Agmates

"I bet you wonder how I knew.."

Hardly a week ever goes past that I don’t get a phone call or an email tip off about something that has happened, is happening or is about to happen. Most of it never makes it into the mainstream media and some of it is just rumours.

If you’ve got something for the grapevine either email me at steve(at)agmates.com (the at is a @) or if you want to post it anonymously just do it through the comments section below.

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Are the four National Party Senators in a separate party? National Party Senators Barnaby Joyce, Fiona Nash, John Williams and Ron Boswell were left scratching their heads when they saw Federal National Party Leader Warren Truss standing next to Coalition leader Malcolm Turnbull at a press conference earlier this week announcing that the Liberal & National party’s were offering bipartisan support to Kevin Rudd’s Emission trading target cuts of 5-25%.

The National Senators have been very clear that they would not support any such targets as they will cripple the economies of rural & regional people they represent. The National Senators were left bewildered that they had been completely left out in the dark on on the Truss and Turnbull decision. They found out about it at the same time as the rest of Australia, when they saw it on Sky news. Now the question remains, are there actually two National Partys or maybe three if you count the LNP in Queensland. What a mess the party is in.

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Beef 2009 Executives try to muzzle Barnaby Joyce. Did you happen to notice that Senator Barnaby Joyce was not one of the keynote speakers at this years Beef 2009 event? The organizers of Beef 2009 did send Senator  Joyce an invitation which was duly accepted. However just weeks before the event the organizers asked the good Senator what he planned to speak on. Senator Joyce informed them that he’d speak on the negative impact on Rural Australia of the Federal Governments Emissions Trading Scheme the QLD Bligh governments Moritorium on regrowth clearing.

The organizers told Senator Joyce that they would appreciate it if he did not speak on either of those issues. Not wanting to be gagged Senator Joyce withdrew. The organizers were desperate not to upset the events major sponsors, The Federal and QLD Labor governments.

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Our Bad tempered Prime Minister. It has been well documented how a dinner served with meat on a government plane  or the absence of a a hair dryer on the battle field can send our Prime Minister Kevin Rudd off in a hissy fit. Journalist around Canberra are digging about frantically trying to find a PM female staffer who was reportedly on the wrong end of a book pegged at her in a fit of rage by our PM. The story goes that the book struck the female staffer in the head drawing blood. Apparently after wanting to report it to police the lady in question was placated and the whole incident smoothed over. You have not seen the story in the media because the jouno’s can’t get anyone in the PM’s department to talk. The only thing we can confirm is that the media is frantically chasing the story.

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AWB Landmark pressuring farmers on the South Australian Eyre Peninsular – Its been a few tough years over in the cropping country of South Australia’s West Coast. AWB Landmark has a huge presence on the Eyre Peninsular through it’s network of Branches and franchises. We are told that AWB Landmark is turning the screws on farmers in what is usually considered very safe winter cropping country.

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Ruralco Managing Director and CEO John Maher buying up shares. Ruralco CEO John Maher must think that the companies shares have hit rock bottom. Its not been a great 12 months for Ruralco’s share holders, if you’d invested $1,000 in Ruralco shares last year they would be now worth about half. John bought 10,350 shares for $19,665 on Wednesday. He holds 19,150 shares. Ruralco owned companies include some of Australia’s most iconic private agencies and rural businesses:

Combined Rural Traders (CRT), Grant Daniel & Long (GDL), Brady & Runciman, Davidson Cameron & Co, Grow Force, Queensland Rural, Savage Barker & Backhouse (SBB), Rawlinson & Brown, Roberts limited (TAS), Rodwells & Co, South Australian Livestock, Territory Rural, Town & Country, Water Net ….

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Correction –

From Geoff Magoffin Head of Suncorp Agribusiness – Queensland

Suncorp Agribusiness is growing

I refer to your column ‘Heard it through the Grapevine’ which appeared yesterday, where you said there was a rumour Suncorp was ‘paying their loans staff to offload rural borrowers’.

There is no truth to this rumour. Agribusiness remains a core business for Suncorp and we are committed to supporting and aiding the growth of this sector.

Certainly no staff member has been offered a financial incentive to move our agribusiness clients to another lender.

Regards,

Geoff Magoffin

Head of Agribusiness – Queensland

Suncorp Agribusiness

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“Good to hear Geoff. In fact the farmers who contacted us to report Suncorps activity are very pleased to hear it and have reported that Suncorp is now being very reasonable in their dealings with them.

We’d still like to hear from you in regards to our invitation to become an Agmates Community Business supporter.”

