Embattled farmers from Charters Towers resisting the compulsory government acquisition of their land for a vast new training base for visiting Singaporean troops say Defence chiefs are deliberately keeping them in the dark.
Twenty cattle families also yesterday condemned Agriculture Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce for “turning his back” on honest farmers.
The 200,000 hectares of rich farmland west of Townsville set for reclamation would be used by the Singapore Army to train 14,000 troops for 18 weeks of the year, after the Singapore government paid $2.5 billion for the 25-year training deal.
Singaporean Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen said in May, when the security agreement was signed, that his country would build its own base facilities on the land at Townsville and Shoalwater Bay.
Dr Ng said the vast area — 10 times the size of Singapore — would allow long-range artillery and Apache attack helicopters to fire live rounds of high-powered ammunition undisturbed.
Singapore also plans to build a “mock city” with multistorey buildings on the fertile cattle-fattening country so its soldiers can “hone their urban warfare skills”.
Grazier Glenn “Butch” Spurdle, whose family has four stations facing possible seizure by the Defence Department, said he was disgusted at the way farmers were being treated.
Mr Spurdle, whose grandfather and father were cattlemen, said farmers did not know what “the bloody hell” was going on as the Defence Department would not reveal the exact boundaries of the area it planned to acquire.
He was also angry that landholders were being portrayed by some politicians and army officials as making a big fuss about losing their homes and farms as a way of talking up their compensation claims.
“It’s not about the money,” Mr Spurdle said. “This is just beautiful country where three rivers meet the Burdekin. We would unfairly and wrongly be losing three places we’ve waited decades to own because they so rarely change hands.
“It shouldn’t be this country (that’s acquired). We’re all fighting for it because it’s just such good cattle-fattening land. There’s three much less valuable properties one hour up the bitumen at Greenvale where all the owners are happy to sell, which would give the same land training area at much less cost.”
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Our Government selling off other ppls farms to pay off it's debt.
