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The Guardian
11-06-2025
- Climate
- The Guardian
Parts of Australia are suffering another devastating drought, but you wouldn't know it in the cities
We got some rain in rural Victoria over the weekend, and that's headline-worthy news. There's been a record-breaking drought that's been afflicting the states of Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and parts of New South Wales for over a year, but depending where you live – and how you get your news – you may not know much about it. This represents a problem Australia desperately needs to confront. ABC radio's Victorian Country Hour has been touring towns across the state, collecting stories from areas that were previously some of the richest farmland in Australia, recording the ongoing impacts – material, financial, social, psychological – on communities. The weekend's rain will help refill some dams, but the winter cold means it won't replenish pastures where it's needed for animal feed: an unprecedented 'fodder drought' continues. Australia is predisposed to droughts. Even so, the ABC has quoted the Colac-based Dairy Farmers Victoria president, Mark Billing, explaining: 'This is not a normal year.' He's right: in parts of southern Australia, rainfall data's shown totals at near-lowest or lowest levels since record-keeping began. Sign up to get climate and environment editor Adam Morton's Clear Air column as a free newsletter Australian farmers have adapted their agricultural methods and listened to science to prepare for unpredictable conditions, but no one was prepared for this. Now, 18 months after farmers began trucking water and hand-feeding their animals, stockpiled feed is running out. Shipping in more pressures the farmer to front the capital for its purchase – a burden that's pushed many to sell off animals and sell off land. The bush telegraph in rural communities like mine has been relaying stories of abattoirs so full with the unsustainable stock that some farmers are left with animals that will simply – pointlessly – have to die. No one needs me to tell them climate change is making droughts worse. But as a nation dependent on local agriculture to feed itself, what we need to work out is how a crisis with such dire implications is barely on the mental register of a city like Melbourne – with 5 million inhabitants and a mere two hours' drive from Colac – because despite the severity, despite state government emergency measures – it just isn't. Depending on which corners of the internet you hang out in, the drought gets scant mention even in the outrage towards federal environment minister Murray Watt's provisional approval of a 45-year life extension for Woodside's North West Shelf gas mega-project in Western Australia. My colleague Adam Morton and some others have made the obvious connection, and excoriated a project the Australia Institute calculates will generate 4.3bn tonnes of emissions 'with no proposal for abatement at all'. But others did not. Which provokes an equal and opposite question: why aren't climate-hit farmers bullrushing Watt's office themselves? A recent Peter Lewis piece reminds how recent rollouts of renewable energy 'ran the real risk of being sidelined by a lack of community social licence'. I can vouch 'Stop AusNet's towers' corflutes still hang in our town. As we try to get our heads around the reality of climate change, the largest obstacle to meaningful action appears to be the siloing of stakeholder communities. If droughts are invisible to city slickers, why should any farming community believe transmission lines are anything but an eyesore? When it comes to environmental policy, gaining 'social licence' is an omnidirectional struggle – not because rural communities are climate deniers or that climate activists are self-appointed moralisers or even that governments steamroll communities into policy decisions. An overwhelming majority of Australians believe in climate change, but evidence suggests communities are no longer holding different opinions so much as they are holding completely different conversations, and I suspect the pick-and-mix, choose-your-news nature of modern media may be contributing to a terrifying problem at the worst possible time. If there's no common framework, there can be no consensus commitments. Woodside's proposed North West Shelf expansion represents an unacceptable climate risk in an Australia where dairy farms are drying out already – and the Albanese government, which has pushed so hard on renewables infrastructure, batteries and EVs from its first term, obviously knows this. Sign up to Clear Air Australia Adam Morton brings you incisive analysis about the politics and impact of the climate crisis after newsletter promotion The unique 'tawny horror' experienced by the red-tinged-with-green Labor-voting environmentalist lies in being disgusted by the environmental consequence of a Labor decision while understanding precisely why it was made. Absolutely, Australia must reform its environmental protection laws to add climate considerations, but if we're to achieve imperative energy and sustainability transitions in the wake of Albanese's election win 'for stability against the chaos of Dutton', as Lewis writes, that will not come through unilateral, command-and-control antics. At the other end of the political spectrum, that's what Trump's doing. Going fast and breaking things results in a lot of broken things – a situation Australians find electorally unpalatable. The alternative obliged here is a nuanced, national conversation shared by the breadth of the electorate. When it comes to projects like the North West Shelf, there is a pressing need for the government to move on environmental protection reforms, but it can't do it without all communities contributing to a shared conversation about risks and trade-offs. At the same time mounting environmental risks are causing increasingly lethal chaos, everyone has to understand where tens of thousands of jobs will be lost, what energy transitions do to investment returns and tax revenue, as well as our energy security relationships with importers like Japan and South Korea. Complaints are not solutions. Plans are. Where and how that honest community conversation takes place is now the challenge. It demands a cultural humility the internet is unlikely to encourage. Overcoming the silos between rural experience, urban attention and the policy bunkers of government is hard, but it has to happen. We once valued the ABC as the instrument for this kind of national discussion, but as the broadcaster sheds shared forums like The Drum and Q+A, we're staring down the reality of environmental disaster understood as niche programming. If a devastating drought only a couple of hours away has become unimaginable, perhaps the faraway place called the future has already become impossible. Van Badham is a Guardian Australia columnist