Agmates Editor and Founder – Steve Truman.

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If you have a tip off for us please email us at steve(at)agmates.com or post it anonymously in the comments section below. Remember you heard it through the grapevine.

Have Your Say!

QLD Shadow minister for Community Services, Housing and Women and State Member for Burdekin Rosemary Menkens writes:

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Rosemary Menkens

The Federal Government is blatantly discriminating against the School of Distance Education.

I know of one school that had gained approval under the Primary Schools of the 21st century fund had been told their application was withdrawn as they were a School of Distance Education.

This is blatant discrimination against the children in the bush.

These federal funds are for building libraries etc and this school based in Charters Towers, which has more than 350 students, wanted a library.

Information that was given to me was that the school submitted an application to the Federal Department of Education and Training on May 1, about seven days later they had a phone call to say that their submission had been accepted and the details were verified.

Less than two weeks later, the school received yet another phone call from the department telling them their application for funding had been withdrawn as they were a distance education school.

I thought these funds were for all schools and nowhere can I find in the eligibility criteria that Schools of Distance Education can’t apply.

These schools still have to have buildings to house their resources and for the department to accept their submission then three weeks later withdraw it is appalling.

Children living in rural areas had far more unmet educational needs than those in urban areas where accessing educational tools, such as a library, was much easier.

This school gives children in rural and remote regions a quality education and is an essential party of their lives.

The Charters Towers base was the first Distance Education School to open in Queensland and lead the way in using technology to communicate with students from Prep through to Year 12 and beyond.

The Federal Government should realise that there are thousands of children, like those educated by the School of Distance Education in Charters Towers, and they deserve to share in the funds being given to all schools.

(See article from Dianne Hansen the Chair of the Schools of Distance Education Alliance Parent Network.)

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Have your Say!

Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, John Cobb writes:

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John Cobb

The Rudd Government’s war on Regional Australia is intensifying with the news that the Rudd Government has purchase 240 gig litres of water from the Twynam Group for $303 million.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd today announced the Government had bought almost 240 gigalitres of water rights – the single largest purchase of water for the environment in Australia’s history – from Twynam Agricultural Group.

The deal is worth $303 million and dwarfs all previous water buy-outs, taking the total amount of water rights purchases to 297 gigalitres. The Twynam purchase is equivalent to half the water Sydney uses each year.

I am appalled that not only is my electorate being hit again by the Rudd Government’s attack on regional communities, but astonishingly there are no guarantees that any of the $303 million of taxpayers money Twynam’s has just pocketed will even stay in Australia.

The Rudd Government $23 billion cash splash was supposed to ‘stimulate’ to such an extent that even dead people were lining up to get it.

Yet here we have the Rudd Government ripping 240 gigalitres of water out of regional communities which has the potential to create hundreds of jobs in regional Australia, grow thousands of tonnes of food and fibre to feed people and permanently stimulate the economy.

The Rudd Government is hell-bent on turning the current climatic drought into a permanent Rudd made drought.

Perhaps the most frightening aspect of this sale is that taxpayers have just paid an Argentinean company $303 million and that money could end up being spent off shore at a time we need resources and funds being invested in Regional Australia.

The Australian economy has just taken a double hit, not only are we permanently losing productive capacity, jobs and food security, $303 million could be shifted offshore to Argentina.

The Minister for Agriculture, Tony Burke has shown yet again he lacks the ticker to defend his Portfolio.

No wonder on a recent farmonline poll over 60% of respondents rated his time as Minister for Agriculture as terrible or poor.

At this rate if this phantom Minister refuses to stand up for his portfolio he won’t have any Agriculture constituents left.

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Have Your Say!

Agmates Editor Steve Truman writes:

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As the head of NASA’s programs for 12 years (1982-1994) Dr John Theon was was responsible for all weather and climate research in the entire agency, including the research work by James Hansen, Roy Spencer, Joanne Simpson, and several hundred other scientists at NASA field centers, in academia, and in the private sector who worked on climate research.

In January this year Dr Theon has finally spoken out about the useless nature of climate modelling, the manipulation of the data by James Hanson and others in the agency for political means.

“My own belief concerning anthropogenic climate change is that the models do not realistically simulate the climate system because there are many very important sub-grid scale processes that the models either replicate poorly or completely omit.

Furthermore, some scientists have manipulated the observed data to justify their model results. In doing so, they neither explain what they have modified in the observations, nor explain how they did it.

In just November last year Dr Hansen was embarrassingly caught out adjusting the global temperatures upwardly.

