Agmates

NSW Cattle producer “Straight Talking” John Carter writes: (Opinion)

Australia’s new Trade Minister, Simon Crean (pictured), is coasting along on the back of the same idiotic advisor’s that have taken Australia to the second highest debtor nation in the OECD during a mineral boom.

His disappointment at the new US Farm Bill continuing to subsidize grain farmers is akin to a child bemoaning the setting of the sun. “Please Mummy, stop it going away”. They have repeated the disappointment press release for over 30 years! These people need a heavy dose of reality salts.

Chinese, European and US Governments have known for years that food supply is as important as defense.

Australia’s fat cat bureaucrats, NFF (National farmers Federation) officials on their career paths and Business class travel around the world and empty minded ministers in First Class don’t want to understand this very basic concept.

Amongst public figures only the late Bob Santamaria and Independent Federal MP Bob Katter (pictured) have been able to see and say . Bob, apart from his deep reading and use of the Parliamentary Research Library lives in the far north of Australia and is closer to the real world.

Insular Canberra doesn’t understand that when you are in a hole and want to get out of it the first thing to do is to stop digging. They neither understand holes or digging. They just keep travelling and polluting the atmosphere with their free trade passports. Why?-

“Put your money on self interest, you always know that it is trying”.

We are disappearing under a mountain of debt. We have the second highest interest rates in the OECD- and rising because we have to service the huge debt and, unlike the USA, we don’t have the power to claim that ours is the world currency and print it with no backing. Our high interest rates mean speculation in “carry trades” as money men borrow at 0.5% in Japan and lend at 7-8% in Australia. Madness.

We now import all sorts of food from subsidized Communist China. We have destroyed our manufacturing industry and are destroying our pork, orange, milk and sugar industries. The policy is the antithesis of Pliny’s AD 69 call to Rome ” We must, whatever happens, safeguard the family farm”.

When I went to Paris in 1983 on my Churchill Fellowship tour and met with OECD officials they told me that they had dismissed Australian negotiators as fools as they protested at subsidies.

But what about our beef access to the world? With the world’s only mandatory RFID NLIS we can’t get another kilo into Europe. We haven’t filled the US quota for 5 years and are unlikely to ever fill it again as drought and alternative land use lower our herd.

As we near parity with the US dollar expect to see US Choice grade beef begin to appear in our top restaurants. “They can’t do that, they have no NLIS and they have BSE” we will cry -That mightn’t work-. South Korea is BSE free and the US are forcing their beef in there even without a free trade agreement finalized.

But what about our mineral exports to China? No Free Trade agreement there or with Russia where some of our beef is now going. “Our minerals will save us”. Look at South Africa but worse-look at Nauru.

Nauru was one of the wealthiest countries on earth as its phosphate royalties flooded in, there was no push for alternate industry or self sufficiency, the phosphate ran out and it is now a basket case economy. If we don’t change course it is also Australia’s future.

Globalisation has seen the people of 47 of 50 African countries and much of South and Central America go backwards under free trade and US multi national company thuggery.

That is why desperate people sank the Seattle negotiations with mass protests. That is why the US multinational dominated WTO now meet in isolated centres like Doha.

Oodnadatta should apply for the post Doha meeting with a well organized farmer/manufacturer repeat of the Battle of Little Big Horn to follow. The Custardisation of the Free Trade Custers would make the world in general and Australia in particular, a far better place.

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Have Your say! To join John is an online discussion of the issues he has raised, just leave a comment.

News South Wales Cattle Producer John Carter writes;

“This is the second in the series of articles written after my return from the USA where I attended and was a key note speaker at R-CALF USA’s 3 day annual conference held in Omaha Nebraska. I participated and spoke as a representative of the Australian Beef Association (ABA).”

Free Trade Agreements benefit “Billionaire Thugs” and not ordinary citizens.

Conference Key Note Speaker, Lorri Wallach , Director of the 200,000 strong Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch gave Free Trade the most energetic and fact based demolition that I have ever heard.

Her description of the brainpower of those who negotiated the recent Free Trade Agreements is unprintable.

However to summarize Ms Wallach and her organization believe “the US/Australian Free Trade Agreement (FTA) is of no benefit to the ordinary people, but is of huge benefit to multi national chemical companies and other billionaire thugs.”

Ms Wallach contends that the World Trade Authority (WTO) is undemocratic and operates in secrecy, that it is controlled by big business interests who exploit cheap labor abroad and that it has begun to encroach on the rights of countries to protect their environment and restrict imports of unsafe foods and hazardous materials.

However it was the Leadership Townhall meeting following my effort that really impressed me. Sponsored by R-CALF and the Coalition for a Prosperous America, some 300 men and women sat around dinner in the ballroom of the hotel.

An old, dignified Nebraskan Senator spoke of America being brought to its knees and the need for a rebirth. We then listened to seven brilliant speakers address answers to correcting what they believe is the impending US Depression .

Leaders in manufacturing, the trade unions (Union Boss Richard Trumka addressing the conference in the photo below) and farming attacked the de-regulation and free trade policies of the past 20 years.

A man from Paul Revere’s 1801 Revere Copper Products, explained how China was putting them out of business.They could manufacture a Revere silver plated bowl for $20 but China could do it for $14.28, not because of cheaper labor but because of their currency.

Colorado apple farmers are being put out of business by China for the same reason. Free trade just doesn’t work with different currency regimes.

The Union official spoke brilliantly on jobs being lost , health care becoming unaffordable. This was an inspiring coalition.

It was a privilege to be part of a general panel for questions. It was a privilege to be a part of this most inspiring gathering. Photo of me (seated centre) with Judith McGeary of the Farm & ranch Freedom Alliance and R-CALF CEO Bill Bullard answer questions from those at the conference on the Animal ID and Trade Panels.

I wished that anyone with influence in Australia was listening. Here is the policy platform for a new Australian party to take.

This was the heart of America rising against Globalization greed and distortion.

Belatedly Americans are realising that China has outsmarted them. One speaker said “We put the small crooks in yellow suits and send them to gaol and the big ones in pin stripe suits and send them to Washington”.

They see both major parties as multinational stooges. There is a grass-roots mood for change in the USA and these people are serious about getting the de-regulation and Free Trade policy’s of the last 20 years reversed.