Cane farmers like John Russo are struggling to make a living as they battle increasing power prices.
As Annastacia Palaszczuk’s new government was sworn in today, Member for Burnett Stephen Bennett came out swinging to fight for the rights of farming families.
Mr Bennett said he was fearful for the future of farming families under a re-elected Palaszczuk Labor Government, particularly given Labor’s abysmal track record on vegetation management reforms and power prices.
“It’s no secret that Labor is captive to the Greens and hell-bent on anti-economic development policies that would do nothing but hurt our regional communities like the Bundaberg and Burnett region where agriculture is a key industry and employer,” he said.
“Just last year I stood side by side with farmers and landholders to fight against Labor’s aggressive anti-agriculture vegetation management reforms which, if they got their way, would have denied Queensland’s farmers and landowners the opportunity to sustainably grow their agricultural businesses.
“I hold genuine fears that this Labor Government will continue down a destructive path of pushing aggressive, anti-agriculture laws on our hardworking farmers and landholders and completely wipe them out of existence.”
Local rural landholder and small business owner Brad Newton holds similar fears.
Mr Newton said the future of his business and farm were under threat by a Labor government determined to take away property rights for the sake of green ideology.
“They will continue to take more country off us and take away our property rights altogether,” he said.
“We are going to lose people off the land – young people aren’t going to want to stay on the land. They feel that there’s no future in farming.
“Why do people in the rural sector have to pay for the ideologies of people in the city?”
Mr Bennett challenged the Premier to be honest with landholders and come clean with her government’s future plans for the state’s agriculture sector.
He said the Labor Government’s mismanagement of power would also see the demise of farming families.
“We haven’t seen any action from Labor to help farmers and irrigators battling high electricity costs… they’ve done nothing but blame them for their energy use,” he said.
“Farmers can’t keep battling soaring power prices and that’s why the LNP had committed to introducing a food and fibre transition payment to primary producers during the election campaign.
“The Premier should do the right thing and adopt the LNP’s power policies to give farmers and irrigators the helping hand and confidence they need.”
North Isis cane farmer John Russo said increasing power costs continued to plague irrigators despite their best efforts to cut back on energy use.
“In the past three years we have put in, at considerable expense, a combination of low pressure irrigators, variable speed drives and a solar powered pump for one irrigator in an endeavour to counteract the ever-increasing price of electricity,” Mr Russo said.
“We were encouraged by the food and fibre plan that the LNP had put forward which had the potential to address the ever-rising price increases for electricity.
“We understand that the majority of the voting power is not within the rural sector, but if this trend of escalating power prices continues, farming as we know it today will no longer exist.
“We are calling on the Palaszczuk Government to take heed of the plight of the farming community.”
The LNP’s record in government on electricity reforms to support agriculture:
• Capped electricity price increases on transitional tariffs;
• Established the Agriculture Energy and Water Council that was actively addressing issues such as tariff reform to tackle spiralling prices;
• Opposed Federal Labor’s Carbon Tax that nearly doubled the price of wholesale electricity in Queensland;
• Reduced wasteful expenditure on network infrastructure by $7 billion which would have increased electricity prices;
ENDS.
12 December 2017