Dr Theon goes onto say:

“They have resisted making their work transparent so that it can be replicated independently by other scientists. This is clearly contrary to how science should be done.

Thus there is no rational justification for using climate model forecasts to determine public policy.”

Incredible. The whole need to act on ‘man made global warming’ expressed by governments around the world is based on the predictions of this computer modelling.

Dr Theon has exposed the whole Dr James Hansen / Al Gore global warming hysteria as possibly the greatest con trick ever played upon mankind. Once again I’m reminded of our Emperor Kevin Rudd and his New Cloths.

Click here to see Dr Theon’s comments in full plus his qualifications.

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Have Your Say!

Agmates Editor Steve Truman writes:

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Steve Truman

It has just emerged that the Rudd Labor governments silent  ‘jihad’ against Australia’s food and fibre producers knows no bounds.

Agriculture Minister Tony Burke must have scored maximum brownie points with Prime Minister Rudd by sacrificing 32% of his departments funding ($908 million) in the budget as a means of  clawing back some of the Rudd / Swan induced sea of deficit and debt.

Whilst those unprecedented cuts in funding to the department and Agricultural research are a ‘kick in the guts’ for Agriculture there is worse in store for Australian farmers.

Buried in the budget papers is a tax change that will fundamentally strike directly at the viability of 1,000’s of family farming operations.

Farming families whose land is owned by a family company and who operate their business through a partnership or trust using the company’s land will most definitely be caught up in the changes , unless the business, or farmer, starts paying rent to use the company’s farmland.

Many farming family companies were set up years ago as a means of minimising the blow of death duties.

But business lawyers Jim Main and Brendan Cockerill, from JMA Legal, say the changes are a “tax bombshell” for many Australian farmers.

There are tens of thousands of family farmers who have had their businesses structured in this way on advice from accountants and business advisers. The budget changes mean that these farmers will be burdened with enormous annual tax payment increases, even though they have earnt not one cent more of income.

Under the new changes, soon to come into effect, if a family has a farm valued at $1.5m with a market rental value of, say, four per cent of its sale value, the operating entity (or farm business managers) will have $60,000 a year added to their assessable income, or deducted from their carried-forward losses.

If the farmer wanted to solve the problem by paying rent then, based on the example above, the company would still pay $18,000 tax regardless of business profits or losses.

Agriculture Minister Tony Burke has scored many more Brownie points with his Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. Not only has he gutted his own Agricultural department to cut costs, he has also served up farmers to the grasp of the tax office to raise more revenue for his cash strapped government.

Minister Burke 18 month reign as Ag minister can be viewed as nothing more than a ‘Jihad’ on Australia’s Food and Fibre producers. No doubt this has put him in good stead for a much more prestigious portfolio as one of Kevin Rudds golden haired boys.

Tony Burke’s unrelenting attack on Australian Farmers is unprecedented in modern Labor governments. Certainly farmers fared much better under both the Hawke and Keating governments.

Its almost as if we are back to the class wars that existed between Labor and the Farming community in the first half of the 20th century. Producer group the Australian Beef Association call for Minister Tony Burke’s removal yesterday is entirely appropriate.

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Have Your Say!

Agmates member Matt Kolbe grew up in Zimbabwe and worked for Banket farmers Patrick & Sue Stooks. Matt tells me that the Stooks are wonderful people, so much so that they are his sons god parents.

He was most distressed to read this report in today’s Zimnews.

“A Banket farmer was beaten on his farm last Friday, by the son of a top political official set on taking over the farm. Patrick Stooks received serious facial injuries after being repeatedly punched and then hit in the face with the butt of a shotgun.

The official, Philip Chamboko, who holds a political role at the Zimbabwean embassy in Tokyo, has been trying since last year to remove the Stooks from their land.

Patrick and his wife Sue, were both locked up for three days in deplorable conditions last year, on trumped-up charges relating to the invasion of their land. ….. Chamboko’s son, Gideon and his hired thugs, continued to live on the farm but last Monday a High Court ordered the illegal occupation of the land to cease.

On Friday Patrick came under violent attack after he confronted Chamboko, whose thugs vandalised Patrick’s farm equipment.

The attack was in full view of the Deputy Sheriff of the High Court who was there to serve the order papers on Chamboko and his men, but unsurprisingly, the police have taken no further action.

The ongoing invasions of Zimbabwe’s remaining commercial farms have been fully supported by police officials, acting on the direct orders of the Attorney General, Johannes Tomana.”

