Recall the 2018 announcement of a $5b Drought Fund that was the Morrison Government’s answer to the last big drought. 

The belated response was that the interest generated from the fund would spin off $100m a year to support eight research hubs across the nation to help develop drought resilience. 

This was the Federal Government’s attempt to once and for all wean farmers off the handout mentality when the decile numbers got down to one, and the fodder ran out.

Mind you, Western Australian farmers have long been off the drip as our state government turned off the tap back in the 1990s, telling us there was now no such thing as a drought, just high rainfall years and low rainfall years, and it was not their problem if the rains did not come.

It’s amazing how people stop hanging around the tap when it is disconnected.

Something that the Federal Government fails to understand when it panders to the endless number of groups demanding government support, be it for drought or anything else.

Disconnect the tap, and the mob moves on. Offer to fill the trough, and you will never have enough feed and water to keep them all fat and happy.

Farmers can’t complain about government troughs of cash for everything from renewables, the arts, elite sport, or indigenous issues, or anything else for that matter, if they themselves keep demanding to be propped up for natural cycles in the weather. 

Note to NFF: stop being rent seeker champions for all farmers as it weakens our global trade credibility when calling out other nations for subsidising their farmers, along with our calls to the government to reduce expenditure and, with it, our taxes.

But back to my story.

With $100m on the table each and every year for drought projects, the stampede to pile into the trough by the universities was something only institutions skilled in rent-seeking could accomplish.

Not surprisingly, too much money does not necessarily lead to great outcomes unless you think that a grant of $45k to develop the concept of ‘farm sitting,’ think ‘house sitting,’ is value for money. 

Imagine expecting unpaid people to keep 3000 sheep alive in Goondiwindi. It’s not quite the same as house sitting three cats in Glebe. Or there is the oyster – Drought Resilient Oyster Farming – project that got $45k; as to why, the logic escapes me. 

While most of the projects announced to date will come and go and not make the slightest difference to how the average farmer copes with the next drought, there were one or two good projects – like the Water Smart Dams – Making Dams Work Again project – which are game changers for those looking for the latest dam engineering to maximize their on-farm water resources.

But, on the whole, most of the $200m committed to date won’t move the dial on drought preparation one bit.

What would focus the minds of farmers to be more drought resilient is if the State and Federal governments come out together and simply say to all Australia’s farmers that ‘you are on your own, we are no longer handing out grants when the rains fail.’ 

But that’s unlikely to happen. Governments struggle to tell people to stand on their own feet, preferring to always be there with a hand in their pocket, ready to prop them up when it all gets too hard.

If they are going to continue with the Drought Fund, then they should focus on funding some big game-changing projects, not the rats and mice ones that won’t move the dial.

Now the Federal Minister for Agriculture has gone part way down this route by swiping $38m from the Drought Fund to fund six long-term, six-year trials and real science-based research projects with peer-reviewed papers at the end.

They were announced last month, and all the projects look solid, but as usual, the universities were the major beneficiaries, with Charles Stuart Uni (NSW) $6m, CRC for High Performance Soils (University of Newcastle) $3.93m, NQ Dry Topics (Qld) $4.3m, Flinders University (SA) $8m and Deakin University (Vic) $8m. 

The only problem is Western Australia missed out, but then maybe our state is paying the penalty for being all grown up when it comes to drought management.  You don’t need it because you have learned to manage the weather risks of farming.

I bet the 6000 farmers in WA would take a cheque of $1000 each = $6m as their share of the next round of projects.  In fact, I bet Australia’s 100,000 farmers would take $1000 each a year = $100m rather than fund any drought projects at all.

Maybe that’s the best way to get the industry off the teat of government, $1000 a year over 10 years to never come back to government when the rains stop coming.

I wonder if the same formula could be applied to all the other rent-seekers out there who are forever demanding government fix their problems?  Do the maths, 100,000 indigenous in regional and remote Australia where the gap is the largest divide $30 billion ($300,000), a simple cash rebate of, say, $100,000 a year for 10 years to move to where the jobs, houses, and functional communities are and there will be no need for a Voice.

Time for Australia to turn off the drip for all rent seekers and the elites that claim to represent them, and we all go back to self-funding and sorting our own priorities with our own money, not giving it to the government and then demanding they help us.