YOUR SAY: Hope Voice debate doesn't turn into 'a farmer-bashing exercise'

My forebears of both the Odewahn and Munro families arrived in what is now Australia in the 1850s and have been involved in agriculture ever since.

My maternal grandfather Colin Munro, a person I admired greatly and had a close relationship with, partly due to our mutual passion for agriculture. Colin "Pop", who was born on a farm near Rochester in Victoria in March 1886 and died in Albury in December 1985 and spent his lifetime devoted to farming, never once mentioned any conflict or confrontation with any Indigenous people by himself or his father and grandfather.

The left wing extremists and self appointed inner city "elites" are suggesting massive frontier wars, something I think is being grossly exaggerated; while there were some very unsavoury incidents I believe they were isolated and few.

Prime Minister Albanese has not made the slightest effort to visit towns in NSW and Victoria that have high Indigenous populations and are also big centres of agricultural production. You would think visiting and listening to the concerns of these communities would be his top "priority".

If the people who make up the Voice are primarily inner city extremists and activists, many of whom have nothing but contempt for Australian farmers both past and present, the prospect of future conflict will be greatly enhanced not as hoped mitigated.

Mr Albanese has to give an ironclad guarantee that current land tenure is to be totally respected by all parties and that this doesn't turn into a farmer-bashing exercise that will massively widen the current very large country/city divide.

IN THE NEWS:

Lynda Shortis' logic reckons we should look at overseas examples from New Zealand and Canada as a case for the Voice "yes" campaign has lost the overriding principle for the "no" campaign.

That principle is "Why should one section of society representing only 4 per cent of its population have an over-representative say in the rest of everyone else's lives just because they were here first?". Also, if we were so "pro overseas" experiences, why have we not adopted the use of nuclear power generation which is occurring in so many countries?

This current government's policies of closing down our reliable baseload power before bringing on ample renewables is irresponsible at least and will kill our country economically. I am sure the world will most certainly see in the next few decades that this climate change policy is one that should not be adopted; so much for looking at overseas examples of how to fix this undemocratic "yes" Voice campaign.

MORE COMMENT

To read more stories, download The Border Mail news app in the Apple Store or Google Play.

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content: