Page 5919 - Week 18 - Wednesday, 11 December 1991
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I think we have to look at the fundamental concerns of people who are on the land. Many of them see the land almost in mystical terms. I think some of the original greenies, as Mrs Grassby will no doubt agree with me, were farmers. That was a long time before the term became popular. Those of us who grew up on farms well know the measures that were taken by our elders in those days to protect trees from being effectively ringbarked by cattle rub and the rest. It always astounds me how those people who are let onto blocks without adequate backgrounds can very often lead to their degradation. The modern greenies often tend to blame the Pitt Street farmers and lump them in with the real farming community.
As my colleague Mr Jensen and other members know, the Decade of Landcare is a significant event in Australia, and Greening Australia is receiving significant support throughout the country from farmers and in the Territory from some of our leading rural licensees. We call them lessees, but in law some of them do not have a lease and they are mere licensees; some of them are licensees at will. That is a disgrace, and it must be put an end to. Rather than go through the overview of the various comments that others have made, with which I mostly agree, I want to say that the first thing that the incoming government has to do - these are major decisions and they should be made by an incoming government - is create a rural lease tenure system which gives those guarantees.
Mrs Nolan: Hear, hear!
MR COLLAERY: Mrs Nolan interjects, "Hear, hear!". I think the community is fortunate to have had the reference to the committee moved by her.
Mr Deputy Speaker, I want to record the graceful manner in which a number of witnesses assisted the committee. A lot of old-world grace still exists among rural people. However differently they perceive this Assembly, they contributed without rancour and spoke, in many cases quite eloquently, of what, in an urban sense, would be a most insecure position for them and their children to be living in. We do have genuine rural people in our midst. They do not number many; they do not count much in terms of electoral numbers. But from my point of view they are very important people, and I am sure other members agree with that.
I want to record one item particularly, and that was the evidence given by Mr Murdoch Geikie, who is the licensee, or lessee, at the old Lanyon station. In referring to changes in the Murrumbidgee River during the many, many decades that he has seen the Lanyon area develop and, to an extent, be spoilt, particularly by development too close in, he referred to the fact that there were, in the river, water moles. One had to think for a while and do some research to realise that that was the term used decades and decades ago for platypus.
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