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Media Statement: Philip Davis Condemns Labor Alpine Grazing DecisionI completely condemn the Bracks Government’s decision to ban alpine grazing. By Philip Davis - 25th May 2005 - Back to News It is a repudiation of all of the symbolic heritage traditions by which country Victoria has been a contributor to our economic and social fabric and on which Victoria’s prosperity has been built.
The process by which the Bracks Government has arrived at the decision indicates how contemptuous of country people the Government is, in that they have justified the decision by establishing a committee of back bench labor party hacks with no collective or individual expertise, knowledge or experience of the issues under consideration.
They refused to refer the matter to a bipartisan Joint Parliamentary Investigatory Committee, which would have had some chance of looking at the issues objectively.
The decision announced today by the Minister for the Environment to ban alpine cattle grazing is a decision he could have announced more than a year ago before establishing the farce of a Labor Party committee.
Country Victorians will again be outraged at the total detachment of the Bracks Government from the traditions and heritage which has been important to them for 170 years.
Alpine grazing occurs on only 10 per cent of the Alpine National Park and the park exists as a consequence of the long term management which the successive generations of mountain cattlemen have cared for sustaining that environment.
Progressively, the Bracks Government is engineering a dismantling of many values, traditions and heritage symbols of country life.
Our children will not know, nor have an appreciation for the activities of their forebears that have now been consigned to the dust-bin of history by Steve Bracks.
Source: http://gippsland.com/ Published by: news@gippsland.com
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