OUTSPOKEN radio personality Alan Jones urged struggling North West and Carpentaria Gulf graziers not to be intimidated into signing mediation agreements with the banks.
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“Stand up, be strong, put your shoulders back,” he said.
In an exclusive interview with The North West Star at Winton’s rural debt crisis summit, Jones said graziers were demoralised because of numerous issues that were not their own fault.
These issues were the drought, banks, prices, the previous halt on live exports with Indonesia and a lack of confidence to stand up for themselves. The government said it would financially support the banks but this money belonged to the taxpayer, Jones said.
“I’m saying to each farm, don’t sign mediation agreement with these banks, ’’he said.
“These are outfits which now had made Commonwealth $10billion, the others, ANZ, Westpac and NAB five and six billion profit.
“These people are closing in, foreclosing farmers.”
Jones also criticised the Newman government – which had no representative at the summit – as “bullies” and as one of the “worst governments in Queensland history”.
“The bloke who works and invests and sacrifices and goes 24/7 ought to be a price maker, not a price taker, and that’s what we elect governments to do,” he said.
Instead the government favourably focused on the mining industry, criticising free water allocations and the Galilee Basin railway line for miners as a “royalty holiday” by Premier Campbell Newman.
“But now they are suddenly realising that the volume of exports is falling because there’s only so many cities China can build, and the value of them and the price has decreased, and people saying ‘gee we’ve got to have an alternative to mining, what about agriculture?’.”
Jones warned agriculture could not be a viable alternative if graziers were evicted from their land and if breeding stock disappeared.
He said when banks foreclose and take possession of properties they will be sold to Chinese interests.
“I’m all for investment, I’m opposed to ownership of assets of national significance and this land where we are today is of national significance,” he said.
Jones was quoted in yesterday’s The North West Star as being critical of Australia’s free trade agreement with China but said there was “nothing wrong with live export to China as long as we own the exports’’.
Jones said the agreement could allow Chinese interests to buy land used for food supply.
“The only revenue available to Australia is the price they will pay for the property,” he said.
Jones encouraged graziers further by saying these issues were now “getting traction” in cities.
He said he would listen to graziers if they needed help, and could be reached at alanjones@2gb.com.