Just take a good look at the photo, Patrick looks just like any farmer in Australia, the USA, Canada, New Zealand, UK, Europe, in fact he could be your next door neighbour.

The world continues to stand by and watch as the Mugabe regime brutalizes its people. It is embarrassment that the Australia government is providing $36 million in aid this year to this corrupt regime. Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Stephen Smith says:

“Australia will continue to consider Zimbabwe’s humanitarian and reconstruction needs.”

Stephen Smith, what about the human rights of Patrick & Sue Stooks and the remaining white Zimbabwean farmers? It is clear they have none and yet your government turns a blind eye to this and the many other atrocities perpetrated by Mugabe on Zimbabwe’s citizens both Black and White.

When Morgan Tsvangirai was sworn in as Prime Minister he said that the seizure of White farmers land would stop. Clearly it hasn’t. That makes him either a puppet Prime Minister or a liar.

Australia’s Rudd Labor government now joins other western governments as a financial supporter of Mugabe’s despotic rule.

Patrick & Sue Stooks and the millions of other Zimbabweans suffering a miserable existence under Mugabe need to know that the average Australian is embarrassed that our government would give millions of dollars of our taxpayers money to support a state that does not protect its citizens basic human rights.

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Agmates Founder & Editor Steve Truman

Have Your Say!

Hardly a week ever goes past that I don’t get a phone call or an email tip off about something that has happened, is happening or is about to happen.

Most of it never makes it into the mainstream media and some of it is just rumours. Still I think its about time we started to share this stuff on Agmates.

If you’ve got something for the grapevine either email me at steve(at)agmates.com (the at is a @) or if you want to post it anonymously just do it through the comments section below.

Here is what we are hearing through the grapevine:

Suncorp is paying their loans staff to offload rural borrowers. We are told that Suncorp is so desperate to get get rid of rural borrowers off their books that they are paying their branch managers / lending staff bonuses for every loan that they can ‘move’ to another lender.

Great Southern is completely broke: It’s public news that the Agr-giant Great Southern has gone into receivership. What is less well know is that the receivers McGrathNicol have no money from the company or its bankers to pay staff wages or repairs and maintenance. Apparently it is an urgent priority for them to sell off any asset that requires intense management. That includes cattle, vineyards and orchards.

QLD Motor registry offices seem to be grossly understaffed. Is anyone else noticing that in main roads offices across QLD there are no counter staff. On a trip to my local main roads office to hand in some old number plates I sat in a crowded waiting room for an hour while only 2 of the 6 serving windows were open. Finally I asked the guy next to me how long he’d been there and he said an hour and 15 minutes. He pointed to 2 other in the room who had been there when he got there. I left then.

Another Agmates member reports that in Brisbane he sat for 2 and a half hours in a motor registry office waiting his turn to be served. Same story only 2 windows opened out of 6.

Anybody else out there having the same problems?

AWB Landmark is charging its finance clients huge cheque cashing fees. We have been told that AWB Landmark has hiked the fees it charges financed clients who have a AWB Landmark cheque book. Reports are coming in that clients are finding cheque cashing fees ranging from $30 to $60 a cheque when they check their statements.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is now Kevin 57. After his performance on Lateline on Monday night the wags around the corridors of Parliament House in Canberra are saying first it was Kevin 07  then Kevin 747 and now it has morphed into Kevin 57 after his refusing to utter the words billion dollars when speaking about the extent of the budget deficit. That was further compounded when Tony Jones on Lateline tried no less than 6 times to get the PM to say $300 Billion -- but Kevin Rudd would not . Intead he set about spinning his way around it and finally saying around 300 (not $300 billion).

If you have a tip off for us please email us at steve(at)agmates.com or post it anonymously in the comments section below.

Remember you heard it through the grapevine. Enjoy the great Credence Clearwater Revival song below and remember to let us know what your hearing on the grapevine.

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Have Your Say!

Federal Shadow Minister for Agriculture, John Cobb writes:

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The Rudd Government is compromising our farmers’ ability to feed and clothe the nation after admitting it would be slashing research jobs and funding in next weeks budget.

I hope the Governments decision to cut the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation (RIRDC) by 25% was not linked to a recent report by RIRDC which highlighted the heavy burden the Rudd Government emissions trading scheme would have on the profitability and productivity of Australia’s agricultural industries.

If the Prime Minister can lose the plot and reduce a RAAF VIP jet hostess to tears because he didn’t get a hot meal, I shudder to think what he would do to an taxpayer funded organisation which broke his governments tightly scripted spin and highlighted the extremely negative consequences of his ETS on agriculture.

Farmers are already being forced to produce more with less, in particular less water and less arable land, and without increasing public expenditure to dramatically increase productivity there was the very real possibility of Australia becoming a net importer of food at a time the worlds population is set to double within the next thirty years.

Without real increases in funding for agriculture research and development the cheap, high quality, clean and green food we take for granted in Australia will be relegated to the history books.

Similarly the only way we are going to tackle the worst affects of climate change is to produce new plant varieties that can cope with droughts, new disease and fungus strains (such as Rust in wheat) and increase yields.

The Prime Minister has already made cuts to vital agriculture R & D when he slashed $63 million from the CSIRO’s budget with the majority of those cuts coming out of the agriculture research leading to the decision to close the Merbein Laboratory in North West Victoria and the JM Rendel Laboratory at Rockhampton in Queensland.

This has been compounded by State Labor Government’s in NSW and Victoria also slashing their agriculture R & D budgets and closing down research institutes.

It is the height of hypocrisy for the Minister for Agriculture, Tony Burke to be swanning around Europe as an observer to the G8 Agriculture Minister’s meeting two weeks ago where he claimed in a media release;

“Australia has a major role to play in meeting the global food shortage and boosting global food security … We believe investment in agricultural research will be essential.”

I can only hope the Minister for Agriculture hasn’t ratted out his constituents completely and we still have a functioning Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry after Tuesday night’s budget .

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Have Your Say!

QLD Farmer and Chairman of the Carbon Sense Coalition Viv Forbes writes:

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The Carbon Sense Coalition today called on the Australian Federal Parliament to stop playing Global Warming politics and focus instead on the irresponsible damage being contemplated by the Cap-N-Tax promises.

In testimony this week to the New Zealand Parliamentary Enquiry into the ETS, I said that it was impossible to achieve the gigantic cuts in carbon dioxide emissions suggested by various western governments without a crash program of Carbon Capture and Burial (CCB).

You can read the full submission here.

There is no evidence that CCB would provide any climate or environmental benefits whatsoever, just a huge misuse of investment capital and a massive increase in the cost of living for any society silly enough to tread this path.

It does not take much engineering, financial or biological knowledge to uncover the logistic, economic and environmental stupidities of CCB.

Australia currently relies on carbon fuels for 90% of its electricity needs and coal for over 70%. Every tonne of coal burnt in an existing power station needs about 2 tonnes of oxygen. But to get 2 tonnes of oxygen from the air requires 8 tonnes of air. The other 6 tonnes are nitrogen which comprises 75% of the atmosphere. Therefore the power station is currently taking in about 8 tonnes of gases for every tonne of coal burnt.

Therefore 9 tonnes of material must come out. After removing the minor quantities of ash and real pollutants such as NOX and SOX, there is still about 9 tonnes of three harmless gases going up the stack , the unchanged 6 tonnes of nitrogen, 2.6 tonnes of carbon dioxide and the rest is mainly water vapour.

These three harmless gases are the natural gases of life in the atmosphere, necessary and beneficial for all life. Any nurseryman could tell Canberra that all vegetation around the power station will show enhanced growth in the lush atmosphere now enriched with the extra carbon dioxide and water vapour.

To extract the 2.6 tonnes of CO2 from every 9 tonnes of exhaust gases, compress it, pump it hundreds of kilometres in specially constructed pipelines and then bury it in carbon cemeteries is environmental and economic lunacy.

All of this can undoubtedly be done, the real question is should it be done?

These are the likely effects:

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G’day Agmates. This Friday the 8th of May Agmates TV will be interviewing National Senator Barnaby Joyce in Brisbane.

We invite you to submit the questions that you’d like Senator Joyce to answer.

A couple of the things that I plan to ask Senator Joyce are:

1. What are your thoughts on the Rudd Governments $43 billion dollar broadband plan, especially  that 10% of Australians who live in small rural & regional towns across Australia will miss out.

2. What are your thoughts on the Rudd governments back down on the Emissions Trading Scheme. What are the implications for rural & regional Australia. Has it improved the outlook for these areas or is it just a temporary stay of execution for our farmers and rural communities?

3. Why is the Rudd government spending $100 Billion to expand our military on the premise that we need to protect ourselves from China when we are looking at selling a large part of our resources wealth to them?

To see Senator Joyce promotion of the upcoming interview on his blog, click here.

Here is a video of Senator Joyce speaking on that subject.

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Please submit your questions in the comment section below.