Hopes that the Government, shocked by the drought into an acceptance of climate science, might now turn to rational and evidence based policy appear to have been dashed.
Another Nationals MP has hit out at suggestions farming is unviable in some parts of Australia.
Australian Institute head Clive Hamilton today said yesterday’s $350 million drought relief package was bad public policy and would only perpetuate bad farm management.
John Cobb describes the comments as “agrarian genocide”.
To play devil’s advocate…
Forced population transfers can constitute genocide. Clive Hamilton admits that his policy is designed to force farmers to move from their (unviable) land. Thus, Clive Hamilton supports genocide by population transfer. Clive Hamilton is a reverse-Pol Pot.
A Top Lop?
Making a statement like that, playing devils advocate or not, merely trivialises the suffering of hundreds of thousands of Cambodians. Maybe you think it’s funny, well it’s not even remotely amusing.
People move all the time to follow jobs or educational opportunities, and in a sense these may be “forced”. Does this constitute “genocide”? I don’t think so.
Dude
the post is headed ‘hyperbole contest’
hope you’re feeling better, anyway.
Oh, fer crying out loud. This is a post entitled “National hyperbole contest”.
I’ve always been a huge fan of Clive Hamilton’s but I also grew up on a (sustainable) sheep-wheat-and-barley farm, and the general go of him yesterday (tone, expression etc rather than what he actually said, which I sadly concur may be right) was that of the usual smug urbanite who does not have the first or the foggiest clue about what rural life, political or otherwise, is actually like, and speaks about it in idiot Brunswick Street cliches. I was dreadfully disappointed in him.
This is the great man whose mock free-market solution to the exploded koala population on Kangaroo Island was to organise high-end tourism shooting parties and charge $10,000 a shot (as it were) — a strategy he predicted would be so successful that they would end up having to organise a koala breeding program on KI to keep up the demand. And now I can’t like him any more. Sob.
Poor Clive, perhaps he’s still running on high waiting for the writ from David Jones over earlier comments from the Australia Institute on child fashion explicitness. But the guy has a point, the same way that earlier South Australian colonials were told not to farm marginal land (Gawler line). A pity the Nationals don’t face that reality today. The collapse of Bourke in western NSW might wake the State Government to reassess Western Division leases. Give lease holders the option of an orderly withdrawal (modest lease buy-outs) or staying on as NPWS caretakers.
OK, I’ve taken my pills and feel a lot better now.
“the usual smug urbanite who does not have the first or the foggiest clue about what rural life, political or otherwise, is actually like”
This echoes Vaile yesterday suggesting Hamilton go and “talk to struggling rural families who are doing it tough through no fault of their own” (slight paraphrasing), and is just as specious. The idea that just because you farm you have an exalted status or special knowledge or are the only one to truly suffer the slings and arrows and that anyone east of the Range hasn’t a clue is bullshit. Farming can be tough, but so what?
Getting back to real issues, there are various public policy responses to the drought and/or climate change:
We can go laissez-faire and ignore the bleatings of the Nationals and let the welfare state pick up the pieces while waiting for the reduction in farmers to push up prices for primary produce enough (and push down land prices enough) that the farmers that are left can make a decent living.
We can make a cost/benefit judgement and decide that the social/economic impact of transferring rural populations to bigger towns and cities, the addition to dole queues, higher food prices, the loss of export industries, whatever, are not worth it and that farmers should be subsidised to stay where they are (though if climate change alters rainfall patterns enough, that can only last so long).
We can start a long-term managed shift away from marginal lands through subsidies and job training, maybe encouraging industrial development like sustainable power stations to replace farms.
The current rationale for exceptional circumstances aid seems to be that the drought is akin to an earthquake or other natural disaster that would normally attract immediate unconditional help for stricken populations. While it has a lot of similarities, this drought is not quite the same. Firstly, in Australia drought years may not be predictable, but the fact that drought will come at some point is definite. Secondly, changed/reduced rainfall looks like becoming more and more of a problem as climate change hits its stride – it’s not like a flood where in a few weeks or months everything is back to normal. There will most likely be an enormous shifting of areas that can be farmed at all, right across the continent, and probably a reduction in the total arable acreage. Hand-outs are just not going to be enough in the long term.
*Talking out of my bob-katter-like hat*
Hypothetically, if land isn’t able to be used for some activity on an ongoing basis, why would people think that they should be able to use it for that activity?
