Vikki Campion on an act of bastardry by Matt Kean:

There is a vast difference between the government having road rules and the government having an official sitting on your lap with their hands on the steering wheel and their foot on the brake as you try to drive to work.

In NSW, regulations changed by stealth under the last state government – influenced by new climate tsar Matt Kean and others who perversely claimed to be Liberals and Nationals – will enable farmers to be monitored by satellite and prevent them from controlling woody weed infestations on previously cleared land to graze the stock that helps feed Sydney.

Apparently, if you cover it in black photovoltaic fields of glass or blow it up for a wind turbine, the same laws that handcuff farmers do not apply. However, remove a seedling that grew up after a bushfire and wait for a stiff penalty to land in your inbox.

While the state Liberals and Nationals brought it in, NSW Labor is pushing through moves that reduce land ownership to merely peasant tenancy. Farmers have to negotiate with the tangled mess of government bureaucracy to obtain permits just to get rid of weeds or collect firewood.

A draft native vegetation regulatory map, first published with as little publicity as possible on August 8, has been sneakily “made available” for landholder review. If you don’t respond because you don’t know about it, you apparently agree to it.

Vast swathes of farmland on the digital map are “regulated” in untouchable yellow or “vulnerable regulated land” in untouchable orange. Much of it will mean the operational farming country will become like a delinquent neighbour, pest-ridden and weed-infested but locked up by bureaucracy, which will decide which plants can be cut and why, from Sydney and Canberra.

If you force the farmers off the land, you’re also forcing off the people who cull feral pigs, wild dogs and lantana.

Imagine if, for climate reasons, your garage was outlawed and enforced by government satellite observation, or you were fined for mowing your lawn, monitored by AI-enhanced satellite imagery of your yard and car.

Yet the Minns government has warned it will be doubling down on “better monitoring and reporting of Allowable Activities through satellite imagery and ground-truthing” of farmers.

In government surveys, more than 80 per cent of landowners said biodiversity was important to them.

Nature in rural life is not a vista only viewed on the nature channel or a computer desktop. It is the kangaroos in your yard in the morning and the birds on your veranda. It’s watching turtles, lizards, and echidnas grow up. It’s your children bringing in half the paddock stuck to their clothes. It’s recognising the beauty in the brutality, the awe of an enormous raptor ripping guts from its prey. It’s the closest thing we get to sanity. It’s our connection to God.

Even if they could, farmers would not cut down all the trees for the simple reason they live here too. That is why there is so much bush in the bush.

But this new map means landholders would incur a raft of fines if they don’t comply with obtuse and poorly defined guidelines.

If the farmer identifies as Aboriginal, he could cut down trees for “cultural reasons”.

One landholder, who is white, doesn’t have that choice.

His entire property is marked as yellow on the map. He says he won’t be able to graze cattle any more and feels forced to hand his property over to the one group allowed to rip and woodchip as many trees as they want – perversely hosting wind factories just to pay back the bank.

That’s the latest from their cement landscape on Macquarie St, while on Parliament Dr, Capital Hill, the Albanese government’s pushing new green cops in a new federal Environmental Protection Agency, which at least has a Coalition figure in Senator Jonno Duniam raging against laws to create yet another bureaucrat behind a computer making decisions to save biodiversity without even coming to ground level to see it, or get muddy themselves.

How do you plan on feeding people, including the new migrant the Albanese government is bringing in every 42 seconds, with arbitrary targets to lock down 30 per cent of Australia’s land and sea by federal bureaucracy, policed by green cops, and then wrap it in another layer of state bureaucracy, policing via satellite every time a weed is killed without a permit?

How do you plan on housing these people, the 1.15 million migrants who have arrived in just 27 months, if the only metric for development approvals is environmental?

Taking local knowledge out of land management is a recipe for failure. Senator Duniam shares an example from Tasmania where land managed by experienced foresters is thriving, while an area handed over to environmental groups has become a gravel pit.

But apparently they know best.

Another proposed federal law seeks to force farmers to report scope three emissions from January 1, with farmers having to supply emissions data to banks, insurers, suppliers and customers.

They do all this for a pitch to Green votes in the most industrialised, least natural urban landscape in the cement hearts of the city.

Our farms have never been so under threat – and it is not the weather you need to worry about.

Allowable Activities. Very Orwellian.
I however can see this brainfart wafting away like the Aboriginal act in Western Australia.
Reckon if Gez had the shotty out and espied a drone over his property, good bye drone.

