I’ve recently been visiting Australia’s far northern Queensland, and the challenges facing that area and Australia in general are the same as many of those facing rural New Zealand.
My reading of the Australian livestock industry is that it is facing a crisis similar to what is occurring here. The country’s dairy and cropping industries are thriving, particularly on the larger farms.
Generally when you drive either north or south of Cairns you see a frenetically busy sugar industry at this time of year. Currently there is no activity at all. The railway tracks carrying sugar cane to the mills are overgrown, many crops are past harvest date and the freight cars carrying the cane to the mills are in a state of decay.
Investigating further we are told via the media that “politicians are stopping work on a crop that may never be harvested”. The Mossman Sugar Mill closed last year and any cane harvested needs to be trucked south. No cane trucks were obvious on the roads despite warnings to expect one every eight minutes.
On the broader agriculture front, Aussies tend to like their farmers more than Kiwis do. The media coverage of farming issues is generally both informed and supportive.
I read in The Australian that the local cattle industry is facing “its greatest existential threat from activists peddling green ideology and spreading misinformation about the industry”.
The article went on to quote David Harris, the head of the 200-year-old Australian Agricultural Company. He made the point that “Australian beef producers were ‘fighting for [their] very existence’ against global forces pushing agendas on climate emissions, animal welfare, the environment, water use and diets.”
Where have we heard that before?
So from an agricultural perspective the issues facing Australian farmers are similar to those facing you and me. The major difference is that Australians have a greater respect for their farmers and the mainstream media is infinitely better informed on rural issues.
Those similarities continue to the general economy with the Australian cost-of-living crisis as big an issue there as it is here. As in New Zealand, there is a lot of talk but little real action. It is the same with inflation.
There is also major conflict between the Reserve Bank of Australia and the government over the state of the economy. As with NZ, one would hope that hard economics will rule over political expediency.
The energy issue does have differences. Australia doesn’t enjoy the hydro capability NZ does and it has many coal-fired generators it is trying to retire.
That has brought some major issues to light. A large problem is that when you close down a lot of smaller coal-fired plants for a bigger, more central solar generator, the reticulation of that electricity becomes a challenge.
There’s only one solution and that is power lines over private property and that is causing major ructions. It has also created much media coverage with the only solution I can see being the heavy hand of the government. It will be an interesting debate, coming up as it has just before a Federal election.
While the current government is talking solar, which makes sense in a country like Australia, the Opposition is talking up nuclear power. It will be an interesting discussion as both solar and nuclear are considered renewables.
It will have ramifications in NZ as well as in my opinion we have the choice of either building more dams, burning more coal or investigating nuclear power.
What I did find iniquitous is that on one hand there is considerable media coverage of the need for renewables when it comes to electricity generation while on the other it is exporting coal by the shipload. Coal mines that were destined for closure are now up and running with a vengeance.
The hypocrisy wasn’t lost on the Victorian Farmers Federation, which waded into the fray with a passion claiming that farmers are forced to carry the burden of the renewable energy targets. They claimed the government is “blatantly ignoring concerns that its transition plan will compromise food security”.
Where have I heard that before?
Reading all the fine print, it seemed to me that bureaucrats decreed from on high what was going to happen without any practical on-the-ground knowledge.
As I’ve said, Australia has similar problems to those we have.
On the lighter side, going onto the media and trying to find an Olympic competitor that wasn’t Australian was incredibly difficult. One Ocker boasted to me that Australia had more medals than NZ. My simple response was to ask him to consider the difference in the population and the medals per capita, and NZ was well clear. The debate ended there.
One positive is that Australian limes, certainly those in northern Queensland, are a lot juicier than ours.
The downside is that gin is more expensive.