Join the long list of blacksmiths, deli owners and Ansett workers, for which nowadays the social safety net should be the same Centrelink benefits for all, before they move on as mechanics, supermarket workers and Virgin and Jetstar employees. Mining anyone?
Do you realise that when phone operators were used to plug your call in at the exchange, that if that technology were in use today, we’d need more than our population to plug in all the calls? The operators have all gone and we’re still all working and enjoying better communications to boot. Ahh free markets, aint they grand?
Oh, bollocks. What, so if I’m not against ‘em I must be with ‘em? Where have I heard that before?
Quite right. Just like being a doctor or a lawyer doesn’t mean you know any more about medicine or the the law.
Your response, fatfingers, is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about.
No advocate is required, Rob.
Fair is fair: Centrelink already penalises people who move from areas of high employment to lower employment, whatever their circumstances. Why not cockies as well? They’re just small business folk with dirt.
Except winemakers. The gummint can plough those vines over my cold, dead body.
With natural disasters the govt should only pick up the social infrastructure losses, rather than any private costs, assuming the immediate needs for individual safety are met. Private insurance is available and accessible for private losses and if you choose not to insure, then tough tits, you lose buster.
Elegant solution:
1. Turn uneconomic farmers into mulch and spread the product on the Richard Cobb Memorial Aussie Cockie Model Farm Theme Park and Devotional Centre.
2. Retrain Clive Hamilton as a docent at said Cultural Icon.
Win/Win.
PC,
Stop embarrassing yourself. You’re the one who says that Clive Hamilton could be right, then you go on about his ‘tone’ and ‘expression’ and imply he’s a ‘usual smug urbanite’ who doesn’t actually know what he’s talking about. You were ‘disapointed in him’ because he said something you probably agree with, but just not in a “I’m from the country, so I know farms” kind of way! You really are all over the shop.
To top it all off, you chuck in the sarcastic strawman about doctors/lawyers and medicine/law, which is not what fatfingers was saying at all. I don’t have to be a farmer to know that pumping taxpayers money into highly marginal land (which will only become more marginal) is idiocy. Tell me: do you think that non-doctors can intelligently discuss health policy?
BBB
The Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists has proposed paying farmers for ecological services and reducing or getting rid of drought aid. I’d support that.
“This is the great man whose mock free-market solution to the exploded koala population on Kangaroo Island was to organise high-end tourism shooting parties and charge $10,000 a shot (as it were)”
This sounds like sensible policy to me. If some silly Yank is willing to pay big money to shoot excess koalas then thats a win-win in my little green book.
Yes, he is right. No, I don’t like his tone. I didn’t say I disagreed with him, I said I didn’t like his (apparent) attitude. Read what’s there. I’m sorry if you find it impossible to imagine a position more nuanced than either For or Against, but fortunately that is not my problem.
Bored now.
I am P. Cat’s friend but I don’t think that influenced how I understood her comment.
She is not having the smack at Hamilton that some of you have assumed.
She’s saying quite clearly that while his message is reasonable and worth considering, his manner struck her as a tactical liability because it might get people’s backs up and prevent them or distract them from hearing what he actually has to contribute to the debate.
Back on topic: The government has a role to play in supporting farmers while they move to more sustainable modes of farming. What constitutes ‘marginal’ land under traditional methods of farming may not be so marginal under precision farming, using both high and low tech water and soil saving technology.
Shipping people off the land before trying new methods doesn’t sound so great. Also, someone will need to stay in place to manage the severely degraded land that is left behind. Farmers as park rangers doesn’t sound like such a bad idea.
“Agrarian genocide” is the most extreme hyperbole you could think of, but I can do better …
PS Great call re: ‘Top lop’, Laura!
I agree with the idea that farmers on unviable farms should receive some assistance to give up the ghost, but these should be conditional. There should be some sort of plan on said farmers’ part, and it shouldn’t have to come from government.
It would be much better in public policy terms to have the farmers think about what they might want to do: get retrained, join the armed forces, buy a viable business somewhere, whatever. An amount of money to help people from unsustainable farming to something else would be money better spent than just “here’s a cheque, good luck!”. In fact, any public policy outcome would be better than that (other than Cambodian-style extermination – call me naive but I don’t think that’s a goer even in today’s Australia).
