The Federal Court Delivers A Devastating Blow Against Free Speech

The Federal Court has devastating blow against mainstream Australians, against freedom of speech and against freedom of speech on climate change by overturning the earlier decision in the Federal Circuit Court which held that Dr Peter Ridd was unlawfully dismissed by James Cook University.

Alarmingly, this decision shows that contractual provisions guaranteeing intellectual freedom do not protect academics against censorship by university administrators.  The time has come for the Morrison Government to intervene.

This has been Australia's David vs Goliath battle, with Peter Ridd on one side, backed by thousands of ordinary Australians, and JCU on the other side who secured some of the most expensive legal representation in the country in Bret Walker SC to stifle the free speech of one of its own staff.

Dr Ridd, a professor of physics at JCU, was sacked by the university for misconduct for questioning the climate change science around the Great Barrier Reef and for public statements made on the Jones & Co Sky News program.

He is now apparently considering his legal options in relation to a challenge in the High Court of Australia.  If he does decide to take up that fight, I ― as well as thousands of mainstream Australians ― will continue to support his fight for freedom of speech on climate change.

JCU has engaged some of the most expensive legal representation in the country to stifle the free speech of one of its own staff, despite crying poor about university funding in the wake of coronavirus.  It creates a massive chilling effect for any academic engaging in public debate in Australia.

The University's shameful actions prove without doubt there is a crisis of free speech at Australian universities.  Many academics are censured, but few are prepared to speak out and risk their career, particularly if faced with the prospect of legal battles and possible bankruptcy.

The case has identified a culture of censorship when it comes to challenging claims surrounding climate change and the Great Barrier Reef.  JCU to this date has never attempted to disprove claims made by Dr Ridd about the Great Barrier Reef.

Revealed: The True Hottest Day Ever Recorded In Australia

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology deleted what was long regarded as the hottest day ever recorded in Australia, Bourke's 125°F (51.7°C) on Sunday, January 3, 1909.  This record* was deleted, falsely claiming that this was likely some sort of "observational error", as no other official weather stations recorded high temperatures on that day.

However, the Liberal Member for Hughes, Craig Kelly, has visited the Australian National Archive at Chester Hill in western Sydney to view very old meteorological observation books.  It has taken Kelly some months to track down this historical evidence.  Through access to the archived book for the weather station at Brewarrina, which is the nearest official weather station to Bourke, it can now be confirmed that a temperature of 123°F (50.6°C) was recorded at Brewarrina for January 3 1909.  This totally contradicts claims from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology that only Bourke recorded an extraordinarily hot temperature on that day.

Brewarrina Meteorological Observations Book, January 1909.  Note 123F recorded at 9.00 am on January 4, 1909.

Just today, Friday 10th July 2020, Mr Kelly MP obtained access to this record for Brewarrina, the closest official weather station to the official weather station at Bourke.

He has photographed the relevant page from the observations book, and it shows 123°F was recorded at 9.00 am on the morning of Monday, January 4 1909 ― published here for the first time.  This was the highest temperature in the previous 24 hours and corroborates what must now be recognised as the hottest day ever recorded in Australia of 125°F (51.7°C) degrees at Bourke on the afternoon of Sunday, January 4 1909.

The Meteorological Observations Book for Bourke for January 1909 records 125°C for January 3.  Photograph taken on 26th June in 2014 at Chester Hill.

That the Bureau of Meteorology denies these record hot days is a travesty.  Is it because these records contradict their belief in catastrophic human-caused global warming?

The temperature of 50.6°C (123°F) recorded back in 1909 which is more than 100 years ago, photographed by Kelly last week at the National Archives in Chester Hill, is almost equivalent to the current official hottest day ever for Australia of 50.7 degrees Celsius at Oodnadatta on 2nd January 1960.  These are in fact only the fourth and third hottest days recorded in Australia, respectively.

Not only has Kelly tracked-down the meteorological observations book for Brewarrina, but over the last week he has also uncovered that 51.1°C (124°F) was recorded at White Cliffs for Wednesday, January 11 1939.  This is the second hottest ever!

The evidence, a photograph from the relevant page of the White Cliff's meteorological observations book, is published here for the first time.

This photograph from the White Cliffs Meteorological Observation Book shows the second hottest temperature ever recorded in Australia using standard equipment in a Stevenson screen.

Until Kelly's efforts, this second hottest-ever record was hidden in undigitised archives.

It is only through his persistence the temperatures at all the official weather stations in the vicinity of Bourke that this and other hot days have been discovered.

If we are to be honest to our history, then the record hot day at Bourke of 51.7°C (125°F) must be re-instated and, further, the very hot 50.6°C (123°F) recorded for Brewarrina on the same day must be entered into the official databases.

Also, the temperature of 51.1°C (124°F) recorded at White Cliffs on January 12, 1939, must be recognised as the second hottest ever.

For these temperatures to be denied by the Bureau because they occurred in the past, before catastrophic human-caused global warming is thought to have come into effect, is absurd.

At a time in world history when Australians are raising concerns about the Chinese communist party removing books from Libraries in Hong Kong, we should be equally concerned with the Australian Bureau of Meteorology removing temperature records from our history.

If global warming is indeed the greatest moral issue of our time, then every Australian regardless of their politics and their opinion on greenhouse gases and renewable energy must be honest to history and these truths.

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* This temperature (125°F/51.7°C on the 3rd January 1909) was recorded at an official Bureau weather station and using a mercury thermometer in a Stevenson screen.  Hotter temperatures were recorded in 1896 but the mercury thermometers were not in Stevenson screens, which is considered the standard for housing recording equipment.

A Simple Stimulus Step That Won't Cost A Cent: Stop Green Lawfare

Over $65 billion of investment, mostly in regional Australia, has been put at risk by a small group of environmental and inner-city activists who have exploited a special legal provision to engage in frivolous and vexatious legal activism without delivering a discernible environmental benefit.

Research recently released found that green groups such as the Australian Conservation Foundation and the Wilderness Society have used a legal provision in Commonwealth environmental law to hold up major projects in court for a cumulative total of 10,100 days since the year 2000.

Section 487 of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act specifically empowers green groups to challenge projects that have been approved by the federal environment minister.

With Australia facing the economic impact of coronavirus, it is now more important than ever to remove barriers to investment.

Since 2000 there have been 28 projects targeted through this provision, including coal mines, dams, vegetation management, and public infrastructure.  Prominent projects include the original $16.5 billion Adani coal mine, a $2.3 billion pulp mill in Tasmania, and a $767 million coal mine at Maules Creek in New South Wales.

Despite the costly delays, the vast majority of these cases have not led to environmental improvements.  According to my research, only three out of 51 cases since 2000 ― or six per cent ― have resulted in significant changes to environmental approvals.

The success of legal challenges is not the primary concern of green groups.  Their aim, as outlined in the 2011 Greenpeace document Stopping the Australian Coal Export Boom is to "stop projects outright", "increase costs", and "raise investor uncertainty".  By holding up projects in court, even without winning the case, they deter investment in the resources sector with the prospect of costly delays and increased legal risk.

