Word: drought
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...because wine is so cheap, our dinner-party talk now extends to North Korea's nukes, terrorism, values, global warming and water policy. Seemingly vulnerable on many of the signal issues, John Howard has brought together those last three talking points in his response to the country's long drought. In the argot of the political class, the Prime Minister is building a new narrative, an update to the national story, to win a fifth successive election...
...drought has tumbled back into the minds of city dwellers. All sorts of trip wires have been activated in a matter of days. Parched, cracked earth and blue sky stretch across the front pages of the nation's newspapers. Canberra is issuing a burst of agricultural terms-relief package, subsidies, exceptional circumstances and "our farmers." "It is part of the psyche of this country, it is part of the essence of Australia, to have a rural community," Howard said last week after announcing an extension of drought support to farmers. "We would lose something of our identification as Australians...
...government has spent $A1.2 billion on drought assistance during the past five years; 53,000 rural families have been helped through interest-rate subsidies and welfare payments designed for those calamities that happen only once in 25 years. Howard told ABC-TV's Landline program that the point of the assistance is to help farmers "keep food on the table and to meet normal living expenses." Given the hardship in many parts of the bush, urban taxpayers can hardly be called heartless or stingy. In any case, it's a fat time for government revenue collection, so a helping hand...
...unsustainable one? It's a judgment that has been made on entire industries in the past, when governments removed or cut the tariffs that protected the manufacturing sector. Why prop up farmers who are bad managers or whose poor practices on unproductive land are hurting the environment? The signals drought policy sends to good farmers are certainly mixed. And how come a 50-year-old waterside worker or factory machinist is obliged to re-train or relocate to an area where there are jobs, while the yeoman farmer is a protected species...
...emerging drought debate, some environmentalists and scientists are taking the place of the hard men of economics. Howard, once known for being dogmatic about his own causes, does not warm to their arguments. Professor Peter Cullen, of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, says Australians have been slow to realize that some places are permanently in drought. "The continuous drip feeding of drought relief just helps people with little hope of recovery to hang on a bit longer," he wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald. "It seems designed to maximize their misery and the land degradation they cause as they...