Opinion

The Australian Rural & Regional News webinar held on 21 April 2022 is now available for public viewing.

The outlook shows 2022/23 may be the first year since 2012/13 in which the world has to consume less grain than the previous year – due to high prices and low supply, says Rabobank senior commodities analyst Cheryl Kalisch Gordon.   “This is forecast to be a drop of only 0.1%, but that compares to average annual growth of 2.1% over the past decade,” she said.

In an election campaign of hits and misses for farmers and regional Australia, the National Farmers’ Federation has revealed how the major parties stack up against its election priorities, rating them in a Policy Voting Guide.

In order to assist readers of Australian Rural & Regional News to obtain some more policy detail from candidates running for rural and regional seats at the up and coming Federal election, Kookaburra has put together a list of questions on some critical issues which one might expect any candidate standing for Parliament to be able to answer ... 1. If you are an independent candidate, in the event of a hung Parliament, will you support the formation of a Coalition or an ALP minority government?

This timber reserve is located just west of the Boddington townsite , on the eastern fringe of the jarrah forest in Western Australia ... The infertile, lateritic soils that initially spared the MTR from clearing by farmers were its ultimate downfall ... An important question to ask is “How much bauxite mining is enough?”

“It is impossible for this to be achieved by 2024. So, what happens then? Will we have huge volumes of water sitting in dams supposedly for ‘environmental use’ that cannot be released because it won’t fit down the system, but not enough water allocated to growing the food and fibre our nation needs? Under this scenario, regional communities will continue to suffer, and every Australian will be hit by increased cost of living" : Speak Up Chair, Shelley Scoullar.

Geoff Helisma. Election campaigns cost money, lots of money. The major parties, which more often than not form governments in their own right, have a distinct advantage when it comes to funding multi-million-dollar campaigns. But, over recent weeks it’s the ‘teal’ independent candidates who have emerged as a threat to the current government’s re-election. The Independent spoke with teal independent, Hanabeth Luke, who is contesting the Page electorate.

Robert Onfray gives an in depth examination of bauxite mining in Western Australia, its impacts on the jarrah forests, ineffective anti- mining protests and questions the McGowan government's decision to end native forest logging but support bauxite mining.

If we wish to compare current observations with past performance, we need to establish a set of relevant data, or baseline ... Water Corporation’s advertisements claim that “Perth’s rainfall is declining due to Climate change” showing a graph of reduced stream-flows into the reservoirs as convincing proof that “Climate change is real”. Such claims deserve scrutiny.

A world where down is up and debt is just a state of mind.

As someone who has run as an independent candidate, Kookaburra can assure readers that the group of candidates standing for election under the banner of Climate 200 resemble true independent candidates as much as a dog resembles a cat. When I ran as an independent, there was no uncle Simon Holmes a Court freely handing out thousands, he now talks millions, for my campaign. Apparently, with no questions asked and no obligations felt. Seriously?

What a stuff up! The Solomon Islands entering a security agreement with the Chinese Government has all the ring of the fiasco of the signing of the Darwin Port agreement with a Chinese company with very close ties to the Chinese Government. The pattern for both agreements from an Australia point of view is remarkable similar, probably best called the ‘do nothing syndrome’.

One of Professor Zylstra’s core beliefs is that withholding fire from south-west Australian eucalypt forests for at least four decades will make those forests less flammable, even in a warming climate. This idea must bring joy to those who have long claimed that frequent, deliberate (prescribed) burning is ‘harmful to biodiversity’.

Dave Donald. While anti-fishing groups have long been opposed to recreational fishing, to claim they have colluded in a major way to “slash Spanish mackerel quotas” is a fabrication. Seeking to lay the blame for the depletion of Spanish mackerel stocks solely on Labor is another furphy as exceptionally poor fisheries management under BOTH major parties essentially created the current situation.

"Australia sells energy and food to the world, so the tragedy in Ukraine means that our miners and farmers have seen the spoils of war."

A Charles Sturt University agribusiness expert suggests Australia can anticipate an increase in wheat exports to countries affected by the Ukraine-Russia conflict and should target those importing nations’ requirements.

Katter's Australian Party Leader Robbie Katter has backed a Cairns game fishing leader’s condemnation of the state government for siding with anti-fishing groups to slash Spanish mackerel quotas ... Cairns Professional Game Fishing Association spokesman Dan McCarthy said the survey on the management measures for the east coast Spanish mackerel fishery released by DAF was skewed towards severe restrictions and used a very different stock assessment model and method to any ever used before.

Countless reports, ‘engagement’, reviews and the rapid erosion of the river have highlighted all these failings, yet a potential prime minister appears oblivious to the geographical diversity of issues, constraints and environments across the basin. With city centric politics appearing more interested in getting elected, what hope does the health of our basin have?

The community-based Speak Up Campaign has joined the growing list of organisations expressing concern at last week’s Labor Party announcement around implementation of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. In particular is the issue of water buybacks, which Labor’s Shadow Water Minister Terri Butler conceded, “If we have to” was “an option that will have to be pursued.”

"There are real opportunities to deliver environmental outcomes to the river system without reducing production. I would call on both sides to put aside the political point scoring around who's tougher on water, and instead build upon the opportunities in the basin plan that have been hard fought but are still yet incomplete": Richard Bootle, NSW Farmers Water Taskforce Chair.

Anthony Albanese and the Labor Party have affirmed their decision to remove another 450 gigalitres of water, in addition to the 2750 gigalitres already removed via the Basin Plan, from productive use in NSW and Victoria. Most, if not all, of this water will be sourced from The Riverina and northern Victoria.

The Victorian Farmers Federation (VFF) has warned that jobs across regional Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia will be lost if Anthony Albanese’s policy for water recovery is implemented under the Murray Darling Basin Plan. VFF President Emma Germano said Federal Labor’s five-point policy showed a total misunderstanding of the Basin Plan and a total disregard for jobs in regional communities.