Energy Resources (Common Provisions) Bill 2014 is past in its current form the ability for neighbours to object to any new mining or coal seam gas project will not be available. The property rights and principles of natural justice of landowners will be severely compromised by the  proposed changes.

For Those attending the PRA conference it was very evident the personal & emotional toll this battle has had upon Peter due to the stress of not having his issues addressed by the neighbouring Coal Project and the disregarded impacts on their water supply for their cattle and livelihood





Barry Rich with daughter Elyse, photo sourced, Land Court sides with grazier


"The Rich family were among a group of Wandoan landholders who challenged in the Land Court a $7 billion Xstrata mining development on their doorstep because of concerns over dust, noise, odour, vibration and health impacts on cattle and people.

And while his small court victory will see the Xstrata mine pit moved at least 3km from his home, it has been a five-year battle to provide some certainty for Mr Rich's feedlot enterprise."

To read more click on the link in the photo caption.
If the new Mineral and Energy Resources (Common Provisions) Bill 2014 is past in its current form the ability for neighbours to object to any new mining or coal seam gas project will not be available. The property rights and principles of natural justice of landowners will be severely compromised by the proposed changes.


Neville Stiller, photo sourced, Farmer sick of CSG workers camp

 

 

Wandoan district farmer, Neville Stiller, without any consultation had a 600 man workers camp for a QGC gas pipeline built close to his house. Under existing Qld law there is very little consideration given to neighbours to coal seam gas projects.

 

For more information click on the link in the photo caption

 

In the new Mineral and Energy Resources (Common Provisions) Bill this situation has been rectified. Property Rights Australia supports the advancement of rights afforded to impacts on neighbours outside a resource authority boundary or a property boundary. It is long overdue and should be standard across all policies, regulations and legislation.

However the positives in the bill are overshadowed by new provisions that erode landholders rights..



UPDATE #1 June 21
Good news the parliamentary committee has extended the submission period to Wednesday 9th July.

Please keep sharing this post, the extension only gives a greater time to get submissions in. The parliamentary committee needs to know that some of the provisions in the bill are unreasonable for landholders.
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