A listeners views

[squidgie]

I know your morning show is not for public forum but i was listening to Squidgy on Friday and he was talking about the fishing exclusion zones and how soon a dad wont be able to take his kids fishing. This morning i read where the Greens are picking up more voters according to surveys and on Sunday arvo i watched a tv show on New Zealand then collectors on the ABC2. Now all these coalesced this morning into this thought. We Aussies who love our natural resources, our way of life, our values are allowing ourselves to be locked out of the very country we love. High country cattlemen have been locked out of the snowy high country, a guy from the national trust was on collectors and talking about our heritage and how with just two hundred years of European history we need to protect it not just bricks and mortar but our way of life . This way of life is our heritage, one of our most famous poems is about it. We have a stock trail (horse trail) the Bicentennial National Trail from Cooktown in far north Queensland to Healesville in Victoria. This is being slowly closed up where you can’t ride parts of it. Horse riding access is slowly being closed into many areas. Access to many areas of forest, dessert, marine and alpine habitats are being restricted to only those in some guise as a scientist, environmental worker or ideological sycophant. Some of these managers should be questioned as to their strategies. Controlled burns in our national parks would reduce fuel and reduce the risk of the catastrophic fires we see but they are the experts and won’t have it and won’t listen to the ancestral managers of this country who managed and manipulated the environment to the “natural landscape” we have today. Marine experts are restricting our access to recreational fishing, setting foot on some beaches and total no go zones, only they are allowed to go and annoy the wildlife in the name of science. I have seen firsthand, Greenies protesting outside a proposed goldmine and camping on and trampling the very plant they were supposedly there to protect. Bloody rent a crowd with no idea.
Now why did i mention a show in New Zealand? It was a show on the south island and how they manage their natural resources, how they integrate and balance tourism, trekking, protection and usage. They don’t exclude, they manage. I hate to say it but we could learn something from them.
I don’t fish much but i would like to know that when i have grandkids i am going to be able to walk down to the river and throw in a line and share those magic moments. I would like to think that i will be able to take them out on their ponies and ride in a forest, to experience riding in the high country, to ride the Bicentennial Trail, to walk a beach if i choose and see baby turtles struggling to the water in their first moments of life. All this can be achieved and made sustainable through responsible management not exclusion.

Exclusion is not the way to protect our natural assets if you don’t know about it, can’t experience it you don’t care, active management and access is the way to protect. I believe the reason our authorities don’t is that they don’t know how, they are lazy, they are selfish and they are gutless to promote a pro active management plan .A plan that might upset the ideological greenies and the political party they support.
I also point the bone at the Greens, politically they offer nothing and ecologically they are over reactive vandals, over protective, lazy, unimaginative cowards.
Example my brothers live on the northwest side of Brisbane and water ski on one of the dams. This dam water quality is extremely good and there has been water Skiers on there for over 40 years. On other dams close by, ski boats are excluded. These dams are clogged up with water hyacinth, the water quality is poor, and it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars each year to treat the water and to control the weed. The only difference Ski Boats, they aerate the water, disrupt the growth of the hyacinth and you don’t have to be an ecological scientist to work that out. But no, some greenies got into the ear of the water board and they now have a body of water they cant paddle their canoes across anyway because they cant get through the weed. So why would they want to paddle their canoes on a manmade still expanse of water when they could be on an interesting river system close by, because they hide behind the ecological saviour banner to exclude power boats of any kind so as to supposedly not to pollute the water supply.
The Australian way is becoming extinct and we, the complacent Aussie are our own worst enemy, we can no longer have the attitude “she’ll be right mate” because she’s not right. We are letting an emotive uninformed tree hugger majority influence a powerful minority. This minority should be managing our heritage and natural resources but they are loving it to death, locking it up where it is going to wither away in the dark recesses of our memories. Our magnificent resources, our liberty to enjoy them, our heritage and our rights are being surreptitiously squirreled away unseen, unappreciated and forgotten except by a few deluded privileged few. Our children will be left with the matchbox car still in its box sitting on the shelf and never allowed to enjoy it.
Those who ride horses vote!!! Those who fish vote!!!! Those who drive into national parks vote!!! We are the majority but we allow minority extremists to dictate. We need a voice. The voice of the common man, the Aussie battler, a caped crusader to lead the troops into a fight for our lives, our very existence, our Australia.
this letter is from Des ######



WE NEED TO ACT AND NOT SIT ON OUR BUMS OR WEE WILL LOSE ALL

Squidgie