There is a great deal of talk about life after the pandemic and the challenges of the economic recovery facing our nation and indeed the entire world. In the midst of this conversation I continue to hear about the important role agriculture will have to play in Australia’s economic recovery.
I’d like to offer a very rural perspective about an ongoing national issue – drought.
The drought is not yet over for many parts of the country and I am concerned that those of us still suffering through it will struggle to help our local community get better let alone lead national recovery.
My next significant income is not expected until late October and in the meantime the relentless pressure of trying to run an agricultural business with the uncertainty of ongoing drought remains all-consuming.
While I have been spared in the short term, some agricultural sectors and communities are already feeling a compounding impact from Covid-19 on top of the drought.
Even for those areas that have received useful rain, the reality is that it takes years to recover financially, let alone environmentally from drought.
If the agricultural sector is to lead the nation’s economic recovery then we need to secure ongoing economic stimulus and support for those areas still suffering from the impacts of drought (and flood and fire).
In the face of the ongoing drought pressure, the speed and scale of the government response to Covid-19 is staggering, and the inconsistency I see in the response to drought that I am still living is hard to reconcile.
I fully support the efforts to contain both the virus and its impacts. I have a great deal of empathy for the people and businesses suffering financially through the pandemic. I understand it because it is almost identical to the financial suffering that rural and regional communities suffer in the face of drought. It’s distressing to know that it is out of our control and to not know how long it will last or whether we can financially survive long enough to see it out and still be able to recover.
Covid-19 is a sudden upheaval and drought is a slower disruption, but the net impact of loss of income to the entire sector is just as devastating. Agricultural businesses have already suffered income loss for years. These drought losses have flowed through communities resulting in business closures and population declines – not just on farms.
Recently on ABC’s 7.30 program, the agriculture minister David Littleproud dismissed an assertion that the bush might be missing out compared with the coronavirus stimulus. He claimed that the government had provided $8.5bn in drought support to just under 90,000 people and $320bn as coronavirus support to 25 million people, thereby suggesting the bush was getting a much better deal. According to Littleproud, “drought communities have had a double lick, and we unashamedly don’t apologise for that.”
It’s true that the number of farm businesses continues to decline and less than 90,000 farm businesses remain in Australia. But they are supported by many more enterprises and indeed entire communities. The agricultural sector supports roughly 1.6 million jobs and contributes around $155bn to the national economy, depending on how you measure it.
The $8.5bn is little more than a political promise used to overstate what is really being done.
The impact of drought is not limited to farmers any more than the impact of Covid-19 is limited to the people who actually get sick. Littleproud’s comments demonstrate either a profound disregard for, or misunderstanding of the true nature of drought and how it really affects the sector he is supposed to represent.
In truth many people and businesses who deserve drought support were deemed ineligible and workers who lost their jobs, on and off farms, were not supported beyond the normal safety net.
Against the speed and scale of the coronavirus response, drought support to rural communities now looks pretty pathetic. Among other things the big ticket items of drought support include: welfare to farm households through a process that seems designed to deter applicants; low interest loans to encourage more debt; and – my favourite – $5bn allocated to future drought mitigation.
I am not suggesting that the people receiving the coronavirus stimulus are undeserving of support. I am merely incensed that people who lost their livelihoods to drought seem, in the governments’ eyes, somehow less deserving than people suffering the same imposition due to Covid-19. In comparison with the coronavirus stimulus the drought response is more than disappointing.
Governments are failing rural and regional communities when our viability is arguably strategically more important to the prosperity of the entire nation than ever before.
The Covid-19 stimulus measures demonstrate what is possible when governments are genuinely motivated to address a problem. It is essential that the same capacity and commitment is deployed in response to drought throughout and past the timeframe and impacts of the current pandemic.
• Pete Mailler is a grain and cattle farmer from northern New South Wales