For investors in the resources industry, the punishment is in the process.

The pursuit of environmental ends with no consideration of costs or care for those forced to bear those costs is characteristic of the green movement.

The movement is based largely in the inner cities, far away from those Australians who their policy prescriptions hurt the most.  In the 2019 federal election, over 80 per cent of the Greens' primary vote came from non-rural electorates, and their share of the vote was twice as high in the inner city compared to regional Australia.

Mining projects have been opposed at the cost of jobs in regional Australia and to the detriment of regional communities.  Continued restrictions on logging are destroying a once vibrant forestry industry.  Farmers suffering through severe drought have been forced to sit by hopelessly as they watch an abundance of water flow by out to sea due to onerous restrictions on irrigation and red tape preventing the construction of industry saving dams.

Landowners have faced hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines for the crime of trying to save their homes from bushfire by clearing trees.  For example, a Queensland grazier was fined $1 million in 2017 for clearing a fire break on his property previously ravaged by bushfire.  Fires have raged at a ferocity enabled by an abundance of fuel that environmentalists have ensured has not been adequately managed.

And of course, the green movement has opposed coal and gas generated power that delivers affordable and reliable energy.  A jump in electricity and gas prices may not be felt as strongly by Green voters who have a median household income $14,000 higher than the general public, according to research from Roy Morgan.  But for many people it is the difference between their small business turning a profit, being able to spend money on the kids, or the ability to heat their homes in winter.

Many of these struggles are simply not felt by inner-city elites.  It is all too easy to advocate "action on climate change" and radical environmental policies when you are not the one bearing the cost.

The resources and agriculture sectors are an integral part of the Australian economy and the lifeblood of regional Australia.  They represent 20 per cent of private capital investment and 75 per cent of the value of Australia's top 25 exports.  Outside the big cities, agriculture and mining are major employers and support the services and retail sectors that are built up around them.

While all Australians want positive environmental outcomes, duplicated layers of complex regulation combined with legal activism are imposing an unnecessary burden on regional Australia for no discernible environmental gain.

Green activism, enabled and emboldened by lax legal loopholes, poses an existential threat to the resources sector, regional communities, and the Australian way of life.  Repealing Section 487 should be the first step in reining in the excesses of the green movement.

The Case Against Four Bin System

The Andrews Government's announced statewide move to four colour-coded rubbish bins is a waste of time, money and space.

Environment Minister Lily D'Ambrosio is conscripting every citizen to become an unpaid rubbish sorter.

Many Victorians just don't have the room to store yet another bin.

Those Victorians with small townhouses and one-car garages hardly have enough space to store their existing bins.

Adding an extra one will increase costs to ratepayers by an extra 25 per cent, which means higher rates.

If the aim of this policy is environmental, then that's an additional diesel garbage truck polluting the neighbourhood every week.

The median value of a square metre of land in Melbourne is more than $1100.  The cost of storing an extra bin will waste $253 worth of land per household, on average — even more in the inner city.

Ms D'Ambrosio said the government was making waste collection an essential service.

But with council rates soaring to record highs, all it is doing is foisting this "essential" responsibility on ratepayers.

A new Dynata poll released last week found 66 per cent of Australians think local councils should stick to roads, rates and rubbish.

Only 10 per cent disagree.  Yet apparently councils can't even do rubbish properly.

Don't let the truth of these terrible weeks be forgotten or rewritten

The infernos of January 2020 will be remembered for destroying so much of south-eastern Australia.  I weep for their victims.  So many people and so much wildlife in so much pain.

In terms of area of land burnt, these last few weeks may be recorded as unprecedented.  This has everything to do with our mismanagement of the landscape, including the lack of hazard reduction burning especially in eucalyptus forests.

We were warned in the report from the 1939 Royal Commission by Judge Leonard Stretton, and in the more than 18 major inquiries since, forests are potentially dangerous and explosive places.  Fuel loads must be kept within acceptable limits.

Blaming the recent fires on climate change is to rewrite our temperature history, something the Australian Bureau of Meteorology has been doing for some time.  This has involved the:

1. remodelling of measured values
2. addition of hotter locations to only the most recent years in the compilation of a national average trend
3. transition to electronic probes that are designed to record hotter for the same weather, and
4. deleting of the hottest day in the official record, which was January 3, 1909.

These misdeeds have all been comprehensively documented, yet the current government turns a blind eye, while referring the matter of a firefighter who claims an Indigenous heritage to the Australian federal police.  It is as though we are ruled over by a political elite more interested in continuing subsidies to electricity companies, and continuing funding to corrupt coral reef researchers — both of which have a vested interest in catastrophe — rather than listening to practical solutions to these and other major environment issues currently confronting Australia.

BUSHFIRE HISTORY:  REMEMBERING JANUARY 1939

The "Report of the Royal Commission to inquire into the causes of and measures taken to prevent the bush fires of January 1939 and to protect life and property and the measures to be taken to prevent bush fires in Victoria and to protect life and property in the event of future bush fires“ begins:

In the State of Victoria, the month of January of the year 1939 came towards the end of a long drought which had been aggravated by a severe hot, dry summer season.  For more than twenty years the State of Victoria had not seen its countryside and forests in such travail.  Creeks and springs ceased to run.  Water storages were depleted.  Provincial towns were facing the probability of cessation of water supply.  In Melbourne, more than a million inhabitants were subjected to restrictions upon the use of water.

Throughout the countryside, the farmers were carting water, if such was available, for their stock and themselves.  The rich plains, denied their beneficent rains, lay bare and baking;  and the forests, from the foothills to the alpine heights, were tinder.  The soft carpet of the forest floor was gone;  the bone-dry litter crackled underfoot;  dry heat and hot dry winds worked upon a land already dry, to suck from it the last, least drop of moisture.  Men who had lived their lives in the bush went their ways in the shadow of dread expectancy.  But though they felt the imminence of danger they could not tell that it was to be far greater than they could imagine.  They had not lived long enough.  The experience of the past could not guide them to an understanding of what might, and did, happen.  And so it was that, when millions of acres of the forest were invaded by bushfires which were almost State-wide, there happened, because of great loss of life and property, the most disastrous forest calamity the State of Victoria has known.

These fires were lit by the hand of man

Seventy-one lives were lost.  Sixty-nine mills were burned.  Millions of acres of fine forest, of almost incalculable value, were destroyed or badly damaged.  Townships were obliterated in a few minutes.  Mills, houses, bridges, tramways, machinery, were burned to the ground;  men, cattle, horses, sheep, were devoured by the fires or asphyxiated by the scorching debilitated air.  Generally, the numerous fires which during December, in many parts of Victoria, had been burning separately, as they do in any summer, either "under control" as it is falsely and dangerously called, or entirely untended, reached the climax of their intensity and joined forces in a devastating confluence of flame on Friday, the 13th of January.

On that day it appeared that the whole State was alight.  At midday, in many places, it was dark as night.  Men carrying hurricane lamps, worked to make safe their families and belongings.  Travellers on the highways were trapped by fires or blazing fallen trees, and perished.  Throughout the land there was daytime darkness.

