Agmates

Why do we need the Agmates Community Network?

After years of economic good times, many Australians are deeply concerned about the social, economic, environmental and political direction of our country.

The Agmates Community Network provides ordinary, everyday people with the tools to fight back, and take innovative and effective action on important issues facing our country. The Agmates community network is building a ground-up movement of real people who are putting the participation back into our democracy.

What do Agmates Community members do?

Some Members choose to do nothing whilst others get involved and take action by joining one of our Action Groups. Group site members receive emails alerting them to new issues and campaigns and engage with each other online providing ways and means of taking positive action. Whether that action is engaging with Political leaders as members of their Agmates group site, sending email’s to members of parliament, engaging the mainstream media through letters-to-the-editor, calling talk back radio or organizing and attending an event. Agmates members are always only ever asked to take what action they can on the issues raised and initiated by the community members.

Who runs Agmates?

The Agmates Community Network was launched on the 24th of June 2009 by its founder Steve Truman. Agmates has a staff of one – Steve but is backed up by our team of dedicated member volunteers.

The real work and impact of Agmates is achieved through our members, who identify the issues through their posts and engagement with each other. That engagement leads to calls for action. The members then coordinate the emails, the phone calls, the event and supply the financial support.

Who funds the Agmates Community Network?

We are fiercely independent and do not and will never receive any government funding or corporate sponsorship. To maintain that independence the Agmates Community Network must rely entirely solely on public donations to fund our work and agitation for positive change.

Our community is supported by hundreds of individuals who may not have a lot of time or money, but who care about the issues and want to have a say.

The Community needs your support to make our voice heard in Australia today! Any donation you can make – big or small – will be a valuable contribution to our work.

Regular contributions will give the Agmates Community Network the ability to plan effectively, allowing us to fund campaigns, campaign materials, further community web site development, build memberships and the general advancement of the community and our causes.

Please consider becoming an Agmates Community financial supporter today. No amount is too small or large. It all makes a difference. Click on the image to become a financial supporter of the community.

Please note that contributions to the Agmates Community Network are not tax deductible.

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The Farm group Property Rights Australia is the be congratulated on being the first farm organization in Australia to recognize the Agmates community and utilize its media.

Since founding the Agmates community 2 years ago our biggest detractors and most resistant groups have been the established farm organizations.

Isn’t that incredible. At Agmates we work tirelessly for the betterment of rural and regional communities and the farm organizations have worked tirelessly to block us.

Agmates has been very critical of many of these organizations, but we are also quick to hand out praise, where its due. As we clearly state , we support anything that is good for rural and regional communities and we are critical of anything that is not. We make no apologies for that. We hold those that are supposed to represent us accountable.

PRA Director Chris Leeds

I personally congratulate Property Rights Australia and their board on moving on from the ‘last century’ model of farm activism to embrace this new and powerful medium.

Check out and join Property Rights Australia’s Community Group site HERE.

I also congratulate Christopher Leeds on leading the way for the Property Rights Australia members into the brave and powerful  new world of multimedia.

As Warren NSW Farmer Rob Wass said to me yesterday.

“Using the Agmates Community has lead me to realize that we farmers are still operating in the 1950’s era. The Green groups and  others that have been running rings around us for years have been using this media to communicate and influence.

We think being active is writing a letter to the Land (NSW) newspaper and hoping they will publish it. This is instant communication with people we have never met but are going through exactly what we are, even though they may be in Western Australia.

We (farmers) might be well behind the eight ball, but when we get onto something we catch up in  a hurry.”

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Have Your Say!

Things are bad when you have to almost raise a petition to get a rural press reporter to cover an issue. Just received this amazing email from Agmate Peter Cannon:

HI ALL,
Just spoke to the Land Editor about this Bloody 460 Million DOLLARS that the Rudd government is giving out to overseas Nations to help their primary producers.

Andrew Marshall said he needs more feed back from us the Australian producer on this issue before he would assign someone to write the article in the Land.

My thoughts are it’s a bloody disgrace, just another knife in Farmer’s backs where the hell are our Farm leaders on this issue?

Please ring Andrew Marshall 45704601. –NOW.

Pete.