@RealMacReport

CNN just DESTROYED Kamala Harris’s Marxist economic agenda:

“We‘ve seen this kind of thing tried in lots of other countries before. Venezuela, Argentina, the Soviet Union…it leads to shortages” and would “cause a lot of harm.”

Economists have long predicted fertility rates would decline as countries become wealthier. But the fall over the past decade has happened in rich, middle-income and poor countries. It has also been faster than anyone predicted.

Maybe the evolutionary experiment of intelligence and mind is drawing to an end?

@RealEJAntoni

Housing permits: DOWN

Housing starts: DOWN

Housing completions: DOWN

Another lousy residential construction report in Jul w/ no relief in sight; we haven’t seen numbers this bad since the covid lockdowns:

@ImMeme0

BREAKING: The founder and former director of Pride in Surrey, UK has been charged with multiple counts of sêxual abuse against children.

Stephen Ireland, 40, and David Sutton, 26, both from Addlestone, were arrested on Wednesday.
Both have been remanded in custody and will appear before magistrates in Staines on Thursday.

Ireland and Sutton face a series of charges including six counts of conspiracy to sèxually assault a child, conspiracy to kidnap a child, voyeurism and arranging the commission of a child sèx offence.

In addition, Ireland is facing a further 22 charges, including râpe of a child under 13, sêxual assault, making indecent photographs of children, and possession of an extreme pornographic image.

Sutton is also charged with a further seven offences, including making indecent photographs of children and distributing indecent photographs of a child.

Both have been remanded in custody and will appear before magistrates in Staines next week.

It’s the cost of living, stupid: political contest gets serious

Simon Benson The Australian 17 August, 2024

Fewer than a quarter of voters now expect Labor to retain its majority at the next election. This is an extraordinary electoral assessment of a first-term federal government as it means Labor voters have joined the ranks of the pessimists. The goodwill Australians usually afford new governments is evaporating in response to a continued decline in living standards and prolonged cost-of-living pressures.

This is the sobering conclusion from the first two years of Labor’s already turbulent return to office after a decade in opposition.

As Australia drifts towards the worst of all possible political outcomes – minority government at a time of global and domestic upheaveal – a disillusioned constituency is almost shrugging its shoulders.

Some Australians would remember what a hung parliament means, having the chaos of the previous Labor minority government seared into a collective political memorial to voter remorse. But many may not – clearly not enough to swing major party support one way or the other to avoid a repeat of the experience.

Labor’s primary vote remains bogged at historical lows and is below its 2022 election result. And while it is the Coalition that is recovering, there is resistance to Peter Dutton as prime minister and returning the Liberal and National parties to government so soon.

When productivity as a pathway to prosperity is through the floor, and spending demands on the budget are immense, the consequences of a hung parliament in which the Greens or left-wing independents would have a seat at the table could be profound.

For the first time, some Labor MPs acknowledge that victory at the next election is not assured. There has been a shift in language from confidence and complacency to growing concern that they are in a serious contest. The question for the nation is whether it can afford another three years of lethargy or uninterest in reform.

A hung parliament would favour Anthony Albanese, but there is opportunity for the Coalition if it can build on its partial revival. But the issue that confronts both major parties is cost of living.

At no recent time other than the pandemic has an issue been so comprehensively dominant in voters’ minds. “There is cost of living and then there is daylight between the other issues of concern,” a senior Liberal source says. This is not disputed on the Labor side. “Cost of living is dominant at the moment in a way you don’t normally see a single issue dominate,” a senior Labor source says. “Clearly this is going to be a cost-of-living election.”

This means the perennial policy debates leading into an election, whether it is healthcare or energy, are being assessed by voters through a cost-of-living lens.

This is a significant shift in the collective electoral mindset All other issues have become captive to the primary issue. And this speaks to the longevity of the problem. Australians were never conditioned to the inflation problem going on for as long as it has. Neither was the parliament. Both are struggling to deal with it.

Having failed to foresee the arrival of the crisis, Treasury and the Reserve Bank have been equally deficient in their predictions for an end to it and both are arguably complicit in a greater failure to arrest it as telegraphed. This is the genesis of the friction between the government and the central bank over who is to blame.

There is frustration within government that the inflation curve has not followed its predicted path. There is equal frustration from the RBA that the government is not helping enough in the fight and is now part of the problem. The worst of it was meant to have been over by now. And this was the premise on which Labor’s second-term agenda was being built.

