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Rise of the Elites

AUSTRALIA FALLS TO A BUNCH OF VIRTUE-SIGNALLING ELITES AND THEIR MASTERS

Saturday’s count saw massive swings to far-left green candidates in leafy inner-city areas, where privileged ‘elites’ now hold profoundly radical views on everything from climate change to ‘gender equity’.

And for all the rhetoric around conservatives and their so-called ‘racist’ agenda, it was One Nation who ran a far more diverse range of candidates across every measure of race, class and life experience, than all the pseudo left parties combined.

But that’s not something you’ll hear about from the mainstream media.

No.  They’re all too busy proclaiming a mandate on radical climate action and wokedom to notice how riddled with inconsistency and hypocrisy their side has become.

Amanda McKenzie, CEO of the Climate Council, led the way calling for a “RADICAL RESET” on climate action.

Others quickly followed, including Adam Bandt, Penny Wong and Albanese, who told Australians he would be adopting much more radical emissions targets now.

“We have an opportunity to end the climate wars in Australia” Albanese told the BBC, who smugly noted “he has a mandate now”.

If ordinary Australians needed a reminder about just how much contempt the country’s elite, inner-city green ideologues feel about their struggles, then Saturday’s election coverage just handed it to them in spades.

There really are two Australias now and the political fault lines dividing the two were set in stone by this election.

The Australia that won the count on Saturday is one I barely know, or care to know.

It is a leafy place of wealth and privilege, where all the residents have cushy jobs and a string of letters after their name; not to mention a whining sense of entitlement Prince Charles would blush at.

And yet, when you boil everything down, Australia has a new government that nearly 70% of the country didn’t vote for.

That’s astonishing.

Labor won with the lowest primary vote ever recorded in our history.

The party also saw significant swings against them from its own traditional support base – blue-collar workers.

Areas with lower incomes and lower levels of education, are now much more likely to vote conservative than Labor – even people on welfare have shifted.

Waleed Aly commented on this historic shift, saying voters in wealthy electorates shifted left, while people in less wealthy seats moved right.

In the end, it was the hard swings in a few key bastions of inner-city privilege that proved decisive.

Sadly, the weekend’s losers are all those in the suburbs,  households, small business and regions.

The people Menzies once famously described as Australia’s ‘forgotten people’.

Only this time, there’s no Menzies coming to save them.

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Environment questions

Stephen Andrew, MP for Mirani, has prepared the following environment questions for estimates at the Queensland Parliament:
1. In regard to new regulations administered by the Minister’s department requiring cane farmers and other farmers to carry out agricultural ERAs, will the Minister advise: (a) when the regulation commenced; (b) the maximum penalties that apply to offences against the regulation; (c) when farmers and other landholders were advised by the department of their new obligations under the regulation and how they were informed; (d) the period farmers now have in which to enact nitrogen and phosphorous budgets to fully comply with the regulation; (e) the number of agricultural advisors in Queensland who are registered with the QRIDA and who can prepare nutrient management budgets with soil tests and crop growth requirements to enable farmers to meet their obligations under the regulation; and (f) what steps the department is taking to assist those farmers who are unable to access an advisor registered with the QRIDA to have the required nitrogen and phosphorous budgets prepared within the time available for them to comply?
2. Given the value of the Great Barrier Reef to the Queensland economy and claims made by organisations such as the GBRMPA about risks to the reef posed by farm pesticides, will the Minister advise what funding is provided in the budget for her Office of Science to undertake research to gauge the presence of pesticides in flora and fauna on the reef, and the adverse impacts of these pesticides?
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New green plan lays waste to the regions

HOLD on to your sunnies, radical green bureaucrats, backed by both major parties are planning a major take-down of tourism and recreational fishers in regional communities. And it doesn’t stop there. Both the Federal LNP government and State Labor government were laying the groundwork for restrictive new laws and regulations across a range of new groups, including Queensland’s $4.6 billion tourism industry.

According to the draft review of reef sustainability, regional Queenslanders and industries are in for a period of ‘potentially major and uncertain changes’. First, they came for our farmers and most people said nothing. Then they came for our miners and most people said nothing. Now it looks like anyone living outside the south-east corner is in for a hiding and we’re not hearing anything about it.

The new draft “Reef 2050 Long-Term Sustainability Plan Review”, released last month, introduces a ‘sector-wide’ program of change that sets out new objectives aimed at  “protecting the Great Barrier Reef”. Any regional Queenslander who wants a job or any kind of lifestyle in the future needs to read the draft review.

According to some of the detail of this document, green bureaucrats are planning a fairly radical transformation of regional towns and communities over the next couple of decades. The main areas of human activity targeted under the new plan include:

  • Recreational fishing
  • Commercial fishing
  • Tourism – both land-based and water-based
  • Indigenous groups
  • Research activities
  • Urban townships
  • Coastal housing and infrastructure
  • Beach uses
  • Agriculture
  • Industrial activities
  • Shipping and ports
  • Recreational users of the reef, including tourists

The new plan, which calls for a further ‘ramping up’ of existing Reef Laws on farmers and commercial fishing, also proposes an extension of restrictions across a whole range of other ‘human-based activities’ – both recreational and commercial. The draft, which is just the first of a series of five-year plans to be released between now and 2050, will have an enormous negative impact on communities and businesses in the region, particularly those that heavily rely on reef tourism, or tourism-related businesses, to earn a living.

