GREEN CREDENTIALS
I begin this post about Peter Spencer by saying that my green credentials are obvious. When Eberhard and I bought our property in 1992 there was no garden surrounding the small timber house that was to grow to become Das Helwig Haus B&B. I set out to build the garden of my dreams and have achieved a remarkable result. We recently opened our garden for the Australian Open Garden Scheme. I’ve planted trees and shrubs in this organic garden to attract the birds, bees, butterflies and other living creatures.
White Buddleia - butterfly bush
Yesterday friends visited just as I assembled a new electric shredder. Although I compost leaf matter from the garden, I realized that most of my shrubs are now so large that when they are pruned back I needed a shredder to mulch their woody branches.
Nick, Tyson and Mary Jane.
Having used these photos to establish my green credentials I will continue to explain why I support Peter Spencer a man willing to lay down his life for people like me. Many years ago our land belonged to the Ferris family who mined for tin along the Severn River and established the Severn River Vineyards. In 1981 this land was divided into two portions.
Property Map showing Lots 1 & 2.
In 1992 we purchased, as freehold land title, portion 1 of this property. At that time the only restriction on our land use was the amount of water we could draw from the river according to our irrigation license. Since then there has been a proliferation of laws and moratoriums limiting our use of our land. We constructed two dams on a swampy gully during the 1990s, but by 2000 farmers in this district were prevented under new Queensland State laws from building such structures.
Geese on farm dam
Then came another Queensland State law. Those farmers like us who still possessed forests on our land suddenly became aware that we could no longer utilize this land or manage it appropriately. It had been claimed as Remnant Forest by the Queensland State government to allow the Australian federal government to sign the Kyoto Protocol using our land as a carbon sink. My readers may wonder why there was not a greater protest at the time this legislation was put into place. Most people thought the law was to prevent large scale clearing of old forests, not that our land would be locked up. Also, it can be said that many farmers were not seriously effected by this legislation. Thus there was no united stance.
Remnant Forest map
The above map clearly shows that while most of our land became locked up by this legislation the other five farms surrounding us suffered minor loss of their land. They were not effected in a manner that would cost them the ability to operate their farms or earn an income. Yet we, and others in a similar situation were offered no compensation. Our free hold title land was literally stolen from us. Now, we are in the position of tenants who must apply to various departments for permission to remove a tree, build a fence or create a firebreak. For instance, I found it impossible to run electric power to the river to install an electric pump. This means that I must continue to manage either a diesel or petrol driven pump, which is becoming increasingly difficult for a woman of my age.
We can still earn a living from our land which we bought to establish our Das Helwig Haus B&B. But, we can not further develop our farm. Peter Spencer lost the ability to earn an income from his land. The story is told in full by Justin Jefferson who was one of the people to visit Peter Spencer last week. It is only on blogs that the full story is being told. Be warned – our Federal government wants to censor the internet. China already limits the information its citizens may receive. The main stream media within Australia has seldom mentioned Peter Spencer, but when they did they tried to portray him as a man either wanting to save a tree, or to clear trees. They will not touch the real story of how country landholders were robbed of land rights so our Australian government could claim our forests as carbon sinks, without paying compensation.
As of today, Peter Spencer has fasted for 41 days. I wish to emphasize the length of time that Peter Spencer has suffered to bring awareness to the plight of many fellow Australians.
ON LINE opinion - Australia’s e-journal of social and political debate
Government theft
By Justin Jefferson
Posted Tuesday, 29 December 2009
On Friday, December 18, I joined the protest of over 80 people at Peter Spencer’s property, up in the mountains near Cooma. Mr Spencer, 61, was then past the 28th day of his hunger strike, perched high above the ground on a communications tower on his property. Looking down from his eyrie with baleful eye, he seemed at first somewhat curious and disheveled, but when he spoke he was lucid, his arguments were cogent, and passions ran high.