THE IMPORTANCE OF HAZARD REDUCTION BURNING

Just last week, at the height of the January 2020 bushfire emergency, Minister for Home Affairs Peter Dutton referred a complaint against a firefighter, who allegedly falsely claims Aboriginal heritage, to the Australian federal police.  I have no opinion on Bruce Pascoe's lineage, but I do know that the people he identifies with have real solutions to our recurrent bushfire tragedies.  Their culture has a long history of land management through the expert use of fire as a tool to create visually pleasing and practical mosaics resistant to the spread of wildfires.

Pascoe's book Dark Emu draws from the more technical work by Bill Gammage entitled The Biggest Estate on Earth.  This essential reader explains how Aborigines actively and skilfully managed the land in a far more systematic way than has ever been acknowledged.  And I know, from my time spent reading original sources at the South Australian Museum about the Yaraldi of the Lower Murray River, that there were also complicated systems of governance, with a focus on a sustainable harvest and the storage of food.

Judge Stretton's 1939 report also noted:

When the early settlers came to what is now this state [of Victoria], they found for the greater part a clean forest.  Apparently, for many years before their arrival, the forest had not been scourged by fire … Their canopies had prevented the growth of scrub and bracken to any wide extent.  They were open and traversable by men, beasts and wagons.  Compared to their present condition, they were safe.

While quick to refer Pascoe, who is best known for his unorthodox and controversial perspective on Aboriginal history, to the federal police, Dutton and his government have over a very long period of time turned a blind eye to the rewriting of Australia's historical temperature record by Blair Trewin and David Jones of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.  The work of Trewin and Jones underpins the notion of an unprecedented climate emergency when the real issues are perhaps the management of fuel loads in forests and current resourcing.

Indeed, now absurdly corralled by the climate change meme, Prime Minister Scott Morrison is actively promoting the need for yet another Royal Commission as though this will prevent future bush fire tragedies.  Yet recommendations of previous Royal Commissions have never been implemented.  For example, a hazard reduction burn across at least 390,000 hectares each year was recommended for the state of Victoria.

It is because “The Elites” don't trust the work of practical land managers, whether that be thinning young forests to ensure that a proper over-storey canopy develops, or adopting straightforward hazard reduction burning programmes.  Climate change may be a convenient scapegoat, but it will not protect our land into the future.

HOTTER AND DRIER SUMMERS

On Sunday morning the Prime Minister said on national history a royal commission into "the killer bushfire season" is necessary and reiterated claims that the nation is facing a "new normal", with more severe natural disasters on the way;  he said he would be seeking more powers to allow the Australian Defence Force to respond more quickly.

Bill Gates has famously said that if you can't measure it you can't manage it, and that fundamental to improvement is the capacity to accurately measure.

Yet we have a situation where key statistics are either remodelled or ignored.

Mr Morrison mentioned hotter and drier summers in his television address.  The historical record shows that the landmass of Australia is not drying out.  Last year, 2019, was exceptionally dry.  But the long-term trend is not towards a drier continent but rather we have on average had consistently wetter years since the 1970s, as shown in Figure 1.

It is also the case that summers are not getting drier, as shown in Figure 2.

According to the Bureau, recent summers have been hotter, but such claims would not pass scrutiny if assessed, for example, for inclusion in the Guinness Book of records.  This is because of all the changes to the way temperatures are now measured.

The Rutherglen agricultural research station has one of the longest, continuous, temperature records for anywhere in rural Victoria.  Minimum and maximum temperatures were first recorded at Rutherglen using standard and calibrated equipment back in November 1912.  Considering the first 85 years of summer temperatures — unadjusted, as in not homogenised — the hottest summer on record at Rutherglen is the summer of 1938-1939.

At Rutherglen, the first big equipment change happened on 29 January 1998.  That is when the mercury and alcohol thermometers were replaced with an electronic probe — custom built to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology's own standard, with the specifications still yet to be made public.

According to Bureau policy, when such a major equipment change occurs there should be at least three years (preferably five) of overlapping/parallel temperature recordings.  Except the mercury and alcohol thermometers (used to measure maximum and minimum temperatures, respectively) were removed on exactly the same day the custom-built probe was placed into the Stevenson screen at Rutherglen, in direct contravention of this policy.

The policy implications are significant, far more significant than Pascoe paraphrasing some text from the early explorers to make a point while claiming an Aboriginal heritage.

In 2011, the Bureau made further changes to how it measures temperatures in that it stopped averaging one-second readings from the probe at Rutherglen over one minute.  The maximum temperature as recorded each day at Rutherglen is now the highest one-second spot reading from the custom-built probe.  That is correct — spot reading.

Across Australia, non-standard methods of measuring (spot readings) from non-standard equipment (custom-built probes) make it impossible to establish the equivalence of recent temperatures from Rutherglen — or any of the Bureau's other 695 probes in automatic weather stations — with historical data.

REWRITING OUR TEMPERATURE

It was at the Sydney Institute in 2014 that I first began to detail the extent to which the Australian Bureau of Meteorology has rewritten our temperature history to create the impression of catastrophic global warming using the technique of homogenisation.  This is in addition to the issues with calibration.

Back in 2014, I showed how temperatures are changed in the ACORN database, and not by a small amount.  I showed that the recorded values — the actual measurements — are often changed by more than a degree from the original measurements to remove the cooling trend from at least 1940 to 1960.  Cooling the past makes the present appear hotter.

If we consider, as an example, Bourke in western New South Wales, the temperature as measured using a mercury thermometer in a Stevenson Screen at the official recording station was 38.9 degrees Celsius.  This value was changed to 38.4 in the first official ACORN database, and then dropped-down by a further 0.3 degrees when the Bureau published version two of ACORN.

This is in addition to the more recent issues that I have uncovered, issues caused by the transition to electronic probes without due regard to calibration.  In the case of Mildura, I have shown that the official electronic probe is regularly recording 0.4°C hotter than the mercury thermometer in the same shelter.

Then there is the issue of how all the temperature series are added together.

Concerned that the Bureau made many errors in its calculation of the mean Australian temperature, Merrick Thomson, a retired accountant, asked questions in a submission to a government enquiry some years ago, specifically:

1. Why was the mix of stations changed with the transition to ACORN, and why was this not explained and declared, particularly given that it has resulted in a large increase in the annual temperature for Australia.  He calculates this was 56°C.
2. What criteria is used to determine whether or not a station becomes part of the national network, and specifically, why was the very hot location of Oodnadatta added to the national network in 2011?

His submission was never acknowledged, and his questions never answered.

So, when the Bureau announced that last year was the hottest on record we can have absolutely no confidence that this is true.  The charts they show and values they present are totally contrived.

I recently explained to Chris Smith on Sky News that the hottest day ever recorded in Australia using standard equipment at an official recording station is 51.6°C at Bourke in January 1909.  I also explained that this legitimate record has been expunged from the record by Blair Trewin at the Bureau.

Over the last six years, I have provided more and more evidence — some of it reported by Graham Lloyd and published in The Australian — which shows Blair Trewin, under the direction of David Jones, is falsely rewriting our temperature history.  But nothing has ever been done about this.  Rather, successive state and federal governments have let the belief in human-caused catastrophic global warming grow while neglecting the forests.