Proposals outlined in the draft paper will intensify the drive to lock up more and more areas of bushland in Central and North Queensland. This will greatly reduce people’s access to, and enjoyment of our beautiful natural hinterland. Today, more than 682,772 hectares of land have been given up by private landholders to the State government under its Nature Refuge Agreements Scheme. This land has been re-designated as “protected zones” and closed off permanently from the public.

The draft review calls for stricter laws around coastal infrastructure, planning, development and land use, as well as suggestions for measures that will  ‘induce behaviour change’ within regional communities. Groups singled out in the new Reef Plan, include business, tourism, industry, mining, farmers, Indigenous communities, commercial and recreational fishers, private homeowners, as well as commercial and recreational boat operators.

They are planning to restrict recreational fishing as well as 4-wheel driving on beaches. The plan proposes a new 4-wheel drive permit system, strict speed limits, and restricted beach access points. These bureaucrats are making decisions and laying down edicts that undermine people’s lives and livelihoods. There has been no transparency from either of the major parties around some of these changes.  Some of the changes here are pretty radical, and yet there has been almost no widespread public discussion or debate around the likely costs or consequences to the community of all this.

I’m calling on all Queenslanders to have their say on the Draft Plan before public consultation closes at the end of this month.

TO HAVE YOUR SAY:

read the Reef 2050 Long-Term Sustainability Plan Public Consultation Draft

Submit your feedback by 11.59pm AEST Wednesday 30 September 2020.

https://haveyoursay.awe.gov.au/reef-2050-plan

 

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2 days notice to change a workforce

When Queensland’s sudden border closure locks out miners and puts Queensland mines in danger of having to close, you’ve got to wonder if it simply wasn’t thought through or if it was a deliberate swipe at the mining industry. If key workers can’t go to work (or be replaced at short notice), no one can go to work. We know Labor is planning for the closure of coal mines so it’s a valid question to ask. It’s not like the Labor Party is against NSW FIFO workers coming into Queensland to work. After all, it was Labor that issued the approval for Bowen Basin coal mines to employ a 100% FIFO workforce in the first place.

Closing Queensland’s border to key mineworkers at such short notice could have a devastating impact on the State’s economy. And yet tonight’s closure of Queensland’s border looks set to strand FIFO mine workers from interstate. If so, this would be a massive blow to Queensland’s mining industry, which has been widely touted as Queensland’s best hope for a fast economic recovery Post-COVID.

We need urgent clarity from the Queensland Government on this issue. The mining industry is heavily reliant on FIFO workers and if hundreds of these workers are to be barred from entering Queensland it is going to make it very difficult for some of them to operate. Mining, along with agriculture, is crucial to Queensland’s economy, and the government should be doing everything possible to protect it. Arbitrary actions like this border closure that imposes blanket restrictions with almost no notice, could seriously jeopardise the industry’s viability.

The Australian Minerals Council, who represents the nation’s largest mining enterprises, also criticised the move. According to the AMC, the suddenness of the border closure notice had given Queensland miners no time to work out how they will staff their mines properly without the large number of FIFO workers they normally employ.

The Queensland mining sector had one of the best Covid-19 safety frameworks in the country. Their record for keeping mine workers, their families and local communities safe has been exemplary. That’s why I’m calling on the Premier to immediately issue an exemption for FIFO mine workers or risk doing enormous damage to the sector – a sector that has contributed huge amounts of money in royalties to the Queensland Treasury over recent years.

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Almost a million jobless but no new mines

ALMOST a million Australians are unemployed but the Queensland government can’t rouse itself to fast-track approving the only potential large-scale job creation in Australia: new Queensland mines. Official June figures, released today, show the highest jobless percentage (7.4 per cent) since recorded statistics began In 1998. The 992,000 people now unemployed was an increase of 69,000 on figures for May.

Now is the time to KickStart the Queensland economy by taking advantage of our best performing industries. Any government that refuses to fast-track large-scale jobs, in the worst recession in a century, is just suicidal. By refusing to extend coal-mining in Queensland, the Labor government is effectively throwing extra hundreds of miners onto the dole.

Several Central and North Queensland coal mines are not at peak production.  And still, whenever they have to sign the last authorisation for more coal mines, paralysis sets in. Their hands shake, and they just can’t bring themselves to do it.

The State Department has confirmed there are six coal mine applications, most listed for several years, scheduled to employ as many as 10,000 people. That kind of large scale job creation is exactly what we need and we are very fortunate, in Queensland, to have the means to do it. This is urgent. The government has to authorise these new mines. And it has to do it soon.

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