A few years ago a farm organisation did some polling on what Australians think of farmers and their food supply. One salient finding was that Australians, as a general rule, are not concerned about our food security.
This should not be surprising, given that we have not faced food shortages since the early settlers more than 200 years ago. Australians take for granted that we have a plentiful supply of fresh and high-quality food available at our shops all the time.
Few realise the sweat, toil and stress that goes into growing this bounty. I know this because of how often governments make decisions that hurt our farmers without any consideration of how that will affect the supply and the price of food in the shops.
Earlier this month I spent a week with my colleagues, including our Opposition water spokeswoman Perin Davey, travelling through the Murray-Darling Basin visiting our nation’s food suppliers.
The Murray-Darling produces 40 per cent of Australia’s food, and over 70 per cent of our oranges, peaches and grapes.
In Shepparton, Mildura, Renmark, Griffith and Moree we spoke to hundreds of farmers about their fears of the latest ignorant thought bubble to be blown out of Canberra. The new Labor Government has decided to start large-scale water buybacks again.
These are not really buybacks, they are buyouts. When the government buys out a farmer – using your money – that reduces the number of farmers and the food we can produce as a nation. For the local town, less food grown means fewer truck drivers and fencing contractors.
Fewer workers in town means less foot traffic in coffee shops and general stores. Towns like Dirranbandi and Collarenebri begin a death spiral from which they never recover.
The last time our farmers were this angry was when Labor was last in power in Canberra. The last time I was in Griffith, farmers were burning Labor’s Murray-Darling plan which would have decimated their town.
Fortunately, the farmers won that battle and Labor backed down. Then when the Liberal-National parties came to power we capped water buybacks restoring confidence and peace to our rural towns.
Now Labor is back in power and they want to remove the water buyback cap. Notionally this is because they want to take water off our farmers and give back to the environment. Labor has produced no science to support this sop to their partners in power the Greens.
And, in any case, there are others ways to give water to the environment through improving the efficiency of water use by lining channels or building more direct channels. These investments are a clear win-win.
However, that approach maintains large scale farming which the greens do not like. Labor’s lazy water buyback approach is more about ideology than hydrology.
Meanwhile rural Australians are upset because they can see another man-made drought on the horizon just in time when the next God-made drought might be arriving.
The rest of us do not get off scot-free. If we produce less food that will push the price of food higher. As the boss of SPC said to us about water buybacks: “The cost of the input to us (food) would be higher and therefore, in order to recover cost and make a modest profit we have to sell at a higher price.”
That’s not welcome news for Australian families already struggling with inflation at the checkout. Since Labor came to power bread prices are up 21 per cent, milk prices are up 18 per cent and eggs are up 17 per cent. Instead of focusing on how this can be reversed, Labor is adopting farming policies that will make a bad situation on food prices worse.
After his Voice referendum was defeated the Prime Minister promised that he would focus on tackling the cost of living crisis. Yet, Mr Albanese can hardly be taken seriously if he persists with a policy which increases the cost of a family’s shopping trolley.
Australia will not run out of food anytime soon but thanks to Labor selling out to the Greens again the price of food is about to get even higher.
