One of the world's first billionaires, J. Paul Getty, once remarked that ''the meek shall inherit the Earth, but not its mineral rights''. I find this incongruous coming from a famous industrialist and philanthropist who was a resident in a country where generally the contrary is the case.
Australia, in contrast, has variant forms of ownership between the land title and the mineral rights. Over the past 100 years, there has been the convenient moralising, prior to excising the property rights from the landowner, often without compensation.
The Petroleum Act of 1915 was the mechanism by which the Queensland Labor government removed the petrol and gas rights from farmers. The reading of this act puts the fallacy to the argument that farmers never owned these rights.
The rights were taken away because of World War I, but last time I checked the war is over.
Read More
Barnaby Joyce
The Canberra Times
No comments:
Post a Comment