I have it on good advice that the detail of my accusations against the Bureau have been discussed in Cabinet, including in the presence of Peter Dutton and Scott Morrison.  At that time then prime minister Tony Abbott was apparently keen to have some sort of inquiry into the industrial-scale remodelling by Jones and Trewin through the process of homogenisation, but it is said his efforts were thwarted by Greg Hunt and Julie Bishop.

ELITE WISDOM VERSUS PRACTICAL KNOWLEDGE

For decades respected Aboriginal elders have been invited onto local bushfire management committees, only to find government-appointed chairpersons refusing to even record their advice.  In the Dreaming active land management is so important, while a particular zeitgeist and red tape now most deliberately prevent it.

Then there is the issue of adequate resourcing.  So much money is provided to science managers to fake news about the Murray River, the Great Barrier Reef and human-caused catastrophic climate change.  Yet the real and pressing issues concerning management of weeds, feral animals, and fuel loads in forests is mostly ignored.  Meanwhile, artificial constraints on commercial opportunities for the sustainable harvest of so much of our natural bounty, including kangaroos and crocodiles, are indirectly imposed by Hugh Jackman and other Hollywood celebrities who support campaigns led by Terri Irwin.

Grahame Webb has spent a lifetime overseeing the successful resurgence of crocodile numbers in the Northern Territory, only to now be prevented from realising any commercial gain for his Aboriginal colleagues because of successful campaigning by Hollywood Elites.

As Bruce Pascoe writes in Black Emu:

Strangely, though, when Ross Garnaut, who prepared the climate-change policy for the Rudd Government in 2008, championed kangaroo farming as a way of conserving the land and cutting greenhouse gases, because cattle are greater polluters than motor cars, the press could hardly contain their contempt.

I've discussed the need to not only restore the historical temperature record, but also the need to restore the estuary of our longest river system, with Minister Simon Birmingham.  But he tells me that there is no advantage in it for South Australia.  Also, he has told me that the Australian Greens — steered on this issue by his fellow South Australian Sarah Hanson-Young — would never support such an initiative.

I met with Hanson-Young back in 2011.  She told me that while she sees some merit in the Murray River having an estuary, South Australian Greens and Liberals "will hold the line" together on the issue.

It is the case that here in Australia, just a few rule over us, and at the behest of their politics that has scant regard for the natural environment, and little more for the economy.

Contrary to the impression given by our ABC, quiet Australians of diverse lineage are not being heard, while the mostly white leadership across The Greens, Coalition and Labor parties together decide how key issues will be managed.

Worse, it is a fact that practical individuals who operate outside the current zeitgeist are hounded by our elites and our government.

The terrifying infernos of recent weeks are a wake-up call.  It is time that the Prime Minister and all the Ministers in the current Australian government showed some real leadership.

They know the real issues, and they understand the politics.  So, it is past time they climbed out from under the thumbs of the catastrophists embedded in our most important government-funded institutions.

Stop taking orders from them, and start referring them to the AFP.  Their misdeeds are significant.

Tragic, But Unprecedented? Not Yet

The word unprecedented is applied to almost every bad thing that happens at the moment, as though particular events could not have been predicted, and have never happened before at such a scale or intensity.  This is creating so much anxiety, because it follows logically that we are living in an uncertain time:  that there really is a climate emergency.

The historical evidence, however, indicates fires have burnt very large areas before, and it has been hotter.

Some of the catastrophe has been compounded by our refusal to prepare appropriately, as is the case with the current bushfire emergency here in Australia.  Expert Dr Christine Finlay explains the importance of properly managing the ever-increasing fire loads in an article in The Weekend Australian.  While there is an increase in the area of national park with Eucalyptus forests, there has been a reduction in the area of hazard reduction burning.

The situation is perhaps also made worse by fiddling with the historical temperature record.  This will affect the capacity of those modelling bushfire behaviour to obtain an accurate forecast.

We have had a horrific start to the bushfire season, and much is being said about the more than 17 lives lost already, and that smoke has blown as far as New Zealand.  Unprecedented has been the claim.  But just 10 years ago, on 9 February 2009, 173 lives were lost in the Black Saturday inferno.  On January 13, 1939 — Black Friday — two million hectares burnt with ash reportedly falling on New Zealand.  That was probably the worst bushfire catastrophe in Australia's modern recorded history in terms of area burnt and it was 80 years ago next week.

According to the Report of the Royal Commission that followed, it was avoidable.

In terms of total area burnt:  figures of over 5 million hectares are often quoted for 1851.  The areas now burnt in New South Wales and Victoria are approaching this.

Last summer, and this summer, has been hot in Australia.  But the summer of 1938-1939 was probably hotter.  In rural Victoria, the summer of 1938-1939 was on average at least two degrees hotter than anything measured with equivalent equipment since, as the table below shows.

The summer of 1938-1939 was probably the hottest ever in recorded history for the states of New South Wales and Victoria.  It is difficult to know for sure because the Bureau of Meteorology has since changed how temperatures are measured at many locations and has not provided any indication of how current electronic probes are recording relative to the earlier mercury thermometers.

Further, since 2011, the Bureau is not averaging measurements from these probes so the hottest recorded daily temperature is now a one-second spot reading from an electronic device with a sheath of unknown thickness.  In the United States, similar equipment is used and the readings are averaged over five minutes and then the measurement recorded.

The year before last, I worked with the Indonesian Bureau of Meteorology (BMKG), and understood their difficulty of getting a temperature equivalence between mercury thermometers and readings from electronic probes at their thousands of weather stations.  The Indonesian Bureau has a policy of keeping both recording devices in the same shelter and taking measurements from both.  They take this issue very seriously and acknowledge the problem.

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology has a policy of a three year period of overlap, yet the metadata shows that for its supposedly highest quality recording stations (for example Rutherglen), the mercury thermometer is removed the very same day an electronic probe is installed.  This is a total contravention of the Bureau's own policy, and nothing is being done about it.

I explained much of this to Australia's Chief Scientist in a letter some years ago — neither he nor the Bureau, deny that our current method of recording temperatures here in Australia is not covered by any international ISO standard.  It is very different from methods currently employed in the United States and also Indonesia, and as recommended by the World Meteorological Organisation.

Then there is the issue of the remodelling of temperatures, I explained how this affects trends at Rutherglen in a blog post early last year.

The remodelling, that has the technical term of homogenisation, is a two-step process.  With respect to the temperature maxima at Rutherglen, the Bureau identified a "statistically significant discontinuity" in 1938-1939.  Values were then changed.

It is somewhat peculiar that the Bureau did not recognise, in its process of remodelling the historical data for Rutherglen, that the summer of 1938-1939 was exceptionally hot because of drought, compounded by bushfires.  Rather David Jones and Blair Trewin at the Bureau used the exceptional hot January of 1939 as an excuse for remodelling the historical temperature record at Rutherglen, with the changed values subsequently incorporated into international data sets.

