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hatrack

(59,439 posts)
Wed Oct 20, 2021, 08:09 AM Oct 2021

Nationals - "Real Australians" (Farmers) Shouldn't Be Burdened By "City" Emissions In Climate Plan

The narrative of the beleaguered farmer runs deep in the national psyche. It’s one often weaponised to berate pampered city slickers who don’t understand what life in the bush – what real life – is about. The National party has come up with a new twist on the old grievance – farmers have been paying for Australia’s emission reductions while city folk have been luxuriating in the benefits.

Nationals senator Matt Canavan gave it a try out in an interview with Alan Jones in July. It’s the cities that are responsible for carbon emission, he said, but “it’s the bush that’s expected to pay”. Egged on by Jones, who believes accepting net zero by 2050 would be “a national economic suicide note”, Canavan claimed that “the cities have sent their guilt bill, their guilt invoice to the bush”.

The Nationals agriculture minister, David Littleproud, has this week voiced the same argument to justify the junior Coalition’s partner’s stubborn resistance. Speaking for regional communities, he said “last time we footed the bill and we’re not going to do it again”. What could this possibly mean? There was no “last time”. Littleproud seems to be referring to the long-term decline in land-clearing, which has had the effect of bringing down Australia’s total greenhouse gas emissions.

EDIT

By claiming that declines in land clearing emissions amount to the bush “footing the bill”, the Nationals have turned a national boast into another rural whinge. The Nationals resources minister, Keith Pitt, has extended the argument further. Farmers have been forced to give up their “property rights” to meet the climate demands of the cities not only by limits on land clearing but by regulations forcing them to reduce toxic run-off into the Great Barrier Reef. But that’s a reef protection measure, not a climate change measure. In Pitt’s brain, it doesn’t seem to matter. It’s all a push by soft-handed city dwellers to extract more blood from the honest toilers on the land.

EDIT

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/20/the-nationals-climate-position-no-longer-represents-australian-farmers-and-is-just-symbolic-posturing

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Nationals - "Real Australians" (Farmers) Shouldn't Be Burdened By "City" Emissions In Climate Plan (Original Post) hatrack Oct 2021 OP
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