“Suddenly everyone has woken up and found Australia is living in a world that it had not expected,” a senior Labor source says. Instead, we have the prolonged extension of inflation that is now pairing with a dangerous slowdown in some sectors of the economy. A double whammy of deteriorating conditions that by May next year, when the election is due, will have lasted for more than three years.

This unanticipated economic environment is demanding a change of strategy from Labor. So far, the government has been slow to respond and appears mired in old thinking that is failing to deliver any political dividend.

The most recent Newspoll shows Labor’s primary vote slipping to 32 per cent and the Coalition lifting to 39 per cent. The two-party preferred split is 50-50.

Despite public sector wage rises, tax cuts, energy rebates and rental assistance, support for Labor has softened. The prospect of a December election this year is highly unlikely. Albanese is being forced to go full term. The question is where Labor goes from here with the political environment in a state of significant transition. There is still optimism within Labor that it will get opportunities to weave a narrative that the nation has turned the corner and we are through the worst. This is built on hope rather than prediction.

But this requires the indicators to start pointing in the right direction. And this is vital for Albanese if Labor is to succeed in securing a second-term majority.

As one Labor figure says, progressive centre-left political parties have to have stories of optimism and hope.

“We need to generate optimism and have the pessimism start lifting,” they say. The centre left needs to win an argument that using the levers of the state will make life better for people. “They have to be able to argue that things have turned the corner and it’s getting better.” Think Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Tony Blair and now Kamala Harris campaigning on hope.

The national mood needs to shift upwards for Labor’s proposition to work. But if the RBA has signalled anything in the past fortnight, it is that the era of big-spending election campaigns is over.

RBA governor Michele Bullock’s language is subtle in her public comments. No one would expect her to be openly critical of government.

Appearing before the house economics committee on Friday, Bullock said it wasn’t her role to dictate spending policy to government. But the point is clear and was made so in the bank’s recent statement on monetary policy.

The board is concerned about federal and state government spending and the impact it is having on inflation through driving public demand.

This is a potentially significant intervention by the RBA chief at a critical time in the electoral cycle.

“Governments have their fiscal policy, and they have a variety of things they need to achieve,” she said. “I’m not telling governments what to do with their fiscal policy.”

The government is faced with a credible leading public figure belling the cat that it’s not just global factors that are causing a more persistent inflation problem. Inflation is now tied to explicit decisions made by the Labor government.

This gives rise to a compelling argument for the Opposition leader that Labor’s economic management or mismanagement is having an impact on inflation and interest rates. It will be up to Dutton and his Treasury spokesman, Angus Taylor, to make this case more compelling electorally.

But there are implications for the Coalition as well. Both main parties have been snookered by the central bank on extravagant election promises. Neither will be able to go into the campaign throwing money around. But there is evidence that this principle no longer appears to work politically anyhow. Jim Chalmers is aware that from the beginning of the inflation problem, government was never going to be able to completely satisfy an electoral petition for cost-of-living relief without the risk of feeding demand and adding to the inflation problem.

A senior Liberal figure describes a fundamental problem at two levels. “There is a generation of parliamentarians now who believe in the principle that throwing money around wins you votes and elections,” he says. “It just doesn’t work any more. We found that out at the last election.”

This is not disputed on the Labor side among those who might still regard themselves as economically dry. The difference is they blame John Howard and Peter Costello for this erosion of economic circumspection.

“People (voters) are so cynical about it now, they simply don’t believe it any more,” a Labor source says. “Howard did it so well, and for many in the parliament today their formative moments were in the Howard era. He perfected the model of identifying disgruntled constituencies and buying them off. The 2001 election campaign was a work of art.”

But the Albanese government so far appears unable to make the necessary policy and political transition. Bob Hawke and former ACTU boss Bill Kelty were schooled in economics. Paul Keating, who had a voracious appetite for policy as treasurer, schooled himself. The intellectual economic rigour that was driven by a belief that productivity was the pathway to prosperity and set Australia up for economic success does not exist to the same extent in Albanese’s cabinet. Productivity, which remains perilously low, has been airbrushed out of Labor’s narrative. The traditional contest over spending priorities between the two major parties, when they were the only credible options available, has pivoted to a far more complex and disparate set of debates, where voters now believe they have more options than before.

