I HAVE always been amazed at how governments and oppositions in the three years that they have between elections to work up good policy manage to come up with such political rubbish that even a donkey would not vote for. With that amount of time one would think that the different political parties have to consult their cadre of staffers, their access to think tanks, their own members of parliament and lay party policy committees,

In February 2018, Labor’s national president, Mark Butler, urged the labour movement “to have a no-holds-barred debate about the place of unions in Australia”. It seems the Shadow Minister for Agriculture Joel Fitzbibbon has taken on this suggestion with creative enthusiasm, except he has skipped the debate bit, and given half a chance, will be going straight for implementation. The Australian agricultural industry has long been on notice that Fitzgibbon is not happy with how

I read with interest the PGA response to Rhys Turton’s open letter to PGA president Tony Seabrook, which appeared in the Countryman last week. Turton has called for the politics of the old bulls to be left in the paddock, and urges a poll to be conducted on the merits of establishing a new single farm organisation to take on the anti-agricultural forces that are building on the horizon. As usual the PGA showed no

I’ve always been amazed at how governments and oppositions in the three years that they have between elections to work up good policy manage to come up with such political rubbish that even a donkey would not vote for. With that amount of time one would think that the different political parties have to consult their cadre of staffers, their access to think tanks, their own members of parliament and lay party policy committees not

Shady corporate players and governments have one thing in common – they all hate competition and if given half a chance they’ll side line their competitors and grab as much of the market power as possible. In the worst-case scenario both will collude to gain the power or money that they crave, even if that means the consumers and voters pay the price. Along these lines, I have a strange but true story of this

Keating promised his tax cuts were L.A.W. law, Gillard promised no carbon tax under her government and Bill Shorten swears that he will not introduce a inheritance tax. But farmers have long memories and political promises are dun der cheap and the cost of new taxes such as a carbon tax or a inheritance tax are oh so cheap politically for a labor government to load onto farmers. One thing we know is that labor

‘State Budget Securing Future for WA Agriculture Effort’ was the title of Minister McTiernan’s pre-budget press drop last week which I read with interest. I’m still not sure what the heading actually means but the money attached to it got my attention. The tap was back on, I thought, with $131.5m of new money earmarked for ag over the next four years. Reading on, after it detailed the failures of the past government, the press

Carbon emissions and targets are back in the news with the election promise by the opposition to ignore the cost to the Australian economy of its policy of a 45% reduction in emissions by 2030 vs the much more manageable 26% target set by the liberals. Labor’s herculean attempt to reduce Australia’s carbon footprint by a total of 226 million tonnes over the next 11 years is 4 times more than what has been achieved