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| "There's a lot of heartache there" |
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Dear Rural Networkers,
I'm always talking to you about a natural disaster. This time it's in central western Queensland, where a year's worth of rain fell in a matter of days last week, and more is on the way.
Water levels are higher than the 1974 outback floods, turning the central desert into an inland sea, inundating houses and cutting off communities. Marilyn Simpson, the president of the Windorah Development Board, told reporter Ben Smee on Monday that the region was used to feast or famine; drought or floods.
She said:
"I think there’s a lot of heartache there. At the moment people are running on adrenaline, they’re dealing with the current situation as best they can. It’s down the track where the impact is going to be, when you pull up one day and think ‘can I keep going, will I recover’ and it all hits hard."
There are estimates the stock losses could total more than one million, once the waters recede.
On Tuesday, Joe Hinchcliffe wrote about Tony Woolford, a 66-year-old South Australian man rescued via helicopter from a flood in one of the driest places on earth: the Munga-Thirri-Simpson Desert. The rescue was coordinated by Don Rowlands, a Wangkangurru Yarluyandi elder who said while he'd helped retrieve many people in his 31 years as a desert ranger, pulling someone from a flood in this area was a first.
Rowlands is in Birdsville, which has been cut off for more than a week. Jundah, Thargomindah, and Adavale were also evacuated. Longreach mayor Tony Raynor told Joe the economic and psychological effects of the floods will be long-lasting.
"We’re already getting reports of landholders that are struggling mentally with the prospect of what they know is to come."
Locals say the situation has been made worse by a lack of data: there's no weather radar coverage and few river gauges. The opposition leader Peter Dutton visited Thargomindah on Monday, on day three of the federal election campaign, and pledged $10m for a new weather radar to cover the region. Labor has matched the commitment.
Sticking with the election, Nino Bucci has travelled to the Victorian electorate of Wannon, on the southwest coast, where independent candidate Alex Dyson is taking his third tilt at the historically Liberal-held seat – and gaining ground.
Wannon has been in Liberal party hands since 1955, and is currently held by Dan Tehan. After the 2022 election, Tehan's margin is just 3.7%. Dyson's campaign has shifted over three election cycles from a lighthearted attempt to draw attention to problems in the area to a serious pitch based on fixing regional roads and alleviating the high cost of living. Offshore windfarms are another leading issue – in an electorate with more wind turbines than any other in the state, some locals feel they've already done their part in helping the renewable transition. You can read Nino's full piece here.
And finally, as you read this, we will be learning what tariffs the Trump administration has chosen to impose on Australian goods, the US president having wisely decided not to announce his new trade policies on 1 April. Beef, pork, and poultry are likely targets, as all were identified in a report by the office of the US trade representative this week as being subject to barriers to trade: namely, Australian biosecurity requirements. Anthony Albanese said Australia will not budge on that issue, saying:
"The idea that we would weaken biosecurity laws is like cutting off your nose to spite your face. In order to defend the exports that total less than 5% of Australia’s exports, you undermine our biosecurity system. Not on my watch."
Dutton has also said he would not agree to anything that would undermine Australia's interests.
The US is Australia's largest market for beef, lamb and goatmeat. Uncertainty around the tariffs has already seen a sharp drop in inquiries from US beef importers. Australian producers will watch Donald Trump's address in the White House rose garden very closely this morning.
Until next time,
Rural and regional editor
Calla Wahlquist |
| Across the (salmon) landscape |
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Just before parliament was prorogued, the two major parties voted together on controversial legislation to protect the Tasmanian salmon industry.
The purpose of the legislation was to shut down reconsideration by the environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, of a 2012 decision to allow the expansion of fish farming in Macquarie Harbour. That decision deemed salmon farming was not a controlled action and therefore didn't need a full federal environment assessment. The reconsideration was triggered by a 2023 legal request from three environmental groups concerned about the impact of salmon farming on the endangered Maugean skate. The new legislation — an amendment to the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act — stops reconsideration requests in cases where developments had been deemed "not a controlled action".
Critics of the amendment — including the Coalition, who voted for it — say it's an "11th hour fix to get this off the political agenda"; so poorly drafted that "legal challenges are almost guaranteed"; and that claims it will only affect the salmon industry and no other developments are "simply wrong".
As Guardian Australia's environment editor (and Tasmanian) Adam Morton explains, Anthony Albanese has "made a remarkable U-turn on protecting nature" in the past 12 months, from backing Plibersek to rewrite the EPBC Act and create a national environment protection agency to indefinitely delaying a rewrite of the act, intervening to stop a deal between Plibersek and the crossbench on national EPA legislation, and now salmon.
Adam has been following this issue closely, as has environment reporter Lisa Cox. You can find their work here.
At least one niggling question has been solved: Lisa Cox has investigated why Oscar-winning actor and environmental campaigner Leonardo DiCaprio so often turns his sights on the plight of threatened species in Australia. You may recall that he shared Rural Network reporting on land clearing last year. Lately he's been posting about the Maugean skate. It turns out Re:Wild, the environmental organisation that DiCaprio co-founded, has a staff in Australia who keeps him abreast of these developments. |
In 1975, in a converted tractor shed in Central Otago on New Zealand's South Island, a makeshift fashion museum began taking shape. Its curator was Eden Hore, a war veteran and cattle and sheep farmer, who acquired the private collection over decades alongside working the land. To date, it remains one of the most significant fashion collections in Australasia.
Hore collected evening dresses, eventually amassing 226 pieces plus hats and accessories. His family, says niece Jo Dowling, were baffled. She told reporter Kiran Dass:
"He was the first to do a lot of things in farming, like top dressing with a plane, catching wild deer for his farm, running his farm tours and then his garment collection.
“He was his own unique person and some of his family couldn’t believe he was collecting gowns. It’s not the thing a man usually does.”
The collection has been memorialised in a new book. You can read about it here. |
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A message from Lenore Taylor editor of Guardian AustraliaI hope you appreciated this newsletter. Before you move on, I wonder if you would consider supporting our work as we prepare for a pivotal, uncertain year ahead.
The course of world history has taken a sharp and disturbing turn in 2024. Liberalism is under threat from populist authoritarianism. Americans have voted to install a president with no respect for democratic norms, nor the facts that once
formed the guardrails of public debate.
That decision means an alliance critical to Australia’s national and economic security is now a series of unpredictable transactions, with a partner no longer committed to multilateralism, nor efforts to curb global heating, the greatest threat we face. We just don’t know where this will lead.
In this uncertain time, fair, fact-based journalism is more important than ever – to record and understand events, to scrutinise the powerful, to give context, and to counter rampant misinformation and falsehoods.
As we enter an Australian election year, we are deeply conscious of the responsibility to accurately and impartially report on what is really at stake.
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Lenore Taylor
Editor, Guardian Australia
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