The Burnett River Catchment opens to the south of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.
By Jo Nova
Below is the craziest environmental rule Peter Ridd has come across, and below that, a strategy to deal with it.
Queenslanders please sign this Petition!
For some reason no one can explain, the catchments for the Burnett and Mary rivers are included in the Great Barrier Reef protection legislation. These rivers don’t even flow into the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, they empty to the south of it, and get swept away by the giant East Australian Current which heads south away from the reef.
The amount of water moving there is so vast that the entire annual flow of the Burnett and Mary Rivers passes in just two minutes.
Any runoff the rivers add to that flow will have to do a full lap of the Pacific Ocean to Peru and back before they get to the Great Barrier Reef.
We’re being so precious about the reef, but there are also eddy currents and gyres in the area that stir up the ocean floor and add a rich nutrient mix to the water. One near Fraser Island is so rich it causes phytoplankton blooms all by itself. Farms also use pesticides, and bad land management could add sediment to water — but as Peter Ridd says “where is the data”?
So despite farms adding an insignificant amount of nutrients to a current flowing away from the reef, farmers spread over 53,000 square kilometers of land must comply with rules about runoff, watering, and fertilizer. And they and their advisors all need to keep records of their compliance.
On this close up map below the distance from Bundaberg to Lady Elliot Island (the nearest reef) is 77 kilometers away.
The Burnett and Mary Rivers flow into an area south of the Great Barrier Reef.
Let’s check that science — Queensland readers — we need your help.
BOM https://www.bom.gov.au/resources/learn-and-explore/marine-knowledge-centre/ocean-currents
Peter Ridd has looked closely into this (see his video below from last year.) The Australian Environment Foundation (AEF) is starting up a campaign to get the Queensland Productivity Commission to run an independent inquiry into the scientific assumptions behind environmental laws. The initial case study would be the Great Barrier Reef Protection Measure in the catchment of the Burnett-Mary rivers because it is a star example of pointless Big Government legislation.
To get started we need 3000 signatures on the QLD Parliamentary Petition before it closes on June 12th. Only people living in Queensland can sign it. But if you know someone who lives there please send them an email.
Professor Peter Ridd is organizing this as Chairman of the Board at the AEF. I am also a Director of the AEF.
Thanks for your help!
Let’s Check the Science: Petition 4488-26 Refer to the Queensland Productivity Commission an independent inquiry into checking the science
Peter Ridd, sums up the situation:
This petition is aimed at establishing a test case with the QLD Productivity Commission to ‘check the science’ around the environmental regulations.
Petition 4488-26 Refer to the Queensland Productivity Commission an independent inquiry into checking the science
The Petition of residents of the State of Queensland draws to the attention of the House that Queensland’s farming, fisheries and forestry industries are critical contributors to the State’s economy, regional employment, food production and community stability.
- These industries operate within a complex framework of environmental and natural resource regulation intended to achieve environmental protection outcomes;
- Stakeholders within primary industries have raised concerns that increasing layers of regulation may be imposing significant economic and operational impacts, and that the scientific assumptions underpinning certain regulatory settings have not been independently reviewed against measurable real-world outcomes over time;
- Confidence in public policy is strengthened where the scientific basis of regulation is transparently examined and independently assessed to ensure alignment between intended environmental outcomes, regulatory burden and economic sustainability;
- The Queensland Productivity Commission is an independent statutory body with expertise in evaluating regulation, economic impacts and policy effectiveness.
Your petitioners, therefore, request the House to:
- refer to the Queensland Productivity Commission an independent inquiry into whether the scientific assumptions underpinning environmental and natural resource regulation affecting Queensland’s farming, fisheries and forestry industries remain supported by measurable outcomes; and
- as an initial case study, include consideration of the Environmental Protection (Great Barrier Reef Protection Measures) and Other Legislation Amendment Regulation 2019, as applied within the Burnett-Mary region.
Science needs to be audited!
The silver lining is that GBRMPA would also ban offshore wind farms. [We hope]
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It’s not pointless legislation if it’s intention is to control farming. It’s right on point, and the reef has nothing to do with it.
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Correct little to no ‘enviromental legislation’ is about the actual enviroment.
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I find the near instant 6 red thumbs very interesting. Someone really went to a lot of trouble. The legislation is an attack on farming, like so much in the UK and EU. Nothing to do with the reef and completely unsupported by evidence. So why go to such trouble to destroy farming in a food bowl area. The same in the Nederlands.
