Warm greetings to Townsville, and all those fantastic Australians in surrounding oceans, farms, stations, mines, and in our military.
Townsville stands tall for its World War II history. Located above the Tropic of Capricorn, Townsville is the largest city in northern Australia. It fuses much-needed defence in the north with its role as a hub for mining and agriculture.
Townsville is a major export centre, contributing more than $10 billion in trade annually through copper, zinc, lead, sugar, beef, and extensive agricultural and livestock shipments. Nearby Burdekin and Hinchinbrook contribute beef, mangoes, vegetables, seafood and sugarcane.
Townsville’s key industries employ thousands and contribute hundreds of millions to the regional economy, but overbearing layers of government limit their potential.
Large areas of this productive land face consequences from the ideologically-driven pursuit of net zero.
Prime farming land is being damaged for transmission lines and toxic wind towers and solar panels that push prices up and reliability down.
Agricultural product prices will have to rise dramatically, if farms and stations are forced to meet net zero rules, to pay for new electric tractors, electric vehicles, electric harvesters, electric trucks, generators and more. Greatly more expensive food and unreliable expensive electricity do nothing to help businesses survive. Does this help our homes?
Razor-thin margins in agriculture and struggling businesses are being eaten away by regulation, compliance burdens, government tape and unaffordable net zero policies – and this is before factoring in new record-high tax settings.
We’re taxed to the hilt, some of the highest taxes in the world, yet we not only have precious little to show for it, but this jeopardises the north’s future. And on top of this, environmental laws not only restrict our clearing and make us unsafe, but put creatures that can kill us – like sharks, snakes, crocodiles – as priorities above our own safety.
Bush Summit: Have Your Say is supported by S.Kidman & Co.
Our staunchest ally has urged Australia to lift our defence spending.
Our ally sure is right. Australia urgently needs many, many more war drones and smart sea mines to defend our critical sea lanes and ports.
How can we receive our fuels and defence supplies or continue to export to receive revenue and support jobs, without being able to defend our sea lanes and ports?
We urgently need Israeli-style or future USA-style domes to protect our essential infrastructure, ports, air and sea, water supplies, communication, electricity, defence facilities, defence manufacturing, and more.
We need truly long-range missiles.
We need to pay our defence personnel more, to encourage more Aussies to join our dangerously undermanned defence force.
We can fund this by ending government waste. Cutting the climate bureaucracy would free up more than $30 billion in 2026-27 alone.
Wouldn’t it be fantastic if we could put out the welcome mat to encourage some of the world’s best in defence, the Israelis, to invest and build some of their advanced war drones and other technically superior defence items here?
And wouldn’t it be fantastic if we could encourage the world’s best in microchips to leave Taiwan and invest and build more safely here?
And how exciting would it be if Elon Musk could be encouraged to diversify and explore whether options for launching his many communications satellites could be done from our adjacent deserted islands?
But all this starts with cutting government waste, and the two Ts – tape and tax.
Bush Summit: Have Your Say is supported by S.Kidman & Co.