These made-up values are then promoted by the United Nations' International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).  This propaganda is then tweeted by Hollywood superstars like Bette Midler to The Australian Prime Minister.

After a recent Sky News Television interview I did with Chris Smith several people have contacted me about the hottest day ever recorded in Australia.  They have suggested it is January 16, 1889, when it was 53.1 degrees Celsius at Cloncurry in Queensland.  A problem with this claim is that the temperature was not measured from within a Stevenson screen, though it was a recording at an official station.  A Stevenson screen (to shelterer the mercury thermometer) was not installed by Queensland meteorologist Clement Ragge at Cloncurry until the next month, until February 1889.

The hottest temperature ever recorded in Australia using standard equipment (a mercury thermometer in a Stevenson screen) at an official recording station is 51.7 degrees Celsius (125 degrees Fahrenheit) at the Bourke Post Office on January 3, 1909.

As the saying goes, we are all entitled to our own opinion — not our own facts.

Cutting Red Tape Will Drive Growth

Momentum is building for bi-partisan reform between the Western Australia state Labor government and the federal coalition government to cut red tape and boost economic growth.

As reported in these pages on 27 November, the McGowen government has reached out to the federal government to establish a "one-stop shop" for environment approvals.  This means that WA would be able to conduct the environmental assessment on major projects in the state, such as gas, gold, and iron ore developments, removing the need for assessment at the federal level as well.

This is a very important development which could reduce the approval time of major projects by up to six months.  The fast-tracking would not alter environmental standards because it is the duplication between state and federal regulations that is to be removed, rather than reducing underlying regulatory obligations.

In announcing the initiative Premier McGowen said "industry has been crying out for bilateral approvals and we are responding to these calls.  This plan ensures we maintain the highest environmental standards, but don't get bogged down in bureaucracy."

This is an example of Team WA working across party lines to achieve sensible economic reform.  At the federal level red tape reduction is being led by the highly capable Ben Morton, who is the Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister and the Federal Liberal Member for Tangney in the city's south.

The bi-partisan initiative comes at an important time.

Across the nation business investment is just 10.9 per cent of GDP, which is lower than it was during the Whitlam years and is slightly above the recessionary lows of the early 1990s.

New private sector business investment in Western Australia is 54 per cent below the 2013 peak which is holding back productivity, employment, and wages growth.

While there are non-policy reasons for this decline, it is red tape which has caused the decline to business investment to be deeper, wider, and more protracted than it otherwise would be.

My recent research estimated there are 107,817 regulatory restrictions contained in Western Australian legislation alone.  To put this in context, New South Wales has a population around three times that of WA, yet has slightly fewer regulatory restrictions on the books.

Regulatory restrictions refer to instances in legislation which restrict or compel behavior, including words such as "should", "must", and "shall not".

Importantly, my research found that the Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety was responsible for imposing the most regulation on the Western Australian economy with 17,097.  This was followed by the Department of Jobs, Tourism, Science and Innovation with 16,272 regulatory restrictions, and the Department of Justice with 15,226 restrictions.

It is a big problem that the two departments who have primary oversight of the WA resources sector and job creation, respectively, are also responsible for imposing the most regulation.

This will undermine the ability of the McGowen government to achieve its ambitious objective of overseeing the creation of 150,000 new jobs in WA over the next five years, which includes some 30,000 new regional jobs.

To understand the problem of red tape in the resource sector, consider the Roy Hill iron ore project located in the Pilbara region.

The Roy Hill project required some 4,967 licenses, permits, and approvals for the pre-construction phase alone, approximately 79 per cent of which were imposed by the state government.

And while Roy Hill has been able to successfully navigate the reams of red tape, many other projects, particular those being undertaken by smaller businesses, cannot.

To further build on the encouraging bi-partisan effort to cut red tape, the WA and federal governments should also introduce a one-in-two-out approach where two regulations must be repealed for every new one introduced.  This will place a binding constraint on bureaucracy to ensure there is a steady decline in regulation.

End The Man-Made Drought. Rip Up The Murray Darling Basin Plan

The failure of the Murray Darling Basin Plan is an example of what happens when decisions are taken out of the hands of locals and given to distant Canberra bureaucrats.

By taking an extra 2000GL of water out of the agricultural sector every year since 2012 — the largest re-direction of water to the environment for any large river basin in the world — the Murray Darling Basin Plan has created nothing less than a man-made drought.

This could all have been avoided if the Australia's state and federal governments had heeded the advice of our founding fathers, who deliberately left responsibility for the administration of rivers to the states.

Our founding fathers understood that when it comes to juggling environmental and economic needs, local knowledge is crucial.  People on the ground have a vested interest in ensuring both the viability of long-term investment as well as the environmental sustainability that will keep that investment secure.

But when decisions are made at a distance, environmental utopianism is often given priority over people's livelihoods.  This phenomenon was demonstrated in the May 18 election, when Queenslanders reliant on mining jobs voted overwhelmingly to reject the ecological extremism being pushed in the inner suburbs of distant major cities.

This local knowledge is why New South Wales Deputy Premier John Barilaro has called for his state to withdraw from the Murray Darling Basin Plan.  As the MP for an electorate near the Murray, Barilaro has first-hand knowledge of the damage the plan is doing to hardworking Australian farmers.

Constitutionally speaking, NSW should be able to act on the deputy premier's proposal.  The question of rivers was raised during the federal conventions of the 1890s, with the South Australians concerned that Victorian and New South Wales agriculture would use up the water they wanted for river boating.  In the face of this controversy, the delegates deliberately chose to leave the issue to the states under the premise that decisions should be in the hands of those immediately affected by them.

The only mention of rivers in the entire Constitution is in Section 100, where it deliberately restricts the federal government from using its Trade and Commerce powers to "abridge the right of a State or of the residents therein to the reasonable use of the waters of rivers for conservation or irrigation".  "Conservation" in this context meant pastoralism, with the founders aware that in a country as dry as Australia there was a limit to how much water could be used for irrigation.

Unfortunately, the federal government has bypassed this protection and taken control of the issue, damaging the principles of federalism in the process.

While there have been centrally coordinated agreements over the use of the Murray River since 1914, the current Murray Darling Basin Plan is based on Section 96 of the Constitution, which allows the federal government to make grants to the states with attached conditions.

Because the Commonwealth has deliberately monopolised the major sources of taxation, states are now reliant on these grants which allow the central government to dictate to them on policy areas where they have no constitutional right.

As a result, any attempt on the part of NSW to withdraw from the plan would carry with it significant financial penalties.

Even if the state government was willing to endure this, there is every chance that the High Court would allow the federal government to legislate on the basis of the External Affairs power in Section 51(xxix) of the Constitution.  This has been interpreted as allowing the federal government to enforce international environmental agreements regardless of the intended delegation of powers.

If we want a healthy system of federalism, we need to reverse this process and restrict the ability of the Commonwealth to centralise control without a constitutional mandate.

As far as the Murray Darling Basin Plan is concerned, it is probably too late for such a structural initiative.  The Morrison government must urgently tear up the plan and allow desperate farmers to access the water that is flowing agonisingly past their front doors.