In all countries farmers are being paid not to grow food. When you consider that the world was supposed to be starving by now, this appears to be a direct attack on Western society. The attack on fertilizer is the flip side, as country after country discovers what Sri Lanka learned, people can starve. So instead of trying to prevent starvation, there is a general consensus to destroy working democracies. But not in China. In fact their production of wine, formerly our big export to China, is now by far the biggest in the world. And they want to sell their agricultural produce as well.
So like Climate Change, what started as a realistic concern about the environment has been perverted into an attack on food. As in Rhodesia/Zimbabw and South Africa. If that’s freedom, it’s the wrong sort. The freedom to starve and deluded environmentalists supporting a direct attack on Democracies. Which is nothing to do with environmentalism. Like the attack on history, on our heroes, our elections. Even the difference beween men and women, so extreme it has passed absurd.
No, this is attack on Australia, not just the farmers of Bundaberg. And fully supported by openly declared communists like Albo Akhbar.
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Communism has a place. And the Greens are communists who care more about the Jews than ecology or the Reef. They are not even pretending today. Ask Greta Thunberg or Grace Tame.
Communism allows grumpy nasty unqualified activists and second rate people like Albo Akhbar to rise to positions where they can enrich themselves massively at everyone else’s expense. And spend billions which are not theirs. Stalin, Lenin, Trotsky, Pol Pot, Mao. All monsters. Hundreds of millions dead. More raw power than in all of history. They work on “tell them what they want to hear and when we get power, we do what we want”. Which explains the $70Billion annual cash grab in a budget for a country which is already $2.5Trillion in debt under Labor and the Greens.
This Great Barrier Reef nonsense is just part of it. Maybe we should ask the Aborigines, the original custodians, for reparations for all the damage they have done to the country? Eliminated all of the giant marsupials, the megafauna, halved the rainfall, destroyed the ecology and filled the place with only flammable/pyrophytic trees. Ecology was novel and aspirational in the 1960s. I studied it. It’s just an excuse to ruin the country today.
And I see our communist leaders as the human equivalent of bush tics. With the same morality.
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Reparations from First Nations? No objection from me. Perhaps we could take a portion of the NIAA’s funds (since it doesn’t seem to be getting to those it is designed to assist) and use it to support struggling farmers.
https://www.onenation.org.au/cut-niaa-waste
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Why would you want to control farming. The market should control farming; if your product does not sell you stop farming it and grow something else. The last thing any farmer, or indeed anyone is a gormless bureaucrat telling you how to farm.
The interesting thing about the GBR is that it did not exist until about 10000 years ago when the Ice age ended and sea levels started to rise; and even then it had a few narrow escapes from climate factors:
https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2019/12/04/great-barrier-reef-study-how-reef-copes-with-sea-level-rise.html?fbclid=IwAR2zWg-kRl7-N8uOeDgQs_d7m_jw8gMRO2AZ8Emejxzp45DDscpGyB8CyvQ
Over the years the sea level around the East coast of Australia has ranged from 130 meters below today’s level to 120 meters above today’s level; and there was not a coal fired power station to be seen:
https://collection.temporalearth.net/sahultime/sahultime.html
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How about a Senate Committee investigation into the money given by Mal Content Turn bull Sh@t to his Missus. Some 444 Million South Pacific Pesos.
Not directly to his Missus but as good as.
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And after a week, the only thing they could say definitely the money was that the administration of the money would cost $134 million. I would be happy to keep the books for only $99 million. If I could keep the compound interest on the cash, now likely closer to $1Billion. But it did pop up as a line item in the budget report once with interest on the cash at $14Million. A bagain. For what exactly is never explained. Of course we the taxpayers paid that too. Every year.
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But why haven’t they petitioned for this months ago and given concerned Qld farmers etc a much longer time period to collect the 3000 petitioners required?
I hope they can still get the numbers , but the Malthusian loonies will fight them all the way to try and further destroy the Qld farmers and the Qld economy.
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I need help! This morning, 8am, the Sky News guy reported that the latest forecast from the BOM was for the El Niño system, which has been been wandering about for the last 5 to 10 years is due to arrive next week. ( pretty poor forecasting)!
The 10am news forecast that rains were about to set in for the whole of next week. What I need help with is finding out if the forecast El Niño is due next , around 12th June 2026 or next year or maybe 2028. It’s already about 5 years late ( & counting ).