Does anybody else find that whole thing just bizarre?

What the ‘bloody disgrace’ actually is, is that Andrew Marshall the editor of the Land Newspaper the flagship of the Rural Press 200 strong publications across rural & regional Australia needs to be convinced to put a reporter onto this story.

You’ll probably find that his skeleton staff is out covering the CWA meeting at Forbes, or perhaps they are having the day off after covering the picnic races or B&S ball in some far flung outback town over the weekend..

What about covering any of these issues that arose out of just last months budget.

Dangerous prevailing rural economic issues.

In case you can’t read the bullet hole points in the danger sign here they are below. Where you see a link, its to Agmates articles on the issue.

• Labors Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) will slug Australian Exports – Import competing industries with an extra $2,500,000,000 tax. (Agmates has 235 Articles here)

• Private Health Insurance rebate to be reduced putting further strain on already stretched public Hospital system in regional Australia. Here
  

• Drought support payments including all Exceptional Circumstances, to cease from July 1 2010.  No replacement program announced. We first flagged this here way back on 31st Oct 2008.
  

• $12 million and 312 jobs slashed from the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry whilst $460 million is sent overseas to help foreign farmers. Here,

• Changes to the Youth Allowance to deny income support to thousands of regional students.

• The $5.8 billion allocated by the former coalition government for water infrastructure to save water for the Murray Darling and food producers remains locked up whilst water buybacks are accelerating. (16 articles here.)
  

• $23.1 million out of the Australian Broadband guarantee program established to provide internet access for regional Australians. Here
  

• Key research agency Land and Water Australia abolished along with $12 million stripped from the Rural industries research and development Corporation. Here

• A decision to limit the tax deductibility of farm losses will impact on rural property values and small rural communities. Here
  

• New infrastructure funding has been targeted at passenger rail in the capital cities rather than being targets at the nations rail freight network.

• Promised flow-through-shares to encourage mining exploration, investment and job creation in resource industries have been forgotten.

• The Rural Partnerships Program has been scrapped, costing communities an important source of funds for local infrastructure and community projects.

Its really interesting that last week Rural press finally ran this front page headline just last Thursday their papers screemed. Beef hardest hit by Rudd’s ETS

Of course it was old news to Australia’s most informed people on rural & regional issues the Agmates members. Since the release of the final Garnaut report last year Agmates has run no less than 110 articles saying exactly that. See Here.

See these articles in particular. here on the 10th of january, here on the 8th January, here 25th November 2008, here 31st october 2008, here 30th September 2008, 24th September 2008, here again 24th September 2008, here 18th september 2008, here 15th September 2008.

The handful of journalists that Rural press employ across its 200 publications must have been to busy covering the social events to have notice all of these vital issues bearing down on rural Australia.

Things are bad when you almost have to raise a petition to get them to cover a critical issue. But then  again, how many Australians outside of the rural areas read their publications anyway – Answer, very few.

Still you can’t spend money employing Journalist to do quality Journalism and still make hundreds of millions of dollars profit from your advertisers each year – can you? After all that’s why journalist  call it the ‘Rural Pressing’ the press.

The rural press business model involves buying up every publication and running a skeleton journalist staff. The model has been highly profitable with the architect since 1994 Brian McCarthy rewarded for his ’successful business model’ by last year being appointed as the CEO of Fairfax Media.

But that’s for another article another day.

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Agmates Editor & Founder Steve Truman

Have your say!

Prime Minister Rudd’s announcement today of a Compromise on his governments proposed Emissions Trading Scheme is a wonderful victory for ordinary Australians particularly the members of the Agmates community and those similarly concerned Australians.

In our democracy it is vital that ordinary Australians and the Media take notice of any legislature that our governing politicians plan to introduce into law.

The Rudd Governments proposed Emissions Trading Scheme is one such piece of legislature that would have reeked destruction on not only our industry, but or jobs and rural communities. In these terms it was always an appalling piece of legislation to begin with, but to stubbornly press ahead and implement it in the midst of a global recession that may easily turn out to be a global depression was insane policy.

