Drought Assistance

Ms PRATT (Frome) (15:27): I rise today to recognise the farmers in my electorate of Frome, and to speak with some poignancy but also with great affection and admiration for the hay run that we saw take place in Jamestown just 10 days ago. The Rapid Relief Team were responsible for delivering a record number of hay bales to South Australia. They totalled 1,500 and were gratefully received by the farming community in my community of Jamestown.

Of course, it had a two-hour radius in any direction, so what we saw on the ground on a chilly Friday morning were lots of beanies, lots of people gathered around barrels and fire drums grabbing a cup of coffee in reflection and in comradeship of the big fight they are in at the moment and that they have been in not just for a few months but for a couple of years now—and that is the drought.

It is endemic across the state, and whether it is described as a green drought or the worst drought in a generation, a drought is a drought—and it is hard. The sentiment and atmosphere on that chilly Friday morning was one of mixed emotions. Farmers on the day were really quite upbeat, full of laughs, like farmers always are, ready for a chat, ready for an opportunity to swap stories and anecdotes and examples, swap science, swap strategy, swap hardship.

But sitting underneath that, underlying those positive reflections, it was not difficult to see—it was quite palpable—that if you lifted your head up away from the hot meals, the free fodder, the toys for the kids, and looked past the oval, there was a line, a cavalcade, of utes, trailers, trucks and any implement or any vehicle that was available from the farm to come to Jamestown to collect a load, and it was a line of people who did not really want to be there.

Farmers are some of the most reluctant people in Australia, I think, to accept what they might see as charity. We describe it as charity. The associations that bring that hay are charitable associations. But the farmers were really at a point where they needed the hay, and no-one would ever turn away such a gesture like that. It was a record delivery, as I mentioned, of 1,500 bales, yet the reluctance comes from the desperation that farmers are in at the moment, having done everything they possibly can to remain independent.

They are innovative and resourceful people. For the last 18 months to two years, if they needed to cull stock, they did. If they needed to change their practice, if they needed to preserve water, if they needed to reduce the number of crops they were seeding, they have taken every step they could to inoculate themselves against the drought. Everyone in this state—the government, the opposition, industry—believes that farmers have done everything they could to put themselves in a fighting situation, but if it does not rain, it does not rain. We certainly need to see those dams fill up.

I had fantastic conversations with Councillor Keith Pluckrose, James Lang and Mark Blake. We sought some comfort under the marquee with Lorna Woodward from the Lifeline crew, who was there on the ground for the better part of six hours. We heard from Justine Reynolds, who runs Woodleigh Hills, who came in for a load but also diversifies with her own Woodleigh Hills natural beauty brand, and Sarah Voumard from Mannanarie, who not only was running the shearing centre of excellence but was there to get feed for her stock. We thank the Rapid Relief team for their delivery, and I wish the farmers well.