To lessen the likelihood that such awful decisions are made in the future, policymakers should look to the wisdom of our founding fathers and allow decisions to be made at the most local level practicable.  At a minimum, this means the state level, where the smaller size of the electorate allows individuals to have a greater impact on political decision-making.

The concept of federalism is about letting individuals take control of their own lives — it is a principle on which our great nation was founded, and it's a principle we must revive.

Farmers Know Best How To Care For Land On Which They Depend

Australian farmers are under ­unprecedented attack by environmental groups and left-leaning political parties.  It's time government ministers put the gloves on and jumped into the ring.  On this page last week, Lyndon Schneiders, national director of the Wilderness Society, argued that land-clearing by farmers is a "key threat" to the environment and more must be done to counteract it.  In doing so, Schneiders called the issue "complex".  However, there is nothing complex about it.

We are talking about private farmers who decide to develop their own privately held land.  It isn't the government's land.  And it surely isn't the Wilderness ­Society's land.  Government ­bureaucrats and green groups have no business telling farmers what they can and cannot do on their private land.

If the Wilderness ­Society is so concerned about land-clearing, then they should pay farmers to forgo productive land development in order to conserve vegetation.  Or, better yet, they should purchase their own land and use that for conservation purposes.

What is perhaps more disappointing, though, is the use of misleading figures.  Schneiders estimates that 1.2 million hectares of land were cleared in Queensland over three years following the Newman government's sensible relaxation of land-clearing laws.  Yet what the Wilderness ­Society doesn't say is that this represents just a 0.7 per cent ­increase in ­agricultural use ­because of land development, or just 0.23 per cent a year.  In any case, about two-thirds of ­vegetation management carried out by farmers is to ­control ­regrowth areas that had previously been cleared.

This is why over the approxi­mate period that the Newman laws were in place, the gross value of agriculture commodities produced in Queensland increased almost 30 per cent — about double the national increase — and it became Australia's most valuable agricultural state.  But you won't read that in the Wilderness Society's piece, either.

Nor will you read the fact that employment in the agriculture, forestry and fisheries sector in Queensland has grown 23 per cent since 2014.  Or that the agriculture sector is home to about 85,000 businesses, many of them small and family-owned, and all of which are under threat from more government regulation.

However, what is even more concerning is that the Wilderness Society has launched what is just another prong in a co-ordinated attack on farmers.

Just last month the Labor Party included a "land-clearing trigger" in its national party platform.  Make no mistake, a land-clearing trigger would be the greatest attack on farmers since settlement.  It could potentially see every proposed instance of agricultural development subject to approval from the federal environment minister.  It would be nothing short of de facto nationalisation of privately held farmland, meaning Canberra-based bureaucrats would have veto power of farm development.  These moves have nothing to do with the environment.  Rather, it is all about control.

What is needed is less, not more, power in Canberra.  Encouragingly, the government is reviewing how to cut the amount of red tape­ ­imposed on farmers by the federal environmental laws.  The best thing the federal government could do is completely remove ­itself from the regulation of environmental matters.  Farmers ­already have to deal with enough meddling bureaucrats at the local and state level, let alone having to contend with out-of-touch, overpaid and underworked Canberra-based officials.

In fairness to Schneiders, he does get one thing right when he says "the vast majority of farmers care about the environment and know the future is all about sustainability".  Yet this completely undermines the entire case for government intervention.  Farmers know that the vitality of their land depends on their ability to properly manage it.  Only they, and not distant bureaucrats, know how to best do this.

It's time governments got out of the way and let farmers do what only they can do:  produce high-value food, fibre and grain while being responsible custodians of their land for the next generation of Australian farmers.

Three Steps To Reducing Red Tape For Farmers

Red tape is destroying farming communities, yet the best the Turnbull government can do is launch another review.

At end of March, the government announced it would undertake a review into the red tape imposed on farmers by federal environmental regulation.

But this review, like most others, will end up providing a massive pay day for the bureaucrats who run it, only to sit on the shelf and gather dust for decades to come.

What is so troubling is that the government is not taking this issue seriously.

In announcing the review, the government said they would be "weeding out unnecessary red tape for farmers".

Red tape is more than just a few weeds that need to be pulled out.

Only root and branch reform, involving the total extermination of red tape, and the bureaucratic pests which impose it, will help restore prosperity and opportunity to the agricultural sector.

Here's how to do it.

Firstly, the Commonwealth government should announce a moratorium on all new rules being imposed on the agricultural sector for the next five years.  As it currently stands, many farmers are not even aware of the rules that apply to them.  And how could they be?  Seemingly every week a new rule is introduced at the local, state, or federal level.  Busy and productive landowners simply cannot keep up.  They haven't got all day to sit around reading the official government registrar of new rules when there are fields to be ploughed, cows to be miked, and livestock to be attended to.

Secondly, the Commonwealth government should remove itself from regulating the agricultural sector.  That sector is already heavily regulated at state and local levels.  Additional interference at the federal level just leads to more duplication and overlap.

Thirdly, the greatest red tape impost occurs at the state level through native vegetation regulation.  Such laws require private landowners to maintain or expand the extent of native vegetation on their private property.  This effectively results in the sterilisation of productive farmland, which can severely undermine the economic potential of that farmland and throw farmers and their families into chaos.

Moreover, this is greatly insulting to farmers.  They know far more than city-based bureaucrats about how to sustainably manage their farmland.  After all, many farmers have been on the land for generations.  They know what they are doing.  If green groups feel so strongly about native vegetation, then they should buy their own land, not force farmers to give up their livelihood.

While native vegetation regulation is a state issue, there is one thing the feds can do.  Whenever a state government sterilises privately held land to conserve native vegetation, the Commonwealth government should redirect a portion of the relevant state's GST share to the affected farmer.  This would rapidly change the incentives that state governments face, and ensure farmers are properly compensated for the forced sterilisation of their productive farmland.

But it's not just our farmers that are suffering under the weight of red tape.  Red tape in Australia is at a crisis point.  Each year red tape reduces economic output by a staggering $176 billion, which is 11 per cent of GDP.  This makes red tape Australia's largest industry.

Thanks to red tape and high taxes, business investment in Australia is just 12 per cent of GDP, which is lower than what it was during the economically hostile Whitlam years.  Wages growth is stagnating.  And more than 700,000 Australians are without work.

Now is not the time for another review.  Now is the time for action.  The Turnbull government must cut red tape to unleash to productive potential of Australia's farmers.

Farmers Know Best How To Clear Their Own Land

The Palaszczuk government's proposed regulations on native vegetation attack responsible farming and threaten agricultural development in regional Queensland.

The changes, being considered by a parliamentary committee, reverse a policy that allows farmers to clear high-value agricultural land to put it to productive use.

Those laws were a sensible attempt to find a balance between environmental conservation and agricultural development.  They allowed farmers to extract value from their land while still requiring them to minimise over-­clearing by self-assessing their activities against codes of ­conduct.

The proposed laws are a further step away from balance in favour of environmental absolutism.  The presumption underlying the effective prohibition of agricultural land-clearing is that environmental protection cannot coexist with agricultural development.

