Office of Queensland Senator Barry O’Sullivan
SPEECH
Property Rights Australia Conference
Let me start today with a funny but quite relevant antidote that came out of the Thatcher years in Great Britain. It is said that the late Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher would often arrange for newly minted MP’s to sit with her on the front bench of Parliament adjacent to the Government’s dispatch box. Legend has it that one of these novices was somewhat overwhelmed and somewhat intimidatedby the wall of political opponents sitting on the other side of the Chamber and is said to have made an observation to Thatcher with the words “So, that’s the enemy Ma’am”. Lady Thatcher is reported to have considered his remark before replying, “No young man, that’s the Opposition; the enemy are sitting behind you.”
I suspect that this parable intended to reflect upon the complexity of political relations within, as well as the challenges that exist for parliamentarians and legislators to navigate the private and public relationships that they develop during their time in office.
Now that I have experienced being in the FederalParliament for a little while,I can say that it can tend to be a very challenging environment for your elected political servants. On any given day there are literally hundreds of advocacy groups and government relations people walking the hallways of Parliament meeting with politicians and journalists, each group of course looking to further their own agenda.
Most,if not all of the groupings are from “rights” movements very much like your own. Animal rights, abortion rights, right to life, right to die, states’ rights, gay rights, civil rights, social justice rights, property rights, women’s rights, children’s rights and so on and so forth.
Most of them are very well organized. Many of them are seriously well funded and there is no question that they are, on occasions, very influential. Some politicians are even a product of the group of influence – e.g. the Greens with the environmental movement and the ALP with the labour movement.
Some of these groupsgo on to form philosophical clusters, where, whilst their issues are different; and sometimes even in conflict with each other – they recognise the fact that co-ordinated frontiers and campaigns can increase the chances for each of them to achieve their individual ideals. Think of the union movement as a case in sample.
Politicians are often persuaded by their efforts, some more so than others. But, overall, they do, rightly or wrongly, help shape public policy and political thinking on almost every subject. This feature of representative democracy can extend in certain circumstances to quasi-corrupt relationships with individual politicians – or indeed entire political parties, especially micro parties and single interest parties.It can also lead to the immoral influencing of Independents who might not have the intellect, intestinal fortitude or normal constraints that group think brings to larger political franchises, diminishing their ability to resist policies of interest.
Additionally, these influences can become more acute at certain times during a political cycle.
For example, we’re all painfully aware that we are amid a federal election campaign where almost every candidate in every electorate is supported by one or more of these advocacy movements. Indeed, entire campaigns are supported in very substantial ways by influential supporters whose endorsements or support through resources can materially affect the overall positions adopted by their benefactors.
In my case, as a Senator whose primary interest has always been the plight and circumstances of people in our rural communities, it should come as no surprise to anyone that I might choose often to visit on the issue of landholders and landowners’ rights.I have arrived at that position because of my personal experiences in life and the belief thatit is almost impossible to support the great people of agriculture and primary production without visiting upon the issue of land ownership and land rights as the land itself and the circumstances of a person’s tenure is often the most integral part of any operating enterprise, or indeed something as simple as achieving a lifestyle that they have to work so hard to make possible.
It is the land upon which they rely and live that underpins their abilityto make a living and create wealth, both for themselves and for our nation.So the questions that apply to land uses and land rights should remain at the heart of our national focus. That focus should be on developing our national interests in a progressive and sustainable way - whilst at the same time ensuring that the touchstones of fairness and equity on people’s property rights remain front and centre of public policy and regulatory application.
We all know that Governments at all levels play a significant role with respect to these determinations within issues and this is why so much effort is expended by interest groups in trying to persuade politicians of the merits or otherwise of one idea or another.
I think the work of both activist and interest groups is legitimate.
What I have trouble with though is the unlawful, untruthful and almost corrupt way many of them choose to operate.
How is that neutralized?
Well, I say, through developed relationships and through activity – both progressive and defensive.
For instance, being now associated with Property Rights Australia (PRA) means I probably won’t be getting an invite to speak at a Wilderness Society function any time soon. And, because the Wilderness Society doesn’t like me then the World Wild Life Fund probably won’t send me a calendar this year either.It is my choice. I choose to support some policies and issues that others find unattractive, even in some instances offensive. Welcome to the beautiful chaos of democratic freedom.
