WE were listening to ABC Radio National. An American scientist was interviewed on the anti-Trump mobilisation by US scientists. She said, “We must make a quantum leap into relevance”.
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Her words resonated later in the day as I filled out a questionnaire on “The Local Land Services’ South East Regional Strategic Weed Management Plan”.
One of 13 inane questions was “Does the implementation section of the plan clearly outline the key approaches that will be put in place to ensure a co-operative, integrated and co-ordinated approach to the delivery of the plan’s vision, goals, outcomes and objectives?” My answer was “No”.
The implementation website was down – which reflected reality. There is no implementation. Serrated tussock and blackberries are taking over the Southern Tablelands and Highlands.
A quote from Don Watson’s book on Australian language came to mind: “The language of business and work grows ever more depleted, barren and senseless”.
Carrying a five-litre spray device on the sides of the Upper Wollondilly River, this octogenarian has sprayed 10,000 young blackberry plants in three years. Neighbours are overrun by blackberries, from which birds spread the seeds over my pasture. The Chinese proverb “A farm’s best fertiliser are the footsteps of its owner” may be true, but anger wells inside the custodian of this land.
I pay $1500 annually to LLS for nothing but the above idiocy, doubtless written by overpaid people less than half my age. I am even charged the Meat Industry Authority levy though the organisation closed 16 years ago. I haven’t seen a weed or rabbit inspector or had a government veterinarian visit in 25 years.
NSW’s Minister for Primary Industries should now realise LLS is a catastrophic waste of hard-earned producer money. It is time for him to force LLS to make “a quantum leap into relevance”. He must issue spray gear to the layers of players beneath him and send them out into the fields.
It is situations like this that convince me NSW has caught the Canberra disease – virtual reality.
The Canberra-based Red Meat Advisory Council has launched The Meat Industry Strategic Plan and The Australian Beef Sustainability Framework – both exercises in virtual reality by an organisation with no power to implement anything. Minister Joyce has talked about dams for four years with the only construction being in children’s sandpits.
Now we have our PM powering water uphill in the Snowy Scheme – a stated four-year project that temporarily upstages South Australia’s Premier in their political war.
We are paying these people to play their word games. Perhaps it is time to remove the lightning conductors on the Crown above Parliament House and have electricity surge through the House and wake our representatives.
- By John Carter