Indeed, it suggests that there is no situation where the benefits of developing land could ever outweigh the costs of clearing shrubbery and trees from farmland.

This is extreme and ignores many economic benefits — to farmers and the state and the nation — of releasing land otherwise locked up by the government.  It is not surprising over the period 2012-13 to 2015-16 the gross value of agriculture commodities produced in Queensland increased by almost 30 per cent — about double the national increase — and it became Australia's most valuable agricultural state.

By comparison, the gross value of agricultural production in NSW and Victoria over the same period increased by just 7.9 per cent and 12.46 per cent respectively.

A number of other assumptions are clouding the land-­clearing debate.  Claims that land is being cleared at Brazil-like levels since 2013 are overblown.  In 2015-16 just a quarter of 1 per cent of Queensland's land area was cleared.  And about two-thirds of vegetation management carried out by farmers is to control regrowth areas that had previously been cleared, for routine farm maintenance such as the erection of fences and tracks, and to stop encroachment of trees and shrubs into naturally open grassland areas.

And this doesn't say anything at all about the extent of vegetation that has grown back since 2013.  As The Australian reported yesterday, the Department of Science remote-sensing centre leader Dan Tindall has conceded that the satellite mapping of regrowth is a "very difficult thing to do" and that "the possibility exists" that more trees are growing back than are being cut down.

The reason why land-clearing has not been occurring at reckless rates under laws enacted by the former Newman government is because farmers know how to get the most out of their land in the least destructive way.

This leads to the other assumption underlying environmental absolutism:  the idea that farmers don't know how to manage their land so it must be publicly managed.  In other words, the public interest in environmental conservation means private property rights are irrelevant.

But property rights give land owners an incentive to care for their land — they know their livelihoods depend on environmentally sustainable practices.  This may mean economising land use or the use of more efficient and environmentally friendly ­machinery and technology.

They certainly don't need city-based bureaucrats, professional politicians or coastal activists to tell them how to do their job.

The government also transfers the cost of protecting the environment from the public to the landowners.  This distorts how people understand the costs of environmental-protection regulations.  For instance, the explanatory notes for the new proposals estimate the "financial cost of administering the legislation (to be) cost-neutral", but ignores the very real cost to farmers in lost agricultural production, a cost that flows to consumers across Australia.

Sterilisation of farmland may feel good but it will make life much harder for our farmers.  Nor will it put food on the tables of families already struggling to keep up with the cost of living.  My research last month illustrated how government-regulated and subsidised sectors are driving up the cost of living.  Wage growth has slightly outpaced the increase in food prices since 1997, but this will be more difficult if governments continue to pile regulations on food producers.

Red tape costs the national economy about $176 billion each year in lost economic output.  The Palaszczuk government needs to ignore the environmental absolutists' low-growth agenda and start cutting red tape to unleash prosperity for Queenslanders.

Why We'll Get More Red Tape And Interference Under Re-elected ALP

More red tape, bureaucratic interference, and confiscation of private land is on the cards under a re-elected Palaszczuk government.

The Palaszczuk government has committed to re-introducing native vegetation regulations, which were rejected by the Queensland Parliament last year.

Those changes would reverse the Newman government's policy that allows farmers to clear high value agricultural land so that land can be put to productive use.

The current native vegetation laws are sensible.  They allow farmers to get the most out of their while still requiring farmers to self-assess their activity against codes of conduct to minimise over-clearing.

Some environmentalists claim that there has been a "free for all" of clearing that has taken place since the Newman government introduced the laws in 2013.

However, nothing could be further from the truth.  Since the laws were introduced approximately 1 million hectares have been cleared.  This represents just a 0.6 per cent increase in agricultural use due to land clearing.  And this is an overestimate as some of that land would have been cleared under the pre-Newman laws.

The reason why over-clearing hasn't occurred is simple:  farmers know what they are doing.  They know how to get the most out of their land and how to manage it in a sustainable manner.  I bet the majority of farmers are deeply offended by the notion that they are somehow ill-equipped to manage their land and need to be told how to do their job by bureaucrats.

As AgForce, the peak body representing Queensland rural producers, was reported as saying in these pages on 1 November, "farming families care about their land and know how to manage it responsibly.  Farming is a difficult enough job as it is, we don't need politicians adding to the difficulties we face."

Unfortunately, what is often unsaid in this policy debate is that we aren't talking about government owned land.  We are talking about land privately owned by farmers.

The government has absolutely no right to be introducing draconian regulations which impede the freedom of farmers to develop their own land.  Worse, such regulations, by effectively sterilising farm land, reduce property values and can throw families into financial chaos.  All because Brisbane-based bureaucrats think they know better than the farmers who have been taking care of their land and providing food for the rest of the state for decades.

The environmentalists who oppose agricultural development can't grow all of their food in their inner-city apartments.  They need our farmers.  How would they react if the government constrained their property uses by locking up their spare bedroom without explanation or compensation?  Perhaps then, these uninformed activists would get a taste of what farmers have to deal with every day and understand the real consequences of their feel-good, virtue signalling.

While green groups complain about tree-clearing, you will never hear them talk about jobs, families, or communities.  The Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries industry employs close to 60,000 Queenslanders, contributes around $15 billion to the Queensland economy each year, and supports thousands of families and rural communities.  Many of these jobs, families, and communities will be jeopardised under Labor's proposed changes.  Yet what does the Palaszczuk government have to say about them?  Nothing, because they simply do not matter to the green left.

Unfortunately, red tape, such as that being proposed by Labor, is one of the biggest impediments to business investment, job creation, and economic growth in Queensland and the rest of Australia.  Indeed, red tape costs the Australian economy some $176 billion each and every year in forgone economic output.  That is the equivalent to 11 per cent of GDP or $19,300 per household.

If we continue down the road of more red tape, then Australia will be all trees and no jobs.  It is imperative that governments at the state and federal level cut red tape to unleash prosperity and allow farmers to get on with farming.

How Our Threatened Species Program Is Costing Us Dearly

The future prosperity of regional Australia is threatened by unnecessary regulatory roadblocks.

All industries, but particularly those in regional Australia, are subject to a byzantine array of licences, permits and regulatory approvals.  This red tape burden slows or prevent major projects, cost jobs and ultimately costs the national economy $176 billion every year in foregone economic output.  That's equivalent to 11 per cent of the national economy.

One of these regulatory roadblocks is from Australia's threatened species protection regime.  My new research paper Decentralisating the Protection of Australian Threatened Species, published recently, revealed that the protection of threatened species has become increasingly complex and is beset with duplication.

The size of the federal list of protected species has increased by over 60 per cent since 1992 when the Endangered Species Protection Act was introduced.  Since 2000 when the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act was introduced, on average 15 species have been added to the list every year, totalling over 1,800 protected species under federal law.

This of course excludes the state lists, which have also increased since 2000.  In particular, the Queensland list has increased by over 100 per cent in that time, and most of the list is duplicated with the federal list, adding to the regulatory confusion.

An onerous species protection regime disproportionately affects regional and rural Australia.  This is unsurprising:  regional and rural Australia is host to much of the wildlife that legislation seeks to protect.