But here is the complexity, I can share a political party - and by extension a Party Room - with members who may be the darling of the coal industry, or the coal seam gas industry. Indeed, members of urban and coastal electorates who might think you should not be allowed to disturb vegetation on your property at the same time that I will battle for your right to engage in sensible science approved vegetation management activities which I see as your fundamental right. At the same time, they see such activities as an offence against the interests of humanity. Remember the Thatcher mutterings. The enemy of a righteous idea is not always handcuffed to a eucalypt tree.
They might want to allow exploration on your property without regard to the issue of just terms; whilst I might, and quite often I do – have an opposing view. Some of these colleagues mind you would support the right of someone to do something on your property that they would not approve on their own.
So, in the 21st Century, we have a battle royal.
As I enter the relevant fray on property rights, I always ask myself a number of defining and qualifying questions.
- Firstly, how do we strike the balance between both necessary and sustainable land uses?
- Secondly, how do we deal with the challenges that particular uses of land present to the environment?
- Thirdly, how do we protect the inherent rights of land owners and partner with them to meet these so named “responsibilities of humanity”?
- Finally, is there a national interest question involved?
Now somewhere in all of that are the sub-considerations of land access, compensation and off property activities that effect on-property considerations and the like.
Itis important to remember thatone of a politicians most important roles is to seek to strike the right balance in State and Federal legislationand regulation along with the all-important local municipal ordinances that affect the aforementioned rights and responsibilities.
Whilst landowner’s rights are paramount in my view, to remove accompanying responsibilities from the mix is to remove civility from civilization.
To do that would create the risk of giving us an entitlement mentality. It would be at danger of saying that we are a nation of mere consumers rather than a nation of collective and responsible citizens. A collection of private fiefdoms if you like.
Every one of you have rights, but because we have decided to form a society, we all, including landowners and land users, have responsibilities that accompany those rights.
Accordingly, almost everyone agrees that a land owner or user does not have a right to use property in any way desired. For example,just because you own the land does not automatically mean you can choose the land use and the rest of the community can take a running jump. Whilst I accept that responsible advocates for land rights and uses don’t advocate that, there are many who do.
Since colonial times, limits have been set on property rights; not only when spill over harms, such as noise, smell, building height and the like impact on others, but also in terms of an affirmative obligation that landowners sometimes bear, such as the duty to plant shade trees along public sidewalks in some cities and towns.
Land use laws reflect and help define a community's standards as to what is acceptable between an owner and his/her neighbours and between an owner and the larger community.
This is why any debate about property rights will always activate emotion.
Most of us either own or aspire to own property. Most of us believe we should be entitled to do what we need todo to exploit the use of that asset and, importantly, to increase the value of our land.
There are two economic reasons why landis unique to other types of property. The first isthepotential impact of land use on surrounding property values and secondly, that much of the primary source of value in land is external to the property lines.
It is a property’s location and/or potential uses which provides most of its economic value – that is the context within which the property exists – and it is the protection of that context that virtually all land use ordinances are about, whether they are zoning laws, historic districts, or ordinances that govern street views, setbacks etc.
Real estate has economic value, but that value doesn’t magically emerge from within the four metes and bounds of the property.
Much of the value of an individual parcel of real estate comes from beyond the property lines from the investments of others, often taxpayers!There are then those who argue that land use controls are an appropriate recompense for having publicly created that value.
Let me ask you, when was the last time you heard an owner say, “Because of the new highway my land went from being worth $10,000 to being worth $100,000. But since it was the action of the Main Roads Department and not some investment I made that increased the value, I’m writing a check to the city for $90,000.”?
You will however have heard that the highway went past my property and in my view, devalued it and so the world should write me a cheque for ‘X’ amount.
Public decisions affect the value of real estate in both directions – it is one of the risks and indeed potential rewards of ownership.
It is in this prism that I, as an elected member of the government, must make my decisions about rights and responsibilities for my fellow citizens.
The area that has perhaps frustrated me more than any other during my time in parliament is the fragmented and antagonistic nature of those groups who should be our allies on these questions.