Maybe they have to mention it in passing just to keep, the moron that identifies as an energy minister, happy!!😜😜
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Peter Ridd has been campaigning on this for months, engaging with the farming “unions” and networks and also with politicians.
While he builds that network, there have been reasons to be diplomatic, let’s just say, rather than hard hitting. Complicating things, large agri-corporations are also on the side of Big Government and Big Regulations help to drive small farmers (their competition) out of business.
So this is slow build for several reasons. But the long game is — perhaps — a different way to get accountability or auditing done in science.
I think that will become my bumper sticker line, Science needs audits, just like finances do.
Who checks the data to make sure the burden of compliance with the reef rules has some value above the cost?
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I’m surprised that Sky News allows this type of climate speculation to be broadcast without confirmed audits of the forecast data. This mornings speculative, dodgy forecasts are more like copies of the ABC or BBC! Not good enough for a news broadcaster which is held in pretty high esteem, which in itself a rare happening!
Don’t ruin it for yourselves Sky News.
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They really should hire young Josh, from Cyclones.oz- check him out.
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The Queensland Farmers Federation has over 15k members. The petition should be easily achieved.
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I hope so Ross, but I signed it anyway. I’m not a Farmer, thankfully.
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One of the best programmes documenting the strictures placed on farmers and farming is contained in a British series. Jeremy Clarkson’s Clarkson’s Farm is brilliant at presenting the red tape strangling British farmers and in many respects it is applicable here as well. The crazies who dream up farm regulation are not farmers; they are non-productive bureaucrats and academics, bought and paid for by environmental groups that comprise non-productive socialists/communists whose aim is to destroy our economy. One only has to see where their support comes from to know who they serve; the ALP and the Greens, neither of which have any love for the independent nature of farmers. They cannot convince farmers to join their politics so they use legislation to control them. Once again we await a government that recognises the loss of property rights and the increase of red and green tape applied to freehold ownership and who will restore those rights and cut the tape.
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Unfortunately, regulatory capture means the large “Farmers” associations are not necessarily on the side of the farmers.
Obviously, you would have thought those groups would be absolutely on board with us.
It’s so hard to believe the NFF or all the other iterations of farmer groups are not 100% in the battle, but that is the absurdity of things.
Each generation, it seems, we have to ditch the networks and set up new ones. Farmers should not be funding those groups that don’t stand up for farmers.
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Ever since its inception 50 odd years ago the National Farmers’ Federation has been the worst enemy of Australia’s regional economy.
At the outset they told us that our greatest problem was interference by foreign governments in our markets. This was true and correct, but their “solution” was to abolish government assistance for Australia’s farmers.
“This Holier than Thou” approach was very brave policy, which soon proved in practice to be lunacy as it advanced the cause of Communism, but it has remained as policy the whole time .
In recent times the NFF has indicated the belief that farmers can profit by engaging the zero sum game of “carbon credits”, where huge profits will be made by a few, equalled in total by huge losses by many.
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The quickest way to sign up the petitioners is to get Peter Ridd on the Bolt Report or Outsiders or Credlin etc, because they’ve had him on before and I’m sure they would want to help him to fight this left wing lunacy.
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There is the Queensland Government Parliamentary petition site that may also be used.
[email protected]
Be surprised if Dr Ridd didn’t know of it.
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The Crisafulli Government has been a huge disappointment.
Sadly, the alternative is miles worse.
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I see what you did there Dr.
Sending off to the “boys” to do their bit.
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Why? Not tossing out the good searching for perfection, I hope.
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Never.
Hell would freeze over first.
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That was their MO.
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Shared responsibility for the Great Barrier Reef’s conservation means that various stakeholders, including governments, Indigenous communities, and individuals, must collaborate to protect this vital ecosystem. This collective effort is essential for addressing threats like climate change, pollution, and habitat degradation, ensuring the Reef’s health for future generations.
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Making absolutely no change at the cost of starving the population, sending wealth overseas, and killing our industry.
Yep makes sense…..
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Déjà vu! Aussie farmers are the new Kulaks. They are becoming the target of Albanese’s Marxist oppression.
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This is crazy stuff. The Mary, the Burnett, and to a much smaller degree the Burrum and the Kolan rivers flow into Hervey Bay. Because of the strong south east trade winds and the shape of the coastline there is a constant inshore tidal sweep flowing north, but hugging the coast. But Fraser Island largely protects Hervey Bay from this. There would be more danger of pollution from coastal streams south of Fraser- Sunny Coast, Gold Coast, and Brisbane- with a very large urban population. This should be included in any study.
