Enjoyed attending the Queensland Rural Press Club Luncheon on Tuesday, with Tim Mulherin (Minister for Primary Industries) as guest speaker. Would like to have asked what the Queensland Government intends doing with the millions they’ll receive for the sale of the DPI land in Townsville, and the millions they’ll receive for the sale of the Burdekin Rural Ag. College land. No doubt North Queenslanders can kiss goodbye to all those valuable assets and the sale proceeds. However asking the questions would have been pointless, because all every other questioner received was half an acre of absolute waffle, apparently cleverly designed to reduce the number of tedious questions that required answering. He seemed like a nice bloke but about all I can remember is that Tim Mulherin apparently really believes that the Queensland State Government can treble the value of agricultural production, in the near future, and that they’re spending a lot of money at Gatton. Tim is from Mackay, so one would have thought he’d know better than to trumpet on about the spending of taxpayer’s hard earned cash being concentrated in the far South Eastern corner. Queensland is by far and away the most decentralised state in Australia, and most of the GDP is produced out of the SE corner, yet that’s where most government money is spent, on a plethora of flash bridges over the Brisbane river, for example.
The best quote of the day came from Peter Kenny, ex-AgForce President, who introduced the guest speaker:
‘The first thing you have to do before you think, is eat.’ Tim was speaking while we were all eating, so maybe that was the problem.