Vikki Campion: Inner-city breakfast dwellers don’t know what the true cost of living is

The anti-agriculture, anti-mining, anti-dams philosophy seems to come from those who enjoy eating our good food in urban cafes and keeping their hot showers and lights on, writes Vikki Campion.

Chinese warships are preparing to be based on the sleepy Solomon Islands less than 2000km away. Those fretting about climate policy in urban seats before a cafe breakfast should ask themselves, should climate change, for which Australia alone can do nothing about, or the progression of a totalitarian superpower to our doorstep be our priority?

I suppose war is too bellicose to delve into over brunch.

What about compassion? Or does concern for the starving stop at the end of an oat latte and a rant about a “feminist transition to renewables”?

From the eggs and avocado to the beans, bacon and toast, none of it gets on the plate at the cafe without coal, oil, pesticide, fertiliser, and massive amounts of water.

Turn off the tap to Warragamba Dam and see how much longer you want to live in Sydney.

When a plan to build Hells Gate Dam in North Queensland was announced this week, it was to secure an inland water supply in my home electorate of Kennedy, which has been crying out for it for more than eight decades.

Geotechnical drilling under way on the Burdekin River north of Charters Towers which is where Hells Gate Dam will be located.

It took eight minutes before those who hate progress said a dam upstream from Charters Towers would kill the reef.

Eight minutes before they screamed for an external consultant “business case”.

The business case for Hells Gate is our bid to feed a starving world that does not have masses of land. If the ALP needs a consultant to tell them that, things are worse than I thought.

We need to build big new dams that open big new areas of agriculture and big new mines to power big new industrial precincts so that our children can live in a strong enough country to tell a totalitarian adversary to stand back.

Now China has a deal with the Solomons, we don’t have much time.

Anti-agriculture, anti-mining, anti-dams philosophy seems to come from those who enjoy eating our good food in urban cafes and keeping their hot showers and lights on, and even want the same for the impoverished – only they don’t want to use our land to do it.

Suppose we genuinely are that compassionate, humanitarian society we profess to be when we emote about climate change. In that case, shouldn’t we open up our vast land holdings on volcanic soil to grow food for the countries that can’t?

There is a global food deficit and the easiest way that we can assist, just as we did by giving tonnes of coal to Ukraine, is by providing nutrition to the starving, which North Queensland is superior at growing with the best soil in the country.

Those who argue “slow down” should consider whether the environmental evil of a dam in the scrub is worse than populations overseas dying of hunger?

Increasing wages won’t stop costs of living soaring, writes Vikki campion. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

If Labor intends to campaign on the cost of living but won’t throw support behind new mines or dams, it’s missing that global food prices are setting new records, commodities are soaring and slight wage increases won’t make it easier, here or anywhere else.

Hells Gate will open up 60,000 hectares in the nation’s food bowl, adding another $6 billion of gross regional product – 10 per cent of what we export now.

When we talk about the cost of living, we come from a spoiled location, where a high agricultural output per capita allows us to export 72 per cent of our food, worth about $60 billion a year.

When we complain about the cost of groceries, we aren’t crying about staples of rice or corn to stop our children from starving to death.

Due to Covid-restricted harvest labour, fertiliser shortages, drought recovery and demand outstripping supply, food prices are up. They will continue to soar as farmers question whether fertiliser and fuel costs for the next crop will be worth it.

Labor’s “policy” to tackle the cost of living is to give job security to those without.

That is called social justice but it won’t improve the cost of living because the cost of what we buy will continue to go through the roof.

It strengthens our humanitarian arm to cut into the bush, build dams, irrigate parched areas, grow and feed other nations but, instead, our climate politics allow someone else’s child to starve to death because they didn’t have the luck to be born here.

Those against the emissions cost of transporting food around the globe would have them die because they don’t have tongues thousands of kilometres long.

As Henry Hazlitt put it: “The real problem of poverty is not a problem of ‘distribution’ but of production.”

Ukraine army Chaplain Mikola Madenski walks through debris outside the destroyed Retroville shopping mall after a Russian attack on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv. Picture: Aris Messinis/AFP

Increasing wages slightly won’t stop cost-of-living soaring, just as scrapping fuel excise is not the solution to our $2 a litre fuel problem.

It’s possible the Arckaringa Basin under Coober Peedy has more oil than Saudi Arabia. We should frack the hell out of it and have $0.70 petrol again.

If you want to reduce the cost of living, you need to increase supply for Australia – and the world.

As councils refuse projects in a fret over their local climate policy, such as Macedon Ranges Shire Council in Victoria, which wants farmers to apply for permits to allow them to graze more livestock, is there another section on the sustainability form about the kids at the bottom of the food pile starving to death?

States are streamlining approval of wind farms, but if a farmer wants to build a dam beneath two dry gullies, they need a QC to get it through.

Weakness has never stopped one bully. Only strength deters aggression.

Our strength comes from exporting coal, iron ore and food, entirely at odds with climate policy.

To build the power of this resource base which allows us to defend ourselves, we need to develop critical infrastructure that enhances it.

Conflict is a major cause of starvation. We have it in Europe, where the only people fighting the war against Russia are the Ukrainians.

No other country is sending troops to help.

Note to self, Australia.

We can hope that can never be the case for us, but we must plan for it.

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