The truth is whenever there is a clash of interests between miners and farmers the Nationals roll the farmers every time.

The climate is an integral part of farming, yet the Nationals are the party still denying climate change, actively advocating to sabotage efforts to limit global warming, dissuading farmers from working with the renewable transition in a way that benefit farmers. Instead, the Nationals rely on portraying support for farmers by supporting unsustainable agrarian ventures that are anathemas to sustainable farming practice – supporting old growth foresting, demanding drought support for farmers that failed to take even minimal efforts to ‘drought-proof’ their farms (wasting resources that allows bad farming practices to outcompete farmers employing good practices), favouring cotton farming by allowing them to deprive water resources to farmers downstream, supporting cruel practices.

The natural fit with farmers is the Greens, but farmers have been brainwashed into an irrational hatred towards them instead.

Yep, if you don’t want Peter Dutton running the show, as he’s doing now, then vote Greens and Independents.

Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones will announce later that life insurers will be prevented from using the results of predictive genetic testing in their underwriting assessments.

Almost 30 years ago Robert J Sawyer (a Canadian SF writer) addressed just this issue in (I’m reasonably sure) his book Frameshift. The science part of that book’s fiction was extrapolating the then-new human genome mapping into the very near future. In other words, even before the turn of the century it was an absolutely predictable thing that really could do with being addressed.

It’s good to see, 27 years later, that someone has picked up the ball and will no doubt introduce some of the ALP’s trademark luke-warm business-friendly legislation that pretends to address the issue.