Peter Spencer is on the 26th day of his hunger strike and when I climbed the Tower of Hope at Saarahnlee in southern NSW where he has been perched I saw how unwell he is. While Mr Rudd is swanning about on the world stage at Copenhagen, Mr Spencer is expressing the pain on the ground that is felt when people are defrauded of an asset and have to pay for the decisions of governments.
My question to Mr Rudd and Ms Wong is how much will the bill be after they sign Australia up to help despotic leaders in Africa and Central America to “pay” for action on climate change. We have 114 people in Copenhagen but we don’t seem to have any idea how big the bill will be when and if Mr Rudd signs us up to a deal.
People resent it when governments take their asset off them and they resent it when they have to pay for things that they have no control over. A hunger strike is an extreme reaction but that is what can happen when people feel they are not heard. How does a farmer compete with Robert Mugabe and Hugo Chavez? We all want a cleaner, greener and more efficient world but we don’t want to sell our nation down the toilet to get it.
Mr Spencer is not well and I plead with Mr Rudd to open up a line of communication with him. There he is day after day, 60 kilometres from where Mr Rudd works (when he is happens to be in Canberra).
I asked Mr Spencer to come down from the tower as no one wants him to harm himself but he is resolute. I say this as a human to another human: please come down. I say to Mr Rudd: concern yourself with things closer to home.
When Mr Tanner says it is financially irresponsible to talk of compensation for land owners he is acknowledging the worth of the asset that has been stolen in the night from the rightful owners.
Photo: Andrew Taylor/Ethos