Drought of extension officers hurts the bush
It’ll come as no surprise to farmers that Labor’s vegetation management laws are starting to bite across Queensland, with managing vegetation and feeding drought affected livestock becoming harder and harder.
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To make a bad situation even worse, Labor is refusing to fund the extra extension officers which are needed in the transition to these unfair laws.
The Palaszczuk Labor Government’s own members told Natural Resources Minister Anthony Lynham to put on more staff to work with farmers.
But all we have seen from Dr Lynham is the establishment of a glorified call centre.
It is absolutely no substitute for boots on the ground.
This Labor government doesn’t understand vegetation management and it won’t even fund the extension officers needed to help farmers wade through the mountains of bureaucratic red tape they created.
It’s particularly outrageous when you consider this has occurred during a government hiring spree.
An extra 25,000 public servants have been employed since 2015, most of which have been hired in the state’s southeast and none of which have been employed to help farmers.
The red-tape keeps coming, but Labor won’t help farmers untangle it.
Only the Liberal National Party has consistently opposed Labor’s anti-farmer vegetation laws, which have thrown scientific consensus out the window to appease a green ideological agenda.
The LNP will continue to take up the fight to Labor on behalf of our farmers who have only ever asked for a fair go.
Dale Last
LNP Shadow Natural Resources Minister
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Fluoride issues
Re Editorial in the North West Star (Sep 25) arguing for water fluoridation.
I work in Geelong, Victoria that was fluoridated in 2009. Many patients became badly affected by the fluoride after it went in.
When fluoride was taken by tablet if someone got a reaction, one could stop the then tablet and toothpaste treatments and they would recover.
Once the fluoride treatment is in the drinking water, washing water and water used for food production, it takes a lot of work to cut down how much of the fluoride treatment people are still getting.
I recall around 1986 when I had noticed aluminum smelter workers with skin problems and asthma were moved to the lower fluoride exposure areas and did get a bit better, a mother brought her young kid in for treatment after she nearly died after an asthma attack.
The child had fluorosis on some teeth, was on F tablets, so I asked mother if she would like to do the same experiment with her child that they appeared to do at Alcoa with good results for asthma – of reducing fluoride intake.
So mother agreed to stop fluoride tablets and toothpaste. The repeated asthma attacks got fewer and less intense over the following months until she was no longer asthmatic.
Wouldn't it be nice to have somebody who is part of our health authorities organizing their first OFFICIAL clinical testing ever to see if fluoridation is harming citizens?
However there are growing concerns in America that fluoride could be reducing the intelligence of our children.
So at the moment, I don't think any funding request for such a study would be looked at sympathetically.
It seems there must be a foreboding in establishment circles about what any properly done research is eventually going to find.
Philip Robertson
Carmoora Clinic
Geelong,
Derek Barry
Editor of the North West Star Mount Isa since January 2016. Prior to that, an editor at several regional southern Queensland newspapers. Passionate about telling local stories. Comes with a strange accent to due an Irish accident of birth.
Editor of the North West Star Mount Isa since January 2016. Prior to that, an editor at several regional southern Queensland newspapers. Passionate about telling local stories. Comes with a strange accent to due an Irish accident of birth.