Mr Spencer is demanding the Australian government pay fair compensation to him and all Australian property-holders whose property rights were taken without compensation pursuant to the Kyoto Protocol. He also demands a Royal Commission into the way governments acquired those property rights, because it seems to have been deliberately intended to, and did, subvert the constitutional protection against the unjust acquisition of property.
But why, you might ask, is Mr Spencer directing his fire at the Federal government, since it was the State government, through the Native Vegetation Act (NVA) that passed the laws restricting farmers’ use rights? The answer is because the federal government moved the states for, benefited from, and paid the states to make these unjust acquisitions.
The Commonwealth decided to meet its Kyoto Protocol targets to reduce so-called greenhouse gas emissions by restricting farmers’ land use across Australia. Farmers obviously made an easy target compared, for example, to power stations or other targets.
Under the Australian Constitution, if the Commonwealth wants to acquire a person’s property, it must do so on just terms, i.e. pay fair compensation. Since land-use rights form part of the equity of a property, therefore the taking of land-use rights, and vesting the control and benefit of them in government bodies, is in effect a compulsory acquisition of property rights.
To give you some idea of the scale, Mr Spencer’s property is 12,000 acres, the use-rights of which were in effect confiscated along with his livelihood. One farmer there told me that these laws cost him $30,000 a year. Another landowner I know lost $1.2 million worth of equity from a 40-acre block of land.
So just think of the whole of Australia, and you can see that the value of the property rights thus forcibly acquired without payment, from the entire landscape of property-holders, must run into the billions of dollars.
Faced with the problem of coveting other people’s property but not wanting to pay for it, what did the fed do? It got the states to take it instead, because unlike the federal Constitution, the state Constitutions, except for one, contain no provision for the payment of fair compensation for the taking of property. New South Wales legislation requires it, but the NSW State simply overrode it with ordinary legislation, smacking of rule by decree.
The mechanism was the Commonwealth Natural Heritage Trust of Australia Act’s cash for laws by which the Commonwealth gave their accomplices in NSW $1.2 billion that it got from the sale of Telstra, for its part in stealing billions of dollars worth of other people’s property.
So Mr Spencer’s case is this. He can’t sue the Commonwealth because although it sponsored the acquisitions of property, acquired the benefit for their purposes, and is constitutionally liable to pay compensation, the fed didn’t actually do the deed itself.
And he can’t sue the state because although it was its actions that acquired his property rights, it isn’t legally liable to pay for it.
In the High Court, the Commonwealth is arguing against Mr Spencer that the Constitution was not intended to protect against forced acquisitions of property by the executive arm of government! The absurdity, or dishonesty, of this argument should be obvious, for if it were accepted, it would make the very idea of private property and constitutional and limited government meaningless.
And now to compound the offence, faced with Mr Spencer’s hunger strike, the Commonwealth says it’s all a state matter.
Either it is entirely appropriate to call for the Commonwealth to fix the problem, since they can obviously use the same measures with the states to fix the problem as they did to cause it, or the Native Vegetation Acts should be repealed and replaced with nothing.
If you want someone to grow beef, or wheat, or tomatoes on their property, you don’t pass a law making it a criminal offence to grow something else. If there is a social need for a person’s property which is to be forcibly acquired, then society needs to pay for it. But if society can’t afford to pay, then it can’t afford to have it and is not entitled to it.
To breach this principle, as the federal and state governments have done, violates basic ethics, blatantly subverts our Constitution and is already spelling the end of limited government and a free society.
All Australians should understand that the Commonwealth is implicated up to its neck in what it blames on its accomplices, the states, and they should join in demanding a Royal Commission into this devious and appalling abuse, and for fair compensation for all persons affected by this unprecedented governmental theft.
Justin Jefferson is an Australian who wishes to show that social co-operation is best and fairest when based in respect for individual freedom.
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Technorati Tags: Australian, Das Helwig Haus B&B, Peter Spencer, property, Queensland
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