Native Vegetation Act treats farmers worse than murderers

The Native Vegetation Act reverses the onus of proof[1]. It permits intrusive search without warrant[2]. It abolishes the privilege against self-incrimination[3].  And it permits evidence by executive decree[4]. Legally speaking, it treats farmers worse than rapists and murderers.

The Native Vegetation Act uses emotive and misleading terms. It defines “broadscale clearing” to include any clearing of native vegetation whatever, even a single blade of grass.[5]

If you’re a farmer, before you can farm your land, you’re faced with an impossible great thornbush of regulations that effectively prevent you from knowing what you can or can’t do on your own farm without committing a criminal offence. The starting position is, everything is illegal.

Then you’ve got three choices:

1. Go ahead and farm knowing or fearing that anything you do is a criminal offence. The Native Vegetation Act brings the law into contempt.
2. Submit to and obey whatever petty government officials tell you to do on, and with your property. The effect of the Act is that your property must be used to satisfy their values and their arbitrary opinions, instead of feeding the world’s hungry; or
3. Ruin your whole life while you devote yourself to fighting for justice, as Spencer has done and is doing.

Thus unequally among all Australians,  farmers are forced to bear virtually the whole cost of Australia’s Kyoto obligations, by being forced to hold their most significant capital goods –  production goods – in the form they were in 1788.

Of course the comfortable well-fed supporters of the Native Vegetation Act won’t be eating gumnuts and tussock-grass. They want steak sandwiches and salads and ice cream like everyone else.

Since the Native Vegetation Act was passed, there have been food shortages and food riots in the world. The Australian supporters of the Act won’t go hungry. They’ll deal with government’s forced and massive decrease in food production by simply bidding away the next available food on the market. The ultimate knock-on effects will be felt by the poorest people in the world.

And the Commonwealth and NSW employees won’t be coming to Court on horseback, and they won’t be writing their submissions with a goose-quill. Imagine if the law said 90 percent of your law-library must be from before 1788, and it’s a criminal offence if you don’t obey.

The Native Vegetation Act stands for the unequal, discriminatory, disproportionate, unjustified oppression of an Australian minority.

REFERENCES:

Footnotes:

[1] Section 44 Evidentiary provision http://www.legislation.nsw.gov.au/maintop/view/inforce/act+103+2003+cd+0+N

[2] Section 35 Powers of entry and inspection http://www.legislation.nsw.gov.au/maintop/view/inforce/act+103+2003+cd+0+N

[3] Section 36 Power to obtain information http://www.legislation.nsw.gov.au/maintop/view/inforce/act+103+2003+cd+0+N

[4] Section 50 Evidence http://www.legislation.nsw.gov.au/maintop/view/inforce/act+103+2003+cd+0+N

[5] Section 8 Meaning of broadscale clearing: “broadscale clearing of native vegetation means the clearing of any remnant native vegetation or protected regrowth”, http://www.legislation.nsw.gov.au/maintop/view/inforce/act+103+2003+cd+0+N .

“Remnant native vegetation or protected regrowth” in turn simply means native vegetation – any species here before 1788 – nothing to do with the scale of anything: Section 9: Meanings of remnant native vegetation and regrowth: http://www.legislation.nsw.gov.au/maintop/view/inforce/act+103+2003+cd+0+N

see in turn Section 6: Meaning of native vegetation

http://www.legislation.nsw.gov.au/maintop/view/inforce/act+103+2003+cd+0+N