Whilst opposition politicians know that the legislation is a dud there is nothing they can do about it without ordinary members of the public and the media voicing their objections. The effort that you our Agmates members put into continually posting your objection to this and other government legislation has played a vital role in encouraging opposition politicians to reject this flawed piece of legislation.

On this front all media in Australia except The Australian Newspaper have failed dismally. Without the Australian every single large media outlet, every other News limited paper, Fairfax Media, the taxpayer funded ABC, SBS, the commercial radio and TV networks and even online news site Crikey have championed the ETS and actively stifled opinion from we so called skeptics.

There is one notable exception to the above and that has been Herald Sun Columnist Andrew Bolt.

So well done team. If the government were a boxer it has just taken a right cross to the jaw that has made it buckle at the knees. Now is not the time for us to let up though. Its actually the time to get further on the front foot and back the opposition, particularly the likes of Senator Barnaby Joyce who stated as far back as December last year on Agmates News that he would not be voting for the ETS legislation no matter what his party or the coalition did.

That’s why Senator Joyce is in my opinion an outstanding politician. He has a conscience and holds the well being of the Australian community above any perceived and contrived party loyalty.

Keep up the good work Agmates. You’ll go to heaven for it.

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Steve Truman Agmates founder & Editor.

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Have Your say!

On last nights ABC program Q&A communications minister Stephen Conroy faced the music over his governments plans to sensor & filter the Australian internet.

His appearance created the biggest reaction from the Australian public ever seen on the show.

Watch this 47 second video of the introduction by host Tony Jones to see what I mean.

Senator Conroy bumbles, fumbles and squirms his way through 30 minutes of grilling on the program.

Not only was the program compelling viewing it was a tremendous example of a free and open democratic society at work. Exactly what Senator Conroy is threatening with this legislation. Australia will be the only democracy in the world with compulsory filtering of the internet if Senator Conroy gets his way.

If you missed it you can watch watch it online here.

My thoughts are:

Senator Conroy is asking the Australian public to basically just trust him and his government not to abuse our right to free speech.

Actually I don’t -- trust him or believe him.

I must say that I was extremely disappointed at Andrew Bolts contribution to the discussion. He would make a good ’shock jock’ on commercial radio.

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Have Your say!

Agmate John Mikkelsen writes:

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At the weekend, in the aftermath of the election, I suggested people should write to their newspapers (or the Courier Mail / Sunday Mail) or the major regionals, expressing their views.

The questions you raise would certainly be worthy, as would the posts from many other Agmates.

An interesting letter in today’s Gladstone Observer shows that the writer has borrowed from this site, taking what could be seen as direct quotes from exchanges between Steve and myself, finishing with -

“Another problem facing this country is the public’s fanatical stance their (sic) either Liberal, Labor, National or Green voters, regardless of how incompetent their party and politicians are.

“A bit like you’re either a Ford or a Holden fan”

Sound familiar? Fair enough, I guess he’s helping to spread the message. He has his real name on the letter (g’day Barry if you’re reading this) –

Click on image to enlarge. I have marked the bits that look to come word-for-word from the Agmates comments section

I wonder if he participated in the ol’ Shoot Out at the OK Corral on Sunday when the metaphorical bullets were flying thick and fast between Steve, “Open Mind” and “William Wallace”.

Anyway, I found it all pretty interesting and entertaining. And if anyone else would like to write to a newspaper, it’s as easy as posting on this site, with the Qld regionals only too willing to print signed email submissions.

A Google search will find them and they all have web pages with links to posting letters.

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Have Your Say

You may not have caught up with the follow up to last weeks article No Free Speech In Rural Australia which has been circulated right across Australia by our readers.

This weeks Queensland Country Life was hilarious. If you have it just turn to the editorial, letters to the editor section (P14 & 15 26th Feb)  and have a look at it … like me you may fall to the floor writhing in laughter.

There are 3 protagonists in this saga, in the one corner you have the heavy weight brutal maulers, the Rural Press  QCL & AgForce tag team, and in the other corner you have the hopelessly mismatched and to date completely flogged lightweight  contenders ABA.

Last week AgForce sat outside the ring cheering, as its partner QCL mercilessly flogged ABA about the ring. ABA against the might of the Country Life was not only like pitting, Jeff Fennick against Mike Tyson but Fennick was in the ring with both hands tied behind his back. It was a massacre.

