Enjoy Barnaby Joyce’s speech to the Rural Press Club today (excerpt + link to full speech below):
The Australian people’s unencumbered attachment to the land is the ultimate reflection of our people’s wealth, of our people’s freedom.
Every time there has been a moral cause, a reason is given to divest the individual of ownership and transfer it to the state. This clash between bureaucracy and the rights of ownership was ably demonstrated in this part of the world at the Eureka Stockade at Ballarat.
The sympathy we showed for those small, independent miners seems to have been lost. A jury acquitted Peter Lalor even though the Eureka rebellion led to perhaps 35 deaths, including the deaths of 5 soldiers. However, over the past 100 years not much loyalty has been shown to landholders and their rights as they have been taken piece by piece.
Where was the sympathy for farmers when their vegetation rights were stolen off them by government? Or the sympathy to the farmer who has been held back by a plethora of green tape. After rights have been taken off the farmer, such as coal, oil and gas, which happened as recently in 1981 in New South Wales, have they been left in a better position to deal with issues such as coal seam gas?
In most states I am deemed a criminal if I knock down trees on land that I own yet nobody bought the asset from me, prior to it becoming an asset of the state.
The community may see it as their right to restrict the removal of trees by farmers but the community has not been prepared to pay for that right. It wants to steal them. If I were to steal property that I wanted but could not afford I would go to jail. I might have a very righteous reason to steal a car, perhaps I want to take elderly people to bingo night, I would still go to jail.
But apparently governments can steal. And once they have stolen a right they then protect that stolen right through new green regulation.
…
The time has come for us to starting cutting back the green tape lantana that is choking regional Australia. Green tape has become a weed that starves economic activity and takes away our basic property rights.
For the future of regional Australia that has got to change.
For me environmentalism is spraying the blackberries, shooting the rabbits, feral cats and pigs; throwing the carp high up the bank; having that favourite part of wilderness on the place that has been there before me, my family, white settlement, aboriginal Australia.
I do not need a PhD from the University of Google to usurp my connection, belittle my views and steal my rights bought and paid for over generations.
If you love it, live with me in it. If you don’t leave me alone.
Oh SNAP!
That closing line goes to the heart of the dysfunction in our political system.
One where laws directly impacting on the people in the country, are determined by a vocal minority of people living in the inner-city and suburbia.
Barnaby Is Right 
Nailed it.
If the government wants the trees, it should buy ’em. Property rights are at the heart of personal liberty, and should be sacrosanct. It is what makes the government dependent upon the people, not the other way around. When the government fear the people, there is liberty, and all the rest of it. Perhaps it’s time we put the fear back in them? The best way in a democracy is to make that a election winner and a mandate t that effect. The foolish labor and Greens supporters just don’t get it that they perpetuate their own servitude.