{"id":1499,"date":"2011-06-10T20:22:20","date_gmt":"2011-06-10T10:22:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/?p=1499"},"modified":"2011-06-10T20:22:20","modified_gmt":"2011-06-10T10:22:20","slug":"the-silver-lining-on-the-live-export-ban-cloud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/the-silver-lining-on-the-live-export-ban-cloud\/","title":{"rendered":"The silver lining on the live export ban cloud"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good things do come out of bad, and I’m actually starting to think that while the live export\u00a0dramas\u00a0seemed like the straw that would break the camel’s back, it has in fact worked to unite primary producers across northern Australia like no issue ever has before.\u00a0 Apart from getting rid of cruel behaviour by a handful of abattoirs, I’m sure some good will come of it – for example it’s been great to see the networking going on and positive fight-back action.\u00a0 At long last rural people who have never before felt the need to speak out and defend themselves, are doing so now.\u00a0 I’ve been banging on for years about animal rights extremists and I don’t think the threat was taken seriously in the bush.\u00a0 It is now, although I’m not sure that most people understand the demand to cease live exports to Indonesia is just the tip of the animal rights extremist’s agenda.\u00a0 Their aim is to demolish all livestock industries.<\/span><\/p>\n

Unfortunately what has been highlighted is a chasm not just between urban and rural residents, but between northern primary producers and southern primary producers.\u00a0 The ‘they’re all uneducated, backward rednecks’ view of northern Australians doesn’t just emanate from our largest cities, it is alive and well in closely settled farming areas in southern Australia.\u00a0Fostered by\u00a0southern media who delighted in portraying Queenslanders as banana bending hillbillies, afraid their curtains would fade more if daylight saving was introduced.\u00a0 \u00a0This chasm between north and south (remote and semi-suburbia) has been illustrated by remarks on blogs and it’s very disappointing to see, particularly when southern primary producers have had their own battles to fight in recent years.\u00a0 For example, wool producers have been in the animal rights extremist firing line themselves, over such issues as\u00a0tail docking and castrating of lambs and mulesing of wrinkly merinos.\u00a0\u00a0Crop growers have been in the firing line regarding chemical and water usage and rising water tables and salinity.\u00a0 Anyone in a rural area close to large cities has numerous headaches – from urban encroachment affecting by laws, dealing with odour and dust complaints, rising land values making rates sky rocket, stolen fuel and equipment, stray dogs attacking stock, etc.<\/span><\/p>\n

Farmers across the world have more in common with each other than with people outside rural industries, so it is reasonable to expect that farmers would have a more thoughtful look at issues affecting the plight of other farmers rather than make instant, shallow judgements in response to an emotive, subjective television programme.\u00a0 Perhaps the scales will fall from their eyes\u00a0now that it has been admitted that the real aim is to ban live exports to all countries, not just Indonesia.\u00a0 If not, they’ll wake up when animal rights organisations move further down the list of things they want to ban – thus affecting southern farmers directly.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ultimately, thank goodness for the internet.\u00a0 Rural Australians are a scattered minority, these days often on the receiving end of government neglect and public scorn.\u00a0 Via emails, personal websites and facebook, rural and remote Australians are uniting as they have never done, and uniting to fight for a common cause – respect for rural people, the food producers all Australians are entirely dependent upon.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Good things do come out of bad, and I’m actually starting to think that while the live export\u00a0dramas\u00a0seemed like the straw that would break the camel’s back, it has in fact worked to unite primary producers across northern Australia like no issue ever has before.\u00a0 Apart from getting rid of cruel behaviour by a handful […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,6,7,11],"tags":[82,158,179],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1499"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1499"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1502,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1499\/revisions\/1502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}