Australia has grown and prospered for over 200 years because we have very strong property rights preservation so when a person buys a property you can be confident that it won’t be taken away by government except in rare circumstances when it’s need for infrastructure, but in those circumstances they have to pay just terms compensation.
Our constitutional forefathers never envisage the situation where the federal government of the day would take land from people by stealth but that is exactly what has happened with the signing of Kyoto and now the Albanese Labor Government taking with EPBC act both have cost farmers both value and capacity to an income of the land
When John Howard’s government signed up to Kyoto Australian farmers were prevented from clearing any vegetation that had grown prior to 1990. The only carbon abatement in Australia was achieved by this act. The problem is it cost farmers a substantial amount in lost capital value and reduction in their capacity to run Livestock or grow crops on their land .
In November 2025 the Albanese labour government has extended that land grab with a further erosion of farmers rights taking the 1990 law back to 2010 so there’ll be another large amount of land that farmers will effectively donate to the government.
I remember my time as President of the NSW Farmers Association when the laws came in we sought extensive legal opinion to try and get a court case to be able to take against the government for what was quite clearly in erosion of our property right but we were told that because the government had changed the use of the land and had not changed the title they did not have to pay just terms compensation.
Farmers know that land with massive regrowth, capital value is greatly diminished. On a recent valuation my scrub country was valued at $200 per hectare. The managed country $2,000, a ten fold increase. Additional you cannot run a lizard on the scrub country so your income earning capacity is greatly reduced.
This stolen land still has council rates due on it to be paid for by farmers, as well as interest paid to the bank.
Will the Albanese Government pick up that cost?
The other interesting issue is now Albanese has acquired the land what management will they employ to look after it? Surely they don’t expect farmers who have just lost the ground to continue to manage it. I have news for them, farmers will not,
This land acquisition is meant to be all about protection of threatened species.
This land with massiveI regrowth will quickly become a haven for pigs, foxes, goats. Cats and Deere. The native threatened species particularly small ground species will be devastated.
If people cannot have confidence Government will not Aquire their land, why would they invest?
Moving to the Gold Coast sitting on the beach and letting all the feral animals consume all the native species looks much more attractive option.
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