The Liberal Party suffered a cataclysmic shock from the emergence of the teals and has yet to recover entirely from the damage caused to its primary vote.

Labor, on the other hand, is being squeezed further from the left over Gaza. Australians traditionally don’t vote on international events or foreign policy and this would likely be less so during a cost-of-living crisis.

But there is real risk in a handful of electorates, such as in western Sydney, where if enough voters withhold support for Labor over Gaza, it could make a difference.

For those voters who are paying attention, according to a Labor campaigner, the debate about Australia’s response to the Middle East has become so polarised that it has become almost impossible for Labor to win points with either side of the issue.

Albanese is applying a purely tactical approach, using his national platform to narrowcast into these communities while working on an assumption the average soft voter isn’t paying much attention.

The numerical reality in parliament, following the 2022 election, is that the Coalition will need to win 21 seats to govern with a majority after offering one of its own as Speaker of the house.

It won 58 seats at the 2022 election, lost one in the Aston by-election and has lost two more MPs to the crossbench, leaving it with 55. This is the lowest representation in parliament for the Liberal Party since it was formed. The scale of the task facing Dutton is immense.

With the latest Newspoll showing Labor and the Coalition locked on 50-50, a 2 per cent swing to the Coalition since the 2022 election offers fewer than five seats, suggesting a minority Labor government would be likely if an election were to be held this weekend.

Above that, however, significantly more seats could be harvested, hence Labor’s concerns.

“We are definitely back to being competitive,” a senior NSW Liberal figure says. “The question is whether the Coalition can gain a couple more points. A government under pressure makes mistakes, a leader under pressure makes mistakes. And internal anxiety can tip governments under pressure into making errors.

“Dutton has done a remarkable job uniting the team. (At this stage) last time they had burned through three leaders. Everyone was scrapping. The voice was the first big stuff-up for Albanese. There is now opportunity to be competitive going into an election. The closer Labor’s vote gets to 30, the closer the Coalition is to getting back into the 40s. If this happens, the Coalition will be in a strong position.”

Labor MPs agree this is the risk, a breakout in the vote for the Coalition. “At 50-50, you can’t afford to have too many things go wrong,” another Labor insider says.

This is the challenge for Albanese. Labor’s period of government since the failed voice referendum has been underlined by unexpected policy crises that have been exacerbated by a failure of political management – none more conspicuous than the immigration detention disaster.

Its handling of the community divisions over Gaza, between Muslim and Jewish communities is now following a similar political trajectory.

The question many internally are asking is: Where does Labor go from here?

According to all the fundamentals, Labor is favoured to get a second term – if for no other reason than Australians are fair-minded and would be inclined to give a first-term government a go before casting judgment.

Something would have to go catastrophically wrong for this to be reversed. And the only way that happens is if the leadership advantage Albanese has over Dutton is turned around.

And the only way that will happen is if the Liberal leader can convince voters the Albanese government should be held to account for the economic situation.

As I wrote yesterday, Dutton attacking Albanese on Gazan visas won’t win him the election. He needs to convince voters he can arrest their decline in living standards.

 All I can do is remember another Australia, one where vistas from lookouts (now grown out) and road trips made you draw breath in awe, your heart soaring for the country
?
The views from the Toowoomba range bypass would be awesome but they put concrete walls each side so you can’t see a thing. “Safety” I guess.

An animal that can bark its fool head off for hours on end when there is no noticeable change brought about by it cannot possibly be described as “intelligent”.

One time Cat contributor (and long gone) Riccardo Bosi gets a mention in Teh Paywallian story on Wieambilla wierdos.

John H.

August 17, 2024 1:57 pm

Reply to  JC

It is about percentages JC. Read his comment. He doesn’t understand the idea. All my life I have been surprised at how often people don’t carefully listen to what politicians say. That’s why I advise people to read transcripts rather than just listen.

The price control idea is idiotic, so is the 10% tariff idea. Both are economic dumbasses.

These are not equally dumb ideas. Tariffs are a stupid policy that lead to various economic misdirection and distortions. Price controls, however, pose a threat to society. Price restrictions are necessary for a market economy to work, but this fool, this cackling stupid meathead, wants to impose them.

Trump might have some success enacting crippling tariffs on China and secondary China trade, but he has no chance of passing a comprehensive 10% import tariff with the GOP. However, because they are so dim, the idiot might be successful in getting a price control bill passed by a Democratic Congress.