The great C.W. mailed this in: Cattle guards are horizontal steel rails placed at fence openings, in dug-out places in the roads adjacent to highways (sometimes across highways), to prevent cattle from crossing over that area. For some reason the cattle will not step on the “guards,” probably because they fear getting their feet caught between the rails.
In 2008, Kevin Rudd received and was reading a report that there were over 10,000 cattle guards over main roads in NSW & Queensland. Graziers had protested his proposed changes in grazing policies, so he ordered the Minister to fire half of the cattle guards immediately!!
Before the Minister could respond and presumably try to straighten him out, Minister for Employment Julia Gillard, intervened with a request that before any cattle guards were fired, they be given six months of retraining.
And now she is running the country.
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And now, for Paul Harvey at his very best: A Salute To Farmers. I’ve put this up before, but it is so good, it bears repeating.
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Even more disconnected from reality are those politicians who, attempting to be politically correct, fanatically make aborting humanity the goal of their lives, even while not only are most people pro-life, but the natural law to which these politicians are also beholden demands respect for life. But they run like blind cattle across the yawning abyss of hell, and get their feet caught up, and sink down. Not a pretty sight. Today we also pray for their conversion. Good, decent farmers wouldn’t want their politicians to be condemned, just that they get to know reality sooner than later, for everybody’s benefit.
Accompany me, Father George David Byers, S.S.L., S.T.D., as I begin life as a Catholic Priest-Hermit by choice. Holy Souls Hermitage is dedicated to the sanctification of my fellow priests, bishops, deacons & seminarians going through the purgatory of this life or the next. Prayer and sacrifice go up, of course, for both Benedict XVI and the next Successor of Saint Peter. 
Hi Fr George, I googled this story suspecting it to be a hoax since cattle guards are called cattle grids here in Australia. Sure enough (see http://www.hoax-slayer.com/kevin-rudd-cattle-guard-hoax.shtml). Sorry, even though I am no fan of our Labor politicians, I couldn’t let this go unremarked given that we are, today, celebrating our national day.
Bernadette: I’m sure, then, that there must also be “cattle stop” versions of the story!
I am reminded of more Australian political humor with this: an Austrlian politician remarked to New Zealander politician Sir Robert David Muldoon that there were so very many New Zelanders who showed good intelligence by moving to Australia, to which comment Muldoon agreed, adding that when such New Zealanders left to go to Australia, the I.Q. of both nations went up.
Yikes!