ABC News
02-06-2025
- Business
- ABC News
Dairy farmers disappointed with new farm gate prices as drought, floods add financial pressure
Dairy farmers have been disappointed by the farm gate milk prices announced for the next financial year as they continue to struggle with drought and floods. Dairy companies have revealed their opening milk prices, a month before the start of the financial year, as required under the mandatory milk pricing code. This year's milk prices are up slightly on last year, ranging from $8.60 to $9.20 per kilogram of milk solids. But they are lower than what farmers were hoping for. The dairy heartlands of Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania are in the grips of drought, while many farms in New South Wales and Queensland are recovering from floods. "This is not a normal year," Colac dairy farmer and Dairy Farmers Victoria president Mark Billing said. "The climate challenges we are seeing right across Victoria, coupled with extraordinary cost increases on farm, mean that farmers are carrying unprecedented levels of financial and emotional strain." He said companies risked the rapid decline of Australia's milk production if they did not increase prices to help dairy farmers through the tough times. "Milk processors have repeatedly said they value their suppliers," Mr Billing said. The majority of farmers are paid for the level of fat and protein in their milk, known as milk solids. Many were hoping to be paid at least $9.20 to $9.50 per kilogram of milk solids, which equated to about 70 cents per litre. Mr Billing said the prices under $9.20 on offer from the dairy companies were not enough for farmers to get by. United Dairyfarmers of Victoria president Bernie Free agreed. "It's pretty disappointing, really," he said. He said some farmers would quit the industry if milk prices did not go up soon. "I think it's a concern that farmers may move out of the industry at this price mark, especially in [drought-affected] western Victoria," he said. "Gippsland is not far behind us, and there are pockets in north-east Victoria that are doing it pretty tough. Dairy Australia's latest outlook shows the national milk pool is on track to drop 1 per cent this financial year, compared to the previous one. It has also forecast a further drop in production of up to 2 per cent in 2025/26. If that happened, milk production would sit around 8.24 billion litres, almost 3 billion less than the industry's peak in the early 2000s. Dairy Australia analysis and insights manager, Eliza Redfern, said ongoing challenges with the weather were affecting production. "We are also seeing a lower appetite for farm business growth, and we do expect some farm exits to continue within the new season," she said. Fonterra Oceania was the first milk company to announce its opening milk price for the next season, with one of the lowest prices — an average of $8.60 per kilo of milk solids. Its director of farm source and sustainability, Matt Watt, said while it was higher than last year's opening price, he understood farmers would like more. "What we've got to do is make sure we're running a business that is here, not only this year, but for years to come," he said. "That's our job, frankly, to make sure that we're continuing to make decisions that support paying a milk price that we're earning in the market. "Sometimes that is a milk price that farmers appreciate and enjoy, and other times it takes a bit of time."
ABC News
21-05-2025
- Business
- ABC News
Victorian government to draft regulations supporting virtual fencing for cattle
The Victorian government will develop new regulations to support the rollout of virtual fencing for cattle, bringing the state in line with other jurisdictions across Australia. Victoria and South Australia are the only states yet to legalise the technology, which uses wireless electronic collars that make noises and deliver pulses to tell cattle where they can and cannot go. The government's decision to green light new regulations, announced on the ABC's Victorian Country Hour, has been welcomed by dairy farmers that have long campaigned for access to the technology. Agriculture Minister Ros Spence said she had consulted widely about the change. "I'm convinced that Victorian farmers should have the option to use virtual fencing and herding technology if they chose to," she said. Victoria is home to more than two-thirds of Australia's dairy industry, with most cattle grazing in open pastures. Virtual fencing uses GPS-enabled collars that allow farmers to define boundaries via a phone app or computer. Cattle receive audio cues or mild electrical pulses if they attempt to cross those boundaries. Colac dairy farmer and president of Dairy Farmers Victoria Mark Billing said the move was a "game changer" that would give Victorian farmers parity with interstate producers. The state government announcement comes after a slew of industry engagement and research to understand the animal welfare impacts of the technology, and how it can create better and more efficient farms. New Zealand-based company Halter, which supplies virtual fencing technology, said the pulses were significantly milder than those from conventional electric fences. Halter vice president of strategic relations Charlie Baker said they were "100 times weaker" than a shock delivered by an electric fence. He said the system also offered broader animal welfare benefits. The Victorian government would need to amend animal cruelty laws pertaining to shock collars to allow the use of virtual fencing. Ms Spence said she had asked Agriculture Victoria to prepare the amendments. "We'll change the regulations to make that the case," she said. The Commonwealth Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry is also developing a federal guide for virtual fencing, to provide a consistent regulatory approach across all states and territories. The RSPCA has been contacted for comment.
