In my recent Real Good Oil piece on how Australian history has shaped our contemporary culture, I noted how two warring tendencies began at Sydney Cove in 1788 and carry on to this day. Australia was founded as a prison society, but the prison had no walls. What kept the prisoners imprisoned, though, was the very landscape itself: harsh, hostile and unforgiving. The sheer alienness of the soil and climate meant that both convicts and free settlers were reliant on the government store to keep alive.
Thus, from the very beginning, Australians were ruled over by an elite class whom they passionately hated at the same time as they were utterly dependent. Even today, even as they hate and distrust the government, too many Australians rely on the nanny state, demanding ‘the gummint do somethin’!’
Surprise, surprise, the gummint just loves to do ‘somethin’. In as heavy-handed a fashion as they can get away with.
Police and a dozen biosecurity officers have arrested a High Vale cattle property owner and raided a second property in the Samford area as community anger at fire ant treatment fires up across the state’s southeast […]
An unnamed woman was filmed in handcuffs, surrounded by police, as workers in high-visibility uniforms converged on her Ryder Rd property.
The footage showed her being put into a police car but she was not taken to a police station.
They weren’t done, though.
After the arrest, biosecurity, police and an entourage of angry residents moved on to another property at the Goat Track, a road connecting Mount Nebo to Samford.
“There were three police and 15 to 20 biosecurity (at the High Vale property). This lady was trying to ask for time to remove her cows but they just handcuffed her,’’ resident Sarah McGuire said.
“They’re abusing the Biosecurity Act to access these properties.
Ah, but biosecurity. Just as they did in the name of ‘public health’ during Covid, the nanny state use legitimate biosecurity concerns to justify the most heavy-handed bureaucratic strong-arming.
Then again, this is the same biosecurity who recently incinerated a priceless, 200-year-old scientific collection, because of a missing letterhead. The property owner should count herself lucky they didn’t just aerial firebomb the whole place to smouldering ashes.
Ms McGuire said Thursday’s dramatic police intervention came after a number of property owners ignored notices to allow access to their properties for fire ant treatment.
She recently received a final notice herself, despite claiming that there were no fire ant nests there or in the area.
Hundreds of residents in Samford and the Gold Coast hinterland have turned out for a string of public meetings and protests over the past year and have engaged a Kings Counsel as they explored a possible class action against the state government.
The latest fire ant mapping showed more than 14,000 infestation sites in Brisbane and Logan alone.
The potentially deadly pest, regarded as one of the world’s worst invasive species, has continued to spread across Queensland and into NSW despite hundreds of millions of dollars being poured into a nationally-funded treatment program.
It’s a real threat, no doubt about that. But then, Covid was a real disease, too. That didn’t justify the heavy-handed brutality of the state.
It’s no coincidence we’re hearing almost identical language.
“The National Fire Ant Eradication Program continues to engage the Queensland Police Service (QPS) to safely treat a small number of properties where owners and tenants have continued to obstruct eradication efforts,” it said.
“The small number of individuals who continue to obstruct our lawful access to properties in certain communities without reasonable justification jeopardises the successful eradication of this globally recognised super pest. Their actions undermine community safety and stand in the way of a fire ant-free Australia.
“Under the Biosecurity Act 2014 (Qld), we are authorised to access and treat all targeted properties in the eradication treatment area. We do our best to work with property owners to ensure we treat all properties safely and effectively. It is only after we have exhausted all efforts that we engage assistance from the QPS on special assistance arrangements to uphold the safety of all involved.
Yeah, yeah, ‘stay home, save lives’.
A program spokeswoman told The Courier-Mail last month that about 100,000 properties covering more than 240,000ha had been treated since August 2024, with more than 99 per cent of owners and tenants co-operating with officers.
OK, so why go straight to sending in the goon squad for the holdouts? Because it’s the government and nanny-state overreach is what governments do.
