The title also unpleasantly describes issues about live cattle/sheep exports, which is potentially part of the same problem/agenda, but that is for another blog.
Milk pricing, forestry sales, toilet paper and the Coral Sea are all issues that are decided by the Australian governments' obsession with the Free Trade rules and environmental restrictions that other countries all but ignore.
Journey from a dairy near Allendale East where farmers are receiving below subsistence rates for their milk; through forests sold off to pay for the Adelaide Oval; past a mill closed because of dumped imported subsidised toilet paper; past a foreign owned coal mine that was farmland; and on out into the Coral Sea where self-imposed restrictions will see Australians buying fish from countries accessing fisheries we have abandoned for 'environmental issues'.
These are only some of the issues that indicate that the Labor Party, state and federal, have not just abandoned regional Australia, but are acting deliberately to deliver it up to big business interests and often foreign ownership.
The Labor Party is trying to dismantle regional Australia by making it literally so unpleasant, so under-serviced, so over-taxed, so fundamentally crippled by the Free Trade lunacy that we must comply with but nobody else does, etc, etc.
In South Australia, the South East does not even appear in tourism literature, and turbine restrictions to protect 'visual amenity and tourism' are specifically not applicable; health services continue to decline, eg, 4 year dental waiting lists; forestry jobs sold off for an oval; etc, etc.
The major supermarkets are complicit, particularly with milk pricing, and have long sought to control the entire process and reap all of the profits without taking any of the responsibility; and if they bankrupt farmers then that just means nice cheap farms for sale.
As far as the big 2 are concerned there are 2 kinds of cattle; those that give milk and those that buy it.
When the Queensland banana industry was literally flattened by Cyclone Yazi the responsible thing to do would be subsidise bananas partly at the farmgate and again at the checkout, helping consumers to afford a relative staple and therefore encouraging sales and therefore also helping the farmers through the crisis.
But no, they have a milk war instead; or was it a bread war; or was it a ...; you get the drift.
Inner-city consumers, blinded to the realities of regional issues and mired in middle-class 'green psuedo-activism', plod along behind the various campaigns that explain to them why everything, mining included, is more important that farmers and food production.
To be continued; apologies for short blog; technology problems for last 24 hrs.
Tomorrow: ABC Radio; Scone Recipes and Wind Turbine Infommercials.
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