Environmental pretexts for land-grabs from private citizens

From The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley

• An Australian reader writes –

I thought you might be interested in another case of Government effectively stealing freehold property via an environmental agency, in this case the Environmental Protection Agency of Western Australia. There are strong similarities in this case with the situation faced by Peter Spencer, the farmer in New South Wales who was until this week on a hunger-strike halfway up a communications tower on his land, which he is now forbidden to farm because it has been designated a “carbon sink” as a way for Australia to comply with the Kyoto Protocol without actually cutting emissions of carbon dioxide.

In summary, my brother owns a beautiful freehold farm of 4,300 acres near Jurien Bay in western Australia. Some years back, the Western Australia Department of Water needed to find a water supply for a land developer who is building 9000 urban lots in the town of Jurien Bay. They found this water under my brother’s freehold land and have since set about reclassifying the property so that it can neither be farmed nor developed. Essentially, it cannot be used for anything. He will be in breach of environmental conditions via the newly imposed limitations on the use of his own land if he does anything at all on the property.

This would be fine but the “State” and or the Department of Water refuse to buy the land for fair value, and refuse to entertain compensation. In other words, they are saying, we don’t want to buy it or resume it, but you just can’t use it any more. Incredibly, under the EPA Act, there is no requirement to compensate. This is just one of hundreds of other examples around Australia whereby the “State” is using powerful environmental legislation to steal freehold land – and they are getting away with it.

The ability to own and use freehold land without fear or favour is a basic democratic right which our forefathers fought. It is the reason why feudal Europe failed and the USA flourished. The headline is: freehold land title in Australia no longer means anything – and no one realises this because it is mostly occurring in the rural areas. It has occurred by osmosis over the past 10 years, with sneaky government bureaucrats using the environment as a stalking-horse to implement powerful legislation that effectively places incredible power with environmental extremists, and removes it from the elected governments. We are all for protecting the environment, but stealing land is not necessary or justified. Yet it is occurring every day.

• Our reply –

A friend of mine was a founder member of Greenpeace. He resigned from the organization he had founded because, he said, it had been taken over by Marxists who had no concern at all for the environment, except as a Trojan horse to destroy the economies of the West from within. What is happening in Australia is beginning to happen worldwide, as the extremists bully mainstream politicians, often in the name of saving the planet from “global warming”.

However, it is becoming apparent that the “global warming” predicted by the extremists has not occurred, is not occurring, and will not occur. As more and more people notice the growing and gaping discrepancy between lurid prediction and normal reality, they will begin to realize that it is the environmental movement, not innocent farmers and other landowners, that should have its property and wealth expropriated. Greenpeace now has a fleet of ships larger than the British Navy. Shutting down this and other cruel pressure-groups, and transferring their money to their many victims worldwide, would be a healthy first step toward restoring sanity in national and global politics in the aftermath of the now-discredited “global warming” scare.