Like Lady Thatcher speaking to the novice in the story at the start of my speech, we are sitting side by side, and yet, despite our common interests; we find ourselves divided. Worse still, we find ourselves, through lethargy I suspect, uncoordinated.
And so this brings me to the core message in my speech.
Because we are divided, we are being picked off one by one by the influential, well organized, well-funded and politically popular national and international environmental movements of the left. You know them. They are the ones who value the fortunes of your pet kangaroo more than the fortunes of yourself. They are the ones who would shut down the entire sugar, banana, horticulture, aquaculture, forestry, cattle, construction and tourist industries and the tens of thousands of families who rely upon those industries on the back of sometimes untruthful, mostly unreliable and sometimes completely junk science arguments that they are solely responsible for affecting the environment.
What the environmental movement has increasingly sought to do is indiscriminately attack the uses of private and public land, class by class, district by district, use by use and industry by industry - particularly in regional and rural areas. They have succeeded in doing this by mounting social and political campaigns from thousands of kilometres away, sometimes from international bases.
We must never forget that our $1 billion live export industry was stopped overnight after hundreds of thousands of spam emails were sent to politicians’ inboxes from the animal liberation movement – a very close first cousin to the environmental movement.
The organization GetUp! is the most familiar example of this type of phenomena.
GetUp! has achieved much in its short life, amassing over 380,000 members which has incidentally, a higher number of members than all the political parties put together.
It alone has expenditure of almost $7 million which it uses to campaign for issues such as Gay Marriage, Protecting the Great Barrier Reef and stopping government support for The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement. Their campaigns are closely aligned with the policy agenda of the Greens and the Socialist Left in the Australian Labor Party and sometimes, surprisingly, enjoys the support of some sections of the union movement.
Having been in Canberra now for two years and having seen the different bodies walking the hallway and scurrying in and out of offices has left me with a strong belief that we need a grassroots conservative body that will take on groups like GetUp! and the half a billion dollars a year budget of the World Wild Life Fund.
I have called it the Anti-Get Up, or Get-Down!
The good news in this space is that there is already a strong exemplar model overseas that proves the traditional adversaries of agriculture, mining, urban development and forestry can be overcome for the greater good of combating extreme green attacks.
It is the Wise Use Movement in the United States.
As the Wise Use Movement in the United States proves, there is real scope for a conservative grassroots organisation that can neutralize the tactics of social change movements.
If we look to the United States, there has been a long history of reactionary movements against federal land policy in that country, particularly with respect to ownership and regulation, especially in states of the mid-West where the federal government typically owns at least half of the land.
The first such rebellion came in the early 1900’s in response to the reservation of large portions of the public domain into forest reserves by Presidents Harrison, Cleveland and particularly, Theodore Roosevelt.
In the late 60’s and early 70’s, we know there was a vast amount of environmental legislation passed through congress and traditional users of Western lands became increasingly alarmed.
In 1979 the Nevada Legislature demanded that the federal government transfer about 50 million acres of federal land to the state.
Conservative Republican Senators from the West soon joined to promote a national Bill embodying the claims of what became known as the Sagebrush Rebellion, named after the treeless grassland country that was mostly impacted.
The movement at first (as has normally been the case) consisted mostly of public land owners and pastoralists, but it soon pulled in timber and energy interests and a few sports recreational groups such as four wheel drive enthusiasts and the like.
Sensing the conservative flavour and political potential of this Rebellion, in 1980 a Presidential candidate named Ronald Reagan declared that he was a Sagebrush Rebel too.
Upon taking office, he appointed "arch-Rebel" James Watt as his Secretary of Interior. Other Rebels were appointed as well such as Colorado Rebellion leader Robert Burford as Director of the Bureau of Land Management.
As the environmental debate developed during the 1980’s, a social movement grew from landholders and businesses people wounded by extreme green laws.
Long experience has shown that it is the plain, unvarnished truth spoken by plain, unvarnished citizens, not statements by full-time lobbyists or public communicators, whichare most persuasive in shaping public opinion.
Beginning in 1988, this "new" social movement,now calling itself the "Wise Use Movement", emerged in the American West.