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Are these river systems included perhaps because they are the major systems which flow into the Great Sandy Strait Marine Park rather than the GBR? Seems tenuous if it’s GBR legislation, but if it’s more generally “Marine Parks” then it might be logical enough. There are a number of coastal and inshore reefs in this area which in theory could be affected by poor-quality agricultural runoff. As has been rightly pointed out though, runoff from these systems does not reach nor impact upon the GBR.
I am all for removing or amending poor legislation, and farmers do have enough to deal with generally. I have signed this petition as a Burnett catchment resident as I firmly believe environmental protection laws should be evidence-based.
However I will also add to the record that there are most certainly improvements which local landowners could (and should) make to help prevent topsoil loss from their farms/properties, most throughout these catchments do operate a long way short of best practice. Council to their credit are doing what they can with respect to urban runoff quality from new developments but given the size of the catchments in question this is dwarfed by runoff from rural land.
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This is an important matter and therefore wouldn’t it make good sense to also approach the Commonwealth-Federal Government?
https://www.corrs.com.au/insights/environment-protection-and-biodiversity-conservation-act-reforms-key-changes-and-implications
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Might have to wait until AFTER the 2028 Federal Election to do this!!
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Fraser (sic) Island pushes the EAC offshore. The predominant wind is south-east so the nutrients are often pushed north. Legislation limiting pollution in the Burnett and Mary catchments is a good idea.
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So maybe that’s real. Where is the data? What measurements show that the run off from the Burnett or Mary rivers shift north?
And can we tell what is natural nutrient upwelling?
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Fraser Island IS the coast in reality. It does not “push the EAC offshore”.
You also need to learn a bit more about the effect of wind and undercurrents and nutrient flow before making incorrect sweeping statements.
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This article from Watts Up With That shows the end of the climate change fraud.
You have always been on the right track.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2026/06/05/the-climate-scam-is-acknowledged-americans-were-fed-lies-and-deserve-to-be-compensated/
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Totally agree with the petition. The environmental laws have gone way too far in relation to farming. If anyone watches Clarkson’s Farm you will see that it can go even further if UK is anything to go by. Next they will extend to “every breath you take”. To do anything in this world will make a slight difference to this world.
Without detracting from the petition, the Mary River does in fact affect the southern areas of the GBR. Have a look at the flood maps from any of the major flood maps and you can see the extent of the impact. Silt plumes extending right up to the bottom part of the GBR. Just one example of this is the effect on seagrasses and has resulted in the deaths by starvation of hundreds of dugong, albeit mostly in the southern parts of the area affected.
Did the flooding of the Mary River affect the GBR? Yes.
Did the farmers kill the dugong? No. A natural event did.
The solution to pollution is dilution.
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A lot of this area also has people living ‘off-grid’ alternative lifestyles in the brigalow scrub. I would guess the legislation covers no new septic tank installations and restrictions on housing density levels?
“Every day I XXXX into the sea, seems strange but it doesn’t mean much to me, I’m living in a porcelain dream, where things aren’t quite what they seem….” (Regurgitator, from Queensland)
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As to why people live ‘off-grid’ in these areas, a history of ‘job-seeker’ support from AI search “Job seeker support in Australia has evolved significantly since the end of World War II, when maintaining full employment was a top priority, resulting in low unemployment rates. Over the years, particularly from the 1970s onward, the focus shifted towards individual responsibility for employment, leading to programs like “Work for the Dole” and the introduction of mutual obligation requirements for welfare recipients.”
A certain distance from a major urban centre reduces your requirement to participate in job-seeking ‘development’ programmes and the like – although I guess this is all ‘online’ these days, so maybe defined by NBN access rather than physical distance. In the local areas these people are referred to as ‘blockies’. (as opposed to bikies, although probably some bikies are also blockies)
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They are trying to send the farmers broke in many
Western countries including France, UK,Ireland, Holland and now Australia which has their grip on water also.
The plan is to Nationalize them.
The three essentials for human life to exist are nutritious food , clean water and sex.
They now are brainwashing children into surgery to change their natural state of birth.
That can give them blackmail power to a dictatorship which the socialists always crave.
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Petition signed and circulated to Queensland contacts.
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Peter Ridd and yourself, Jo, are national treasures. Thank you both for all your efforts over the years.
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