Opinion

The week observed

Will Gourmet Farmer win the public over?

Posted: 20 Jan 10 | Before Christmas I wrote about why Australian agriculture needs its own version of River Cottage to help explain farm practices and food production to the masses. Well, it may have found it in a new program on SBS, Gourmet Farmer. |

Comments (10)

Why Australian agriculture needs its own River Cottage

Posted: 02 Dec 09 | With Australian agriculture under fire from animal liberationists, environmentalists and food elites, is it time to try a different tack? Can a celebrity chef make a difference? |

Comments (32)

The perversity of green politics

Posted: 07 Oct 09 | While this week’s latest package of land clearing restrictions in Queensland is relatively unobtrusive to landholders, Labor and the green movement have again produced legislation that will result in harmful results for the environment. |

Comments (10)

Telstra ultimatum rights the wrongs of the past

Posted: 16 Sep 09 | Telecommunications Minister Stephen Conroy is boldly re-shaping the industry, this week holding a gun to Telstra’s head to force it to structurally separate its wholesale and retail arms in the name of competition ... something which should have been done 20 years ago. |

Comments (0)

Where's Warren?

Posted: 08 Sep 09 | There’s a new game in agri-politics called ‘Where’s Warren?’, in which rural Australians are trying to spot the leader of The Nationals, who is struggling for air time as the party suffers an identity crisis. |

Comments (2)

Why Cubbie's water won't save the Murray

Posted: 19 Aug 09 | If the Federal Government buys Cubbie Station for its water it will be a symbolic gesture and a waste of $450 million in taxpayers' money, because it won't save the Murray-Darling system. |

Comments (12)

Perception is political reality

Posted: 03 Aug 09 | In politics perception can be more powerful than the facts, as both the AWI and Queensland Premier Anna Bligh should have learnt this week. |

Comments (16)

Climate questioning akin to heresy

Posted: 15 Jul 09 | Senator Steve Fielding says he has an open mind and simply needs answers to three questions to be convinced that man-made carbon emissions are causing climate change. So why is he being berated by the pro-emissions trading camp? Is questioning science the new heresy? |

Comments (20)

We're all fools for utegate

Posted: 01 Jul 09 | The ridiculous ironies and double standards of both politicians and the media were on show for all to see with the ‘utegate’ scandal, online editor Michael Thomson writes, but he says no-one is the better for it. |

Comments (4)

Campaigning starts for ETS election

Posted: 10 Jun 09 | Labor's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme appears to be an ugly dog that nobody loves but its owners, but that could be just what the Government wants in order to fight a double disolution election on the grounds of the Coalition's weak suit of climate change policy. |

Comments (3)

ETS stand-off reflects our society

Posted: 27 May 09 | It is a fair reflection of Australian society that the Federal Government is having difficulty passing its emissions trading scheme legislation, but the danger of the situation lies with Turnbull and not Rudd. |

Comments (11)

My enemy's enemy is my friend

Posted: 20 May 09 | While traditionally perceived as opposing forces, farmers and indigenous communities have found themselves with one big issue in common: the fight against green groups intent on limiting their ability to use their land. |

Comments (17)

Backyard farmers not getting the message

Posted: 06 Apr 09 | The revival of the backyard vegie patch and the boom in hobby farming shows there is urban interest in rural industries, but that interest is not being responded to adequately by industry leaders. |

Comments (3)

Where will all-powerful Bligh take Qld agriculture?

Posted: 24 Mar 09 | Labor Leader Anna Bligh went to the Queensland election promising renewal of her cabinet, and having won comfortably, she is now in an all-powerful position to change the Government's and the State's direction. But what will this mean for farmers, after their hopes of an unlikely LNP victory were dashed? |

Comments (3)

Obama's slim hope of subsidy reform

Posted: 27 Feb 09 | The sceptics had heard it all before, but there is a slim chance US President Barack Obama may succeed where others have failed in trying to cut America's wasteful payment of subsidies to rich farmers, which distort the global market in which Australian produce competes. |

Comments (2)

Bligh's blind to bushfire warning

Posted: 20 Feb 09 | Has Queensland Premier Anna Bligh learnt nothing from the Victorian bushfires? Her new push to ban the clearing of regrowth vegetation would indicate not. |

Comments (15)

Bushfire class action demeans us

Posted: 18 Feb 09 | One of the worst days in Australia's history has been followed by an unprecedented outflow of national grief, sympathy and generosity, but that has been marred by lawyers seeking to exploit the situation by launching a class action. |

Comments (8)

Xenophon's power misdirected

Posted: 17 Feb 09 | Senator Nick Xenophon's political wheeling and dealing, which delivered an extra $900 million to be spent on the Murray Darling in the next two years, highlights exactly what is both right and wrong about an independent holding the balance of power. |

Comments (4)

Trade with China, but do it right

Posted: 26 Jan 09 | The shocking volumes of food being imported into Australia from China rightly has the farming community angry, but calls to ditch trade with the economic powerhouse are misplaced. |

Comments (16)

Coalition split a question of identity

Posted: 08 Dec 08 | The divisions within the Federal Coalition were not just embarrassing for both Malcolm Turnbull and Warren Truss, but also exposed the Opposition's current core problem: it does not know what it wants to stand for. |

Comments (11)

1 | 2 | next >