E&OE

Save the Brumbies Rally, Kiandra

Angus Taylor:

Thank you Lisa, thank you everybody for being here. It's a tough day to be here wet and cold, but good on you. This is important, it matters and it's brilliant to see so many of you here sticking it out in this cold weather. It is quite fitting this event is at Kiandra. This is right in the middle of our beautiful high country where people have lived and worked and ridden and travelled for generations. The generations, and you see incredible history all around you, right here.

So let me start by keeping things simple. I am against this cull. I am for the brumbies and I am for the local community being in control of these mountains again. Now I grew up not far from here, there are six generations who have been farming in this region. And I was privileged at a very young age to come up here riding regularly with my family and friends. And through the course of that I got to know this country, this incredible country and the horses that live in it and time and time again we would we would run across those horses through this beautiful and magnificent country and I got learn how to get across the frost plains in a wet year I can tell you that could be tough at times you can get your horses bogged I like to find my way across the rivers and creeks, to find the right ridges up the mountains, to find the brumbies when they were hiding. And I learnt what an incredible history there is in heritage and tradition there is in this beautiful, beautiful country. My family had snow leases up here, and we ran cattle up here all the way through to the droughts, the drought of the early 1980s. I got to learn at the hands of some incredible people who had been living and working up here for a long, long time. People like Snow Miners from Adaminaby. People like Peter Cochrane who is here today. People like Tom Stacey over at Tumut. And these people understood these mountains. They understood the frontiers. They understood their tradition and their heritage. And I knew. They knew that getting the balance right between the horses and the land was achievable, but they knew how to do it. Now, my family had a front row seat in how that changed over many, many decades. We lost our snow leases many, many years ago. We lost the ability to bring cattle up here many, many years ago, progressively during the 1980s when I was working up here as Peter said, taking out trial rides, giving people the opportunity to see what this country meant and why it mattered. We were progressively pushed out. Of the country particularly in that direction, particularly in that direction. Year by year by year, the national parks decided they didn't want people here. They didn't want horses here. They wanted to get rid of us.

And then in the 1980s, they took control of the brumbies away from the locals. 1982, they took it away from control of the locals and they said they knew how to do it. They didn't think there was any knowledge or experience on the back of a horse. They thought the only knowledge or experience that mattered was in an office cow or in a bureaucracy.

They were absolutely wrong. I saw this continue to happen. And it all came to a head for me when I was out at Pretty Plain, in that direction, beautiful part of the mountains. In January of 2003, the dry storms rolled through. Dry storms rolled, some of the locals might remember this. And fire started. And the National Parks said, we're not going to put them out. Because we believe in wilderness now. They've got this ideology from the West Coast to the United States. And they said, humans shouldn't have anything to do with it anymore. We're going to let it go. And we saw the most devastating fire we've ever seen come through this country. The pub there was burned down. Right there. 19 huts went. Traditions. The culture of the place, the history of the place went up in flames from a national park that simply didn't understand. Didn't understand the history and heritage of these great mountains. And now they want to get rid of all the brumbies. We know that. We know, they want the horses back. Now it's on us, it's all on all of us. Because we're the ones left fighting for this. I want to see the locals back in control. I want to see the brumbies protected and most of all I want to see the way of life that generation after generation have enjoyed in these beautiful mountains protected the locals know how to do it they've done it for a long, long time no bureaucrat will understand more than the history and the experience of the people who have vanished this incredible country over so many generations, and the only way we're going to get that back is to fight for it. So thank you so much for being here today, well done, let's take a break.

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