I have a plan to stop farmers sponging off the state. Many farmers in Australia farm extremely marginal land that is regularly very badly affected by drought. Australia is a place that has droughts. Every 7-10 years.
Successive governments have dipped into the public coffers every time a drought comes around for these farmers. Now if I set up a corner shop on a backstreet nobody ever visited, would I be entitled to funds from the government when the inevitable happens and I go broke? Course not. Yet farmers, who decided to farm marginal land in a drought-prone country, get bailed out every time.
So how do we solve this? How about this: the government buys back the land, at a reasonable price given how marginal it is. We then let it go back to its pre-Whitey state, which for different areas would mean different things. Fire would probably be needed.
How do we fund this? Well, why not calculate how much CO2 this cleared land will soak up as it goes back to its natural state? Oh that's right, we would need to have a carbon market and sign Kyoto for that to be worth anything now, wouldn't we.
Back to the drawing board then.