Thread: Which is it to be, fuel or food

Actually very few farmers get "handouts". The restrictions on the drought aid for example mean that only a small percentage of affected farmers qualify for assistance. What you mostly see is farmers working alone in isolation until they have a breakdown, suicide or a serious accident while their wife works in town to feed the kids and keep the bank from taking possession, often driving each way hundreds of kilometres a day.

What you mostly get from the government is ever increasing red tape and morally bankrupt legislation like the NSW native vegetation act which requires a community good (which I can't argue with) to be fully funded by a very small proportion of the state population which is generally less able to afford it than the average urban worker is. And in return get ever decreasing services and increasing fees from both state and federal government.

Another example is the so-called paper roads - I have one of these - the rent on it was increased 1400% (in the middle of the worst drought on record) - for a piece of land that is totally useless to me or anyone else, I have the choice of paying up, with every prospect of it increasing every year, or buying it for thousands of dollars I haven't got (and I have to pay a non refundable application fee to even find out if I can buy it - and I have been advised off the record that I can't), or fence it off for about the same thousands of dollars I haven't got. All this expenditure is merely sucking money from the bush to try and help the state government fund its management disasters.

And then the state government forced a shire amalgamation on us - which resulted in an immediate rate rise of 60%.

Because rural areas have such a small population they have no political clout worth talking about so that all sorts of legislation is passed without a thought as to the implications for rural residents, and then when these complain the city media rubbishes them.

Don't get me started on firearms or e-tags!
John

C'mon guys, that's just a drop in the ocean. The one that gets my goat (subsidized) is the government bailing out the big companies like Mitsubishi - equivalent to $70,000 for a year for every employee of Mitsubishi in Australia, and Coles more recently.

Made me very jolly when they said no to James Hardy on a tax break. The blue asbestos guys deserve all and more, but there's no reason to give it to JH easy.

Cheers
Simon

At $15.99 a kilo they sure as heck won't be turning bananas in to fuel ! We can all eat them !

Originally Posted by JDNSW

Actually very few farmers get "handouts". The restrictions on the drought aid for example mean that only a small percentage of affected farmers qualify for assistance. What you mostly see is farmers working alone in isolation until they have a breakdown, suicide or a serious accident while their wife works in town to feed the kids and keep the bank from taking possession, often driving each way hundreds of kilometres a day.

What you mostly get from the government is ever increasing red tape and morally bankrupt legislation like the NSW native vegetation act which requires a community good (which I can't argue with) to be fully funded by a very small proportion of the state population which is generally less able to afford it than the average urban worker is. And in return get ever decreasing services and increasing fees from both state and federal government.

Another example is the so-called paper roads - I have one of these - the rent on it was increased 1400% (in the middle of the worst drought on record) - for a piece of land that is totally useless to me or anyone else, I have the choice of paying up, with every prospect of it increasing every year, or buying it for thousands of dollars I haven't got (and I have to pay a non refundable application fee to even find out if I can buy it - and I have been advised off the record that I can't), or fence it off for about the same thousands of dollars I haven't got. All this expenditure is merely sucking money from the bush to try and help the state government fund its management disasters.

And then the state government forced a shire amalgamation on us - which resulted in an immediate rate rise of 60%.

Because rural areas have such a small population they have no political clout worth talking about so that all sorts of legislation is passed without a thought as to the implications for rural residents, and then when these complain the city media rubbishes them.

Don't get me started on firearms or e-tags!
John

Yeah,
but my main argument is how is it any different to struggling families trying to survive on wages? It is not. Most families both have to work to survive. At least at the end of the day, farmers usually have a property to sell. And yes only a small percentage get funding, but it is more often than not the well to do cockies that have their hand out. If at the end of the day I do not do my job, my family do not do well, if a business ins not managed properly they go broke. It does annoy me that the government bends over backwards to support multi national companies and not small Aussie owned ones. Mitsubish should have been told to pack up their cars and rack off. Then a total import ban on Mitsubishi's should have been put in place. The world governments should then unite and charge the oil rich countries, china and japan $500 a kilo for meat and other produce, until they want to play the game. Wont happen while we have a lap dog government for the US.
Look I do not want to see farmers of any sort doing bad, but taxpayers should not be responsible for it. Farming prctice in Australia for the last 200 years has been nothing short of rape and pillage. The farms that are doing well always seem to have had some forward thinking (mainly retention of trees to reduce and eliminate salination). Especially in QLD the demolition still goes ahead with the attitude bugger the rest of the country.
John, raising rates like that really sucks and I can see why you could go Postal. But same thing has happened to many elderly people that bought modest houses in now well to do areas and have had their rates increase to impossible levels for them to afford. There is no simple answer.

Your description of farming for the last 200 years as rape and pillage is not only unduly emotional, it is also quite inaccurate. By and large (obviously there are exceptions) farming in this country has been carried out with the best available advice and following this advice as closely as possible within the constraints of capital and logistics. Just because the advice is later found to have been less than ideal is hardly reason to attack farmers. The same arguments can be used against virtually any business - look at polluted factory sites etc, or for that matter the housing developments that many urban residents live in. As a general rule farmers take a much longer term view than most people - after all a lot of them have records going back over several generations in the same place and look forward to more generations doing the same, so they are hardly going to intentionally damage their land or future.
John

John,
I am not attacking farmers but merely stating facts. I do not believe the government should be bailing out any business unless it is totally beyond their control. Yes the government has made it extremely difficult with red tape for a lot of businesses and farmers are not alone here, but when you hear farming representatives grizzling every week on the news or a current affairs about how bad it is, then it's time to get out. I work for a mining company and if we do any environmental damage we will and are held accountable to the point a company may be disolved. If you can stand there and honestly say farmers are not responsible for the country's salt problem then you are on another planet. Thsi argument could go on and on and I have nothing against farmers either or their right to make a fair living. I do draw the line at myself and other taxpayers being expected to subsidize a business though. A shire in WA has taken the right approach that works for everyone. They have brought forward major works projects and will employee farmers and their machinery to carry out these works when the downturn is expected to hit in several months time.
Once again I am not anti-farming at all, but hey if the company I am working for go's broke chances are I will lose all my entitlements, house, car etc and will get no assisstance in the for of grants from the government. I do agree that the red tape is a joke and a better idea maybe a fund that all farmers Australia wide contribute to in good times and maybe even matched by the government and distributed on a fair basis, not just to those who understand the system better. I will put it a slightly different way, I know of several farmers in a certain region that got handouts, but had millions of dollars tied up in family trusts. Cried poverty and got help. 3 months later one went out and paid $2million cash for another farm through the trust. Thinks nothing of spending $1/2 a mil on machinery. This is an extreme case but a good example.

Salt problems have a number of causes, and in some (but not all) places these a result of farming practices, especially irrigation in parts of the Murray Darling basin. But it should be pointed out that in most cases these farming practices were imposed on farmers by the state government - for example land clearing and irrigation.
Can't comment on the situation in your neck of the woods, as I simply don't know. I am not suggesting that farmers should be bailed out, but I do think it is about time that the anti-rural bias that we see in most media these days should be toned down a bit. Certainly in this state much legislation and government spending is either totally irrelevant to everyone outside the major cities, or actively discriminates against people who live outside the major cities.
John

As long as they dont put the price of BEER up we will all be ok.