How things have changed in a week. After years of refusing to publish anything from ABA (even paid articles) and  publicly ‘flogging’ ABA -  QCL’s bully boy tactics were exposed in our article last week .

What the Agmates article did was not only call the foul for what it was, but take the ropes off ABA and hand it a baseball bat.

Here is some  extracts from the ABA letter to the editor published in a highlighted section on page 15.

The editorial ‘ABA a clear and present embarrassment’ (QCL 12-2-09) represents another low point in the journalist integrity of the paper’s editor, Mark Phelps….

Mr Phelp’s comments show that he would rather support AgForce than pay credit to ABA..

His (Phelps) blind allegiance to organizations such as AgForce, cattle Council and MLA, ensures QCL readers are given only one side of vital beef industry issues …

Mark Phelps latest attack has only serveed to embarrass himself and the QCL…

Wack, thump, kapoow, bludgeon…..

On the other page you have AgForce president John Cotter, who has been tagged to step into the ring. With both hands up he writes:

Please, no ‘pointscoring’

Oh John so now that things have been evened up we want everyone to ‘play fair’.  How noble of you.

Interestingly, after last weeks Agmates article I spoke to an AgForce senior executive who thanked Agmates for not ‘flogging’ them in the Freedom of speech article. They were extremely happy that we had ‘flogged’ the Country Life instead.

What is hilarious about the whole thing is that the 3 protagonists  in the fight, QCL, AgForce and ABA go to great lengths not to mention Agmates.

After untying ABA’s hands and handing them the baseball bat they have picked themselves off the canvass and had a David v Goliath victory.  Not a word of thanks or acknowledgment back to the Agmates community for evening the fight up for them, (and read this -  I don’t mean to me, I mean on Agmates written to our community).

It’s almost as if as the three are standing bloodied and bruised in the ring at the end of the bout and say:

‘Psst don’t look now and don’t say anything, we don’t want to alarm the crowd, but there’s an elephant in the room.”

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Have Your say!

In last weeks Queensland Country Life we witnessed one of the most amazing acts of media manipulation and bullying I have personally ever seen.

I’m referring to the editors unbridled assault on the Australian Beef Association. He writes

The Australian Beef Association has again clearly demonstrated why it is the embarrassment of the beef industry.

The organization which has a well developed culture of harping and carping …..

The comments are a clear demonstration of why ABA is a sad joke.

QCL has long maintained that ABA is no more than a damaging distraction to the Australian Beef Industry.

On and on the rant goes.  Click on the photo of the editorial below to read the whole incredible attack.

Queensland Country Lifes attack on producer group Australian Beef Association and 2 of its directors.

So what was it that got the editor of the Queensland Country Life so worked up. He tells us.

This week … ABA president Brad Bellinger and …. special director John Carter issued a media release appearing to suggest that they know more about managing North West QLD than the regions own producers.

It was the ABA’s press release criticizing QLD’s peak farm lobby group AgForce and in particular AgForce spokesman, Cloncurry based Beef producer Peter Hall that has really sparked the editors rage.

Unfortunately the QCL editor does not give you the reader the chance to see what the press release said. But Agmates will. Click here to read a copy .

Here is a part of the press that the QCL editor takes  great exception to:

Executive Committee Member of Cattle Council and AgForce spokesman Peter Hall’s comments amount to a poorly concealed attempt to disguise the fact that AgForce has sat on their hands on this very important animal welfare and property viability issue.

AgForce also got it seriously wrong when they claimed that marooned Gulf Country cattle are helicopter shy and would rather risk drowning than accept fodder drops.

Queensland Country Life editor is adamant that the NSW based directors Bellinger & Carter don’t know what they are talking about … but here is what Cowan Downs owner John Nelson, the man at the centre of the controversy had to say  in the Weekly Times published on the same day the QCL editor published his rant.

“We are talking about targeted feed drops. It took us just a couple of hours to feed those select mobs that needed it most…assistance in doing this is all we are asking for,” he said.

