Hunger-strike farmer won't budge over land laws

CANBERRA - Perched 10m above the ground on a wind monitoring tower, Australian farmer Peter Spencer today begins the 45th day of a hunger strike to protest against land clearing laws.

Ten years and more than 200 court cases after he began fighting legislation that prevents him from removing trees from Saarahnlee - his property near the New South Wales town of Cooma - he is now refusing to eat or budge until Prime Minister Kevin Rudd agrees to a list of demands.

Key to these is Spencer's contention that by refusing adequate compensation for laws blocking land clearing, Rudd is forcing farmers to pay the bill for Australia's Kyoto climate change commitments.

While courts, federal and state Governments and environmentalists reject the claims and Spencer's aerial hunger strike, his action has become a focus for climate change sceptics and opponents of laws impacting on private property rights.

The protest has also rubbed the Opposition's climate change nerves, still raw from the bruising battle over the Government's proposed emissions trading scheme that dumped Malcolm Turnbull from the leadership and installed Tony Abbott in his place.

This week about 300 supporters of the 58-year-old Spencer assembled outside Parliament House to demand action. Senator Bill Heffernan, a farmer and chairman of the Senate's select committee on agriculture, was jeered when he criticised Spencer and urged supporters to encourage him to end the hunger strike.

But Barnaby Joyce, a Queenslander who sits in the Senate for the conservative junior Coalition partner, the Nationals, was applauded for an attack on climate change agreements whose costs he claimed were met by working families.

The right-wing think-tank the Institute of Public Affairs joined in with its view that environmental laws are undermining property rights across Australia, listing 14 acts, regulations and planning policies "taking away landowners' rights to use their properties".

"The hunger strike of Peter Spencer, who is demanding compensation for the reduction in the value of his farming land by government regulations, highlights this serious issue," the institute's executive director John Roskam said.

"State governments are violating the basic right to property of thousands of landowners across the country [and] private property rights are human rights just as much as freedom of speech and freedom of religion."

For Spencer, land clearing laws have become a crusade.

A decade ago NSW passed its Native Vegetation Act, adding to laws restricting the use of his land, including the clearing of trees which Spencer now ties to climate change policies.

"After 30 years of trying to establish myself and my family on a 20,000 acre [8093ha] property on sustainable principles in the high country where, through my maternal family, I have roots back to 1830, I have struggled against governments at all levels who at every turn tried to handicap my ability to permit my endeavours to have any chance of success," he said.

He argues that Canberra's Kyoto commitments have effectively locked up almost 20 per cent of Australia's farmland, without adequate compensation.

After a long run through lower courts, Spencer rejected a government offer of A$2 million ($2.4 million) for his land and headed for the NSW Supreme Court and, later, the Federal Court.

He lost both cases and on November 30 began his hunger strike.

Spencer's demands, including the establishment of a royal commission, have met with no response.