
2023 Pastoralists and Graziers Association (PGA) Award Presentation
Tony Seabrook expresses acknowledgement of Mrs Gina Rinehart AO’s extraordinary commitment to Agriculture & community.
Tony Seabrook expresses acknowledgement of Mrs Gina Rinehart AO’s extraordinary commitment to Agriculture & community.
The Great Western Hotel does feel like the bush. A pub with a rodeo and bullring dust just a short walk from the bar. Bush Summits were held all over the country, organised by News Limited papers, broadcast on Sky News and sponsored by Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting. They were great events that did much to highlight the major concerns of the bush to a city audience. The Great Western Hotel in Rockhampton was the perfect location for Queensland’s Bush Summit. The major topic of discussion was the growing impact of renewable energy on agricultural land and our environment in Central Queensland.
My father throughout his whole life was a huge lover of the bush and of our country, and made himself unpopular at times, standing up for what he could see was in the nation’s best interests. On our long drives together in the bush to check windmills and cattle – I was the gate opener and tool carrier – Dad would sometimes tell me jokes. One he especially liked was told by Dr Edward Teller – scientists who knew both Teller and Einstein said that Teller had the greater mind.
“Age-old problem needs future-proofing” is missing an important component in the worker shortage debate, the harsh treatment by the Federal Government of aged Australians and other pensioners who would otherwise like to continue working.Let’s look after our own better and remove the incomes test. Allow those pensioners who would like to, including veterans, contribute to the prosperity of us all. This initiative will assist with the current housing crisis and cost-of-living issues as well. | Dean Nalder
I listened intently to them as well as to Gina Rinehart who gave her views on what governments need to do to ensure we continue to enjoy the lifestyle we have grown accustomed to. My personal view is our governments need to listen to the Rinehart has to say. We need successful business leaders and philanthropists with common sense and a love of our country more than ever to give advice to our leaders.
Gina Rinehart has offered a scathing assessment of the costs involved with achieving net zero at a regional summit, warning of the dire consequences for the agriculture industry. Ms Rinehart took aim at the handouts for “climate research and government advisers”, highlighting the angst she sees in the agriculture industry. “The type who have never successfully run a farm, a station, or other agriculture businesses,” she told the regional Queensland crowd. “I think we are also not looking at the costs involved with the agriculture industry.”
While business leaders and policymakers were converging in Perth on Monday for The Australian’s inaugural Bush Summit, more than 2000km away, in the state’s remote Kimberley region, pastoralist Chris Towne and a group of workers were battling to contain a massive fire sweeping across the plains of Gogo Station. Once again, the task of dealing with the blaze had fallen to Towne and his employees. And once again, there had not been any action taken against those suspected of starting the fires“If this was bushland outside Perth it would be front page news.” Towne’s experience in many ways encapsulates the sentiment expressed by many at the Bush Summit: that Western Australia’s regions feel forgotten and ignored.
Keynote speech with Gina Rinehart, Executive Chairman, Hancock Prospecting Group.
Hancock Prospecting executive chair Gina Rinehart says the costs to agriculture of achieving net-zero targets has the potential to increase food prices at the supermarket and force farming families off their land. Ms Rinehart, in her keynote speech at The Courier-Mail Bush Summit, also sounded the alarm on red tape associated with mining which she said could take “decades” to navigate.
She sent her strongest message about the expensive bill farmers were facing to meet zero emission CO2 targets. Her Hancock Agriculture business runs 14 farm properties in Western Australia with 12,000 head of Wagyu beef cattle, one of the largest herds in the country. ‘Agriculture usually doesn’t have the financial resources that the mining industry has and this is a big thing we I think we are overlooking,’ she said. ‘It just doesn’t have the resources – unless of course you’ve got, you know, a mining company in your back pocket. ‘You’ve actually got to add up the expense of these net-zero policies on farmers. ‘Just look at acquiring electric vehicles alone,’ she added. ‘Be they for lawn mowers motorbikes utes, four wheel drives, tractors, harvesters, trucks, bulldozers, graders, front end loaders. ‘It’s going to cost a fortune that farmers and pastoralists don’t have without a mining company in the back pocket. They just don’t have this money to be able to invest.’