Politicians scramble to act on drought

SMH


Stephanie Peatling and Jonathan Pearlman
October 14, 2006


DROUGHT aid for desperate farmers will be considered by federal and state cabinets next week as governments try to ease hardship and allay concern about the crisis in the bush.

In Canberra, Government MPs will consider whether to relax the criteria for exceptional-circumstances payments, and NSW MPs will also consider an assistance package.

State and territory leaders yesterday made an unprecedented intervention over the drought and rising interest rates, advising the Reserve Bank Governor, Glenn Stevens, that another rate rise would have a severe impact.

The leaders, who gathered at the inaugural meeting of the Council for the Australian Federation in Melbourne, took their first joint action in a letter to Mr Stevens. "The council agreed to call upon the Reserve Bank to take into account the severe impact of the drought on economic growth and recognise that any interest rate rise will have a devastating impact on farmers, rural and regional communities," they said.

The NSW Opposition Leader, Peter Debnam, said the Government should declare a state of emergency across the state.

"The water crisis is not just in rural and regional NSW; it's in metropolitan areas too, especially on the Central Coast," he said.

The Prime Minister, John Howard, said farmers would not be left destitute as a result of the harsh conditions. "It is a very, very severe drought and it will be consuming a lot of my attention - it already is - and we'll be making certain that the assistance measures remain very generous," he said yesterday.

Cabinet will also discuss whether some areas should be declared officially in drought so that farmers can receive emergency relief payments.

The Greens leader, Bob Brown, said the drought had been "Howard enhanced" due to the failure to adequately address climate change.

Mr Howard said he did not think the severity of the drought warranted the Government changing its position on the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.

The Opposition's agriculture spokesman, Gavan O'Connor, urged the Government to change its drought policy. "[It] must be tailored to the conditions now being faced by farmers… the like of which many have never seen before," he said.

In NSW, the Iemma Government warned that the drought was nearing diabolical levels.

The Primary Industries Minister, Ian Macdonald, said farmers had been rushing to sell livestock and the drought would lift meat, poultry, milk, flour and egg prices.

"We will have a situation where all food prices will rise … significantly, cutting into household budgets," Mr Macdonald said.

"For the first time in many generations we have a drought that's virtually across the southern half of the continent.

"If we don't get rain by March or April, the water supply problems will be diabolical," he said.