Mr Nelson said claims Gulf cattle were helicopter shy were “totally and utterly wrong” and that his staving cattle ran towards the helicopter as it descended with feed.

All QCL editorial staff had to do to work out who was right and who was wrong, was pick up the phone and call John Nelson.

This highlights a very serious problem for Queensland producers. AgForce is the most powerful agri body in Queensland. Ag minister Tim Mulherin when I spoke to him about the Cowan Downs situation told me that he could only make a decision based on the advice he was given. He told me that advice came from 2 sources, his department and AgForce.

It is now abundantly clear that the states only rural newspaper is only interested in publishing AgForc’es view of events.  That is nothing but dangerous propaganda, and censorship as bad as you’d see in a country like China.  There is no such thing as freedom of the press in rural Australia. How can there be when Rural Press owns every rural media outlet (except Agmates).

I’ve held off publishing this until after toady’s QCL was published, hoping that I may have been wrong and they would give ABA and their supporters a right of reply. But no, the QCL has suppressed any and all dissenting views.

Don’t think for a moment that Agmates is in any way aligned with ABA. I too emailed them upon receiving their press release on the 9th with a withering blast for failing to mention the role that our community had played in assisting liaising with the government for assistance for the northern graziers.

Agmates has many loyal members and supporters who are members and indeed executives of groups like AgForce, ABA, MLA and Cattle Council of Australia. None and I repeat none of these groups themselves have ever offered any assistance or support in building the Agmates community to the 10,000 plus members we have today.

Agmates Community News is totally free and the only fiercely independent media platform in rural Australia. Why Agmates exists at all and why it has grown so fast, is because many Australians are well aware that you can’t have a free and fair society without freedom of speech. Without Agmates all you have is rural press. As the above story demonstrates, that’s no freedom of speech at all.

Have Your say!

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By all accounts Canada is a beautiful country. It has one big problem though – its Bill Of Rights.

In Canada, their rather limp-wristed approach to democracy has unelected judges doing the hard yards when it comes to determining the real content of the rights of the citizenry. And – surprise, surprise – they have tended to fill in the blanks in a way that expands charter rights at the expense of legislative prescriptions. Increasingly, judges run Canada, not federal or provincial parliaments.

In the Canadian province of British Columbia (BC) you have the ludicrous situation where the duly elected BC parliament presumably acting on the will of it’s citizens prohibits polygamy which means its illegal.

However the BC Polygamists are protected by the ‘bill of rights’ which under it’s ‘freedom of religion‘ charter allows Mormons to practice polygamy as part of their religion. The unelected Judges are running country.

For all the hype about a charter being the sign of a progressive society, surely the opposite is true. Giving political power to a small bunch of judicial aristocrats is a decidedly backward step for a modern democracy.

Is this what we want for Australia? I know I don’t.

Have your say!

South Australian Andrew Phillips [pictured] is the Chairman of the Australian Protectionist Party and writes:

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The implementation of a Bill of Rights is no guarantor of human rights in this country-it is in fact a tool that can be used to further erode the freedoms so many Australians take for granted today.

We support the right of Australians to freedom of speech and freedom of association.

The Australian Constitution should be enough to guarantee these rights, if not, then careful changes must be proposed and put to the Australian people in the form of a referendum.

A Bill of Rights has been enacted by various countries, many of which have had the most brutal and oppressive dictatorships known to man, a perfect example being the Soviet Union-how did a Bill of Rights or a UN Charter defend those persecuted by the government or tortured by the KGB? If anything, such a Bill here could be used to stifle freedom of speech and religious expression.

A Bill enacted in Australia could be used to seriously curtail criticism of beliefs or behaviour one finds abhorrent in defence of “human rights”. Where would that leave those wanting to voice their concern about practices such as polygamy, sodomy, female circumcision and abortion?

Furthermore, a Bill could be used to deny the right of an employer to employ the most suitable candidate for a position-as in the case of religious based schools wanting teachers to support the Christian ethos of their institution.

Such a move, intent on transferring power from Parliament to unaccountable judiciary is fraught with dangers to the freedoms given to us by previous generations, not least those who gave their lives upon the battlefield- it must be rejected outright.

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Have Your Say!