I’m not volunteering to frame the criteria for handing out this money but it’s interestng to note the complete absence of the sort of scrutiny that accompanies Aboriginal programs. Those farmers might go and spend all their handout on grog. Having them hang around country towns with nothing to do, they’ll just cause trouble.
I actually grew up in ‘rural’ Queensland (though not on a farm) and I am sick of the whole ‘urban elitist tone’ that is thrown as soon as anyone is less than reverent when talking about farmers. The fact is, those who are being helped the most by the government are those that were least prepared – there are quite a few farmers who planned for drought/disaster and didn’t get benefits because, shock horror, they didn’t need them. So much of this seems to be rewarding those who least deserve it
In the words of David Bassanese from the Weekend Fin:
” Australia no longer rides on the sheep’s back. The rural sector now accounts for less than 3% of the national economy, around 12% of total exports, and 3.5% of total employment.” So Vaile et. al. can bleat on about how it is only fair of the government to prop up agriculture if it props up things like manufacturing all they want, as long as they are asking for proportionally based assistance, not some ‘we are the nation’s psyche, we deserve it’ type cant.
And anyway – isn’t all this ‘national psyche’ stuff what Australian politicians used to ridicule the French about not that long ago?
Megami, WRT the national psyche rubbish and its similarity to European justifications for their subsidies, that point was made in the thread “Link Underdone” (link not working – why do I always have trouble posting links to URL’s with funny characters in them??).
As to Clive Hamilton’s rhetorical style, one of the more useful techniques of public debate is to have some of your supporters abrasively put purist and unpalatable versions of their positions. That creates space for “moderates” to put less extreme versions of the position. Hamilton is playing the out-there extremeist role, so others can come in and say, “while clearly, our farmers should be helped in the short term through these extreme weather conditions, thought has to be given as to whether all our current agricultural practices are sustainable in the light of our changing climate, and if they are not how best we can manage the transition to economically and environmentally sustainable ones”.
Clive is playing bad cop, in other words.
ms lee, that does seem a rather more sensible solution than “kick ‘em of the land” or pay farmers to continue using unproductive and unsustainable techniques. I’m interested in what you mean by precision farming, using both high and low tech water and soil saving technology though. Could you elaborate?
“Shipping people off the land before trying new methods doesn’t sound so great. Also, someone will need to stay in place to manage the severely degraded land that is left behind. Farmers as park rangers doesn’t sound like such a bad idea.”
Hang about a bit. The land will inevitably be used better by a smaller no of farmers left in the industry using less intensive farming.(Think about stocking rates for dairy farms vs Outback cattle stations now) To do that the price of land must reflect its long term sustainable return, including drought years. It can never do that while we continually subsidise farmers to stay on what is clearly unsustainable long term farms now. Let the market and individual investors make those perpetually adjusting decisions rather than PSs or science boffins in Canberra. If you are viable long term, any bank will lend on your assets to stay afloat over general droughts or temporary market downturns. If not, you’re undercapitalised or a dodgy risk. That rule applies to any capital intensive biz. Stuff the special interest pleading to privatise the gains and socialise the losses.
Are any of you seriously suggesting the govt should have propped up Ansett instead of letting nature, Virgin and Jetstar take its place? (As for the bust Ansett workers getting a subsidy above and beyond Centrelink benefits from the travelling public, via Johnny, that was bloody scandalous) How do you think bloody commie countries get themselves into so much bother with the great big brother hanky all the time eh?
Another $350 million for farmers yesterday in drought assistance. Isn’t this just shoring up the rural rump of the conservative voting block in good time for next year’s election.
Still no money to help new arrivals in Australia prepare for the “values” testing to come, or the learn the langwidge neither. Then again they won’t be ble to vote for at least four more years.
Only $350 million in drough relief! “Tuppence!” Mark Vaile isn’t working hard enough, bring back *Black Jack* McEwen, the farmer’s friend.
State-capitlism anyone?
State capitalism? Hey, that’s … what was the other name for it? … don’t tell me, it’ll come to me …
Oh yeah.
That’s SOCIALISM.
No it’s a joke Tim. McEwen was a bumptious old fart who many would describe as an “”agrarian socialist”".
To anyone interested in the socialism v state capitalism stream go to the Marx v Stalin thread.
Fair enough then. It can be so hard to tell nowadays …
Spam alert above!
Thanks Ms K – I’ve deleted the vile product.