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Last year the National Farmers Federation stopped campaigning for
property rights for farmers and started fighting for resource
security. Only the name changed. The underlying issue of needing to
remove growing uncertainty over farmers' rights to exploit water and
land was still its main priority.
The NFF judged property rights might sound too aggressive to the
metropolitan electorates whose support it was likely to need to
convince governments that farmers should have such rights, and be
compensated for their loss.
Unfortunately, by adopting resource security, it seems to have
lost many of the city folk altogether.
A market research survey released by the NFF has found that,
unprompted, few people rated resource security among the most
important issues facing rural Australia, let alone the top one.
Drought, isolation, the need for water and water conservation,
and environmental, market and trade issues were considered the
critical concerns.
In smaller focus groups the researchers, Crosby Textor, found it was mostly a guessing
game as to what resource security meant, with suggestions ranging
from security over land and water assets to crop insurance.
"The problem for farmers is that, unless informed, the general
public has no clear understanding of the meaning or issues
surrounding resource security," Crosby Textor said.
However, the issue is not an abstract one for farmers. It has
been elevated to top priority because it threatens to cost hundreds
of millions of dollars in land values and lost income, and
jeopardise investment.
Heightened concern over the environment, leading to stricter laws
and measures to protect rivers and native vegetation, has sparked
outbreaks of conflict all over the country.
In NSW irrigation farmers face losing up to 80 per cent of
previous water allocations under a new management regime.
In Queensland, the listing of a native bluegrass as a threatened
species has created deep uncertainty over what farmers can do if
they have it on their properties.
National Australia Bank recently warned that banks would have to
shorten loan terms for irrigation farmers, with severe cash-flow
implications, if tenure over water entitlements was limited to 10
years.
The NFF welcomed, as a watershed, the long-awaited agreement in
August by the Council of Australian Governments on a national
framework for water reform that includes perpetual water
entitlements and compensation for reductions arising from policy
changes.
NFF president Peter Corish said this week that the devil would be
in the detail, which has to be thrashed out by the next COAG meeting
in mid-2004.
Mr Corish said the NFF would use the market research to decide
whether to develop a campaign in the lead-up to the COAG meeting to
increase public awareness of the resource security issue, and to
increase the proportion of people (now 60 per cent) who believe
farmers are good managers of the environment.
Mr Corish said it was reassuring that 95 per cent of people
agreed, once provided with information, that resource security was
vital for farmers to manage in an environmentally sustainable way,
and that 89 per cent said farmers should be compensated if their
land and water access were restricted.
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