Last Friday I attended and addressed the National Drought Summit. Sadly, and as expected, it was not much more than a talk fest. There is nothing we could have discussed or learned that we didn’t already know after the hundreds of conversation among the same people who were in attendance.
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Those who were hoping for something better would have had their hopes dashed when, before the summit even began, the Prime Minister had made an announcement of a drought future fund. Unfortunately this announcement was simply designed to be a distraction and amounted to no more than a promise to start spending money in two year’s time, if the current government is re-elected
This is pretty extraordinary given we are now in our seventh year of drought and the government is now in its sixth year of office. One good thing that came from the post Drought Summit announcement was a belated focus on building long term farm resilience. There is only so much a government can do once farmers find themselves in drought.
The best drought policy comes not when we are in the middle of a drought, but rather when we are in better times and when we can focus on building that resilience. Drought can no longer be considered a natural disaster; rather we have to accept that with a changing climate drought will be regular, more protracted and hotter.
The starting point of the development of a sound drought policy is an acceptance the climate is growing more challenging and we need to take action both on the carbon mitigation front and on-farm adaptation.
That means after 10 years of argument, we need to place a market price on carbon. We also need to accelerate our adoption of renewable technologies and we need to help farmers embrace and adopt world’s best natural management tools.
I have been serving in the agriculture portfolio since 2013. Five years ago only a minority of farmers and farm leadership groups accepted the need to act on climate change and to improve on-farm methods.
But there can be no doubt that in 2018 the key farm leadership groups and the majority of farmers now accept that dealing with climate change and acting to better protect our natural resource base is critical to the future of the sector. The group standing in the way of this transition is a government unprepared to act on any of those issues.
Hopefully a slightly different tone in the Prime Minister’s words following the Summit is an indication that may change. We will keep our fingers crossed.
Relay For Life
I congratulate the many passionate volunteers involved in organising the 2018 Cessnock Relay for Life. I was honoured to be involved in the officially opening of this vibrant community event and to have my team participate in the relay throughout the day.
It was wonderful to see the community recognising and celebrating local cancer survivors, patients and their carers, honouring and remembering loved ones lost to cancer and raising money to help save more lives.
A wild storm swept through Baddeley Park in the evening bringing a premature end to the event, but thankfully every one made it home safely and an impressive $77,000 was raised for the Cancer Council.