Because rural Australia carries most of the burden of protecting threatened species, that means projects in the country can be delayed or deemed too risky to begin in the first place.

This is what happened to the Nathan Dam project on the Dawson River, where the boggomoss snail held up development for nine years before experts determined that the population of the snail was "significantly higher than originally suggested".

The state and federal government's current method for protecting species is unsustainable and facilitates regulatory expansion and complexity.  One proposed solution would be to abolish the state-based regime and adopt a single, one-size-fits-all regime across the country.

But Canberra is far removed from the concerns of regional Australia, and is poorly placed to understand the balance between development and environmental protection.

The preferred solution is to go the other way:  abolish the federal regime and return responsibility for protecting species to the States.  The States are naturally more likely to have better knowledge of the environmental situation in their jurisdictions than Canberra.

Only by embracing "jurisdictional competition" between the States can duplication be eliminated while also minimising the risk of red tape needlessly killing projects or threatening jobs for Queenslanders.

Annastacia Palaszczuk And The Latest City-Country Divide

The Palaszczuk government's now failed changes to native vegetation law is a perfect example of how out-of-control environmentalism can hold back Australia's agriculture and, indeed, our economic development.

The laws, which failed a vote in the Queensland Parliament last night, proposed to reverse the Newman government's policy that allowed farmers to clear high value agricultural land.

These laws were designed to allow farmers to self assess to minimise any environmental damage and become the great conservationists we know they are.

The Newman laws are not a laissez faire approach to native vegetation as some green groups might have you believe.  Under the LNP's framework, land must be proved to be economically viable and the environmental effects minimised before clearing.

The Newman Government laws found the sensible middle ground between economic development in agriculture and environmental conservation.

Labor's reforms would have completely destroyed this sensible compromise, locking up the most productive land for only marginal environmental gain.

Since 2013, when the Newman government relaxed the laws, around 112,400 hectares of high value agricultural land has been cleared.  This represents a 0.6 per cent increase in land clearing, a miniscule amount given the conjecture.

Have we really reached a point in this divisive debate where vegetation is more valuable to the Government than productive economic activity and the viability of Queensland farms?

Apparently we have.  Last week Andrew Piccone from the Australian Conservation Foundation blew the whistle on the environmentalist's agenda.  He claimed that "To improve economic opportunity in remote Australia we have to start thinking outside the marginal and unimaginative industries of last century — big cattle, big agriculture and big mining — which are in fact the greatest threat to the area's prosperity."

That deep hostility to Australia's primary industries from Australia's flagship environmental lobby says a lot about the ideological politics going on in these debates.

And they help explain why the now failed legislation doesn't just prohibit farming, it punishes it.

For example, the Palaszczuk government's Vegetation Management Act amendments represented a reversal of the burden of proof so that a farmer had to prove they were complying with the laws, rather than the government.  These changes assumed farmers are environmental vandals.

This is an astounding breach of the rule of law.  It is no surprise that the Queensland Law Society described the changes as a step backwards for justice.

Agriculture is a $53 billion industry that employs more than 350,000 people across Australia.  It puts the food on our tables, and provides a livelihood for thousands of regional communities.

The recent Productivity Commission draft report into regulation of agriculture highlighted the breathtaking array of complex red tape our farmers are burdened with every day.  Much of this red tape is pushed by these exact green groups not with the intention of protecting the environment, but to shut down productive industries.

I have estimated that red tape costs the Australian economy $176 bn a year in forgone economic output — equivalent to 11 per cent of GDP.

For decades' groups like the Australian Conservation Foundation have demonised the minerals industry, pushing for more and more red tape that has hampered growth.

They won't stop with this defeat.  Past behaviour is the best predictor of future behaviour in this case.  Earlier this month a uranium mine in Western Australia that would have yielded hundreds of jobs, was blocked by the State's Environmental Protection Authority after a submission by WA Greens Senator Scott Ludlam pointed out the effect it could have on a blind, microscopic desert prawn measuring just 0.3mm in length.

Endless objections from green groups have meant that it has taken more than six years and a billion dollars of investment from Adani to get approval for its job creating central Queensland coal mine.

Now the red tape state is coming for agriculture.

It is refreshing to see farming groups like AgForce taking a stand against the creeping red tape activism into agriculture by taking to the streets to protest their property rights being stripped away.

The Palaszczuk minority Government rightly faced defeat on this crucial issue.

As A Rule, Bureaucracy Is Smothering Agriculture

The recently released draft report highlighted the breathtaking array of complex, duplicative and often inconsistent red-tape requirements that hold our agricultural sector back.

Farmers are best suited to farming;  not filling out forms, complying with archaic rules and battling distant regulators.

The Federal Government should heed the commission's calls and cut back on reams of stifling red tape.

The quicker the change, the quicker the benefits will accrue.

In particular, the privatisation of major ports and foreign-flagged vessels will improve efficiency and get transport costs down.

Removing bans on genetically modified crops will give consumers more choice and allow innovation.

Repealing the re-regulation of international sugar marketing will encourage investment in sugar mills and improve competition.

The sheer volume and growth of red tape is out of control.  Unfortunately, tinkering around the edges is no longer enough.  Bold reform is needed to permanently eradicate red-tape.

To do this, the commission should consider how political institutions could be reformed.

The best place to start is with our three-tiered red-tape system.  Many activities across the economy are regulated by local and state governments as well as at the federal level.

This extra regulation provides no extra benefits to the environment or public safety.  It just adds costs.

A basic principle of effective regulation is that it should be developed and implemented by those nearest to the regulated community.  This is where the local knowledge is.

A good example is environmental regulation.  The Commonwealth has responsibility for regulating matters under the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.

But many requirements under this Act — such as the need for businesses to prepare environmental impact assessments — are also required at the state level.

Local Farmers, Not Distant Regulators, Are Best Placed To Protect Our Environment

Toobeah farmer John Norman's nightmare experience with red tape and excessive bureaucracy illustrates an issue many farmers face.

It shouldn't have taken Mr Norman long to prolong a natural event that occurred on his property following a flood event.  Water just needed to be added to the natural flow from his farm.  But Mr Norman ended up spending six weeks negotiating the red tape maze setup by multiple government agencies at considerable personal expense.  This not only cost time, money and resources.  It also jeopardised environmental outcomes.

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident.  Recent research highlights the extent of the problem:  Each and every year red tape is costing our economy more than $176b.  And our red tape state is now comprised of some 1,181 entities, bodies and administrative relationships.  Mr Norman was just the latest farmer to get caught in this web of excessive bureaucracy.  Indeed, the recent Productivity Commission report highlighted a litany of duplicative, unnecessary and costly regulations across the entire agricultural sector.

The report found how coastal shipping and heavy vehicle regulation increases transport costs, how native vegetation laws can make basic land-clearing nearly impossible and how restrictions on foreign investment reduce farm productivity and land value.  These red tape costs can be the difference between success and failure.  The key lesson to learn from Mr Norman's experience is farmers and land-owners are best suited to manage their own land.  When they are empowered to do this they not only do the right thing by their business and community.  They also do the right thing by the environment.