The National Party remains highly sceptical of climate change and its effect on farmers. Yet the science is clear that global warming has contributed to the current drought. Some farmers are pointing to the failure of the National Party to address climate change.
In this blog on 13 August 2018, I reposted an article by Mark Hudson from The Conversation (The Nationals have changed their leader but kept the same climate story) that highlighted that the demise of Barnaby Joyce and his replacement by Michael McCormack as Leader of the Parliamentary National Party has not resulted in any change in the highly sceptical stance of the National Party to climate change.
In ‘Cognitive Dissonance in the Big Dry’ in this blog on 8 August 2018 Lesley Hughes who is the Distinguished Professor of Biology at Macquarie University and a Councillor with the Climate Council of Australia, said
Climate change is worsening the drought now affecting huge swathes of the continent, bringing gut-wrenching misery for farmers and the communities they support. … But the science is clear – warming has contributed to a southward shift in weather fronts from the Southern Ocean, which typically bring rain to Southern Australian during winter and spring. As these weather fronts have shifted, rainfall in Southern Australia has declined, increasing the risk of drought conditions, including in agricultural heartlands such as the Murray-Darling Basin and the Western Australian wheat belt.
On 15 August, Essential Media reported on public understanding of climate change and its relation to drought. The sample of Australians was asked ‘Do you think that the current drought across Eastern Australia is likely to be linked to climate change?’ 54% of Australians said that they believed that climate change and the current drought are linked. 25% said that there was unlikely to be a link and 21% said they did not know. Even 47% of Liberal and National Party supporters said that they believed that there was a link between climate change and the drought. Only 33% believed there was unlikely to be a link. Clearly, the National Party is out of touch with both the views of Australians generally but also with Liberal and National Party supporters.
Last week, the Minister for Agriculture who is a member of the National Party, David Littleproud, claimed on Q & A that such a link (between climate change and the drought) was a ‘big call’ and that he does no ‘give a rats if it’s man-made or not’.
It is also becoming obvious that many farmers are very sceptical of the attitude of the National Party towards climate change. Ben Potter, in the Australian Financial Review on 13 August 2018, spoke to a long-established farmer, Peter Mailler, about the failure of the Nationals and particularly Barnaby Joyce to address the issue of climate change. See below extracts from the interview between Ben Potter and Peter Mailler.
You can’t help farmers if you won’t tackle climate change, farmer tells government.
Peter Mailler, a third-generation grain and cattle grower from northern NSW who sent pregnant cows for slaughter this week because he can’t feed them all, has a message from drought-stricken northern NSW to the Turnbull government….
First, don’t pretend to champion drought-struck farmers if you’re not prepared to tackle climate change – because the increasing frequency of extremely hot, dry weather is compounding the effects of drought by impairing crops’ ability to use what rain they do get.
Second, don’t talk about giving coal-fired power “a free kick” in the National Energy Guarantee (NEG) when a full accounting of its environmental costs will tell you not that we can’t afford to close coal plants but that “we can’t afford to run one tomorrow”….
Third, don’t lean on high-risk, struggling industries like agriculture for deeper carbon emissions cuts when the stable, regulated electricity industry can obviously bear a larger share of the burden.
Last, the impacts of climate change on farming families threaten the survival of the Nationals’ support base in rural and regional Australia, so it is time for the Coalition to dispense with “undermining science” and have an honest debate about climate change…. .
“I actually don’t see a pathway for my kids to come back – and some of them want to.” His parents built a five-megawatt solar farm on their property when they retired and he thinks this could be a better bet.
Mr Mailler says the conversation needs to be more robust. “If Turnbull and his cohort are nor prepared to diligently install some truth in the debate then what’s the point?” he says.
“You cannot fix the energy problem if you are going to ignore climate … because you are working on the wrong set of assumptions”, says Mr Mailler, who trained as an agricultural scientist before returning to his parents’ farm and then striking out on his own.
“I have no doubt that in my lifetime weather patterns have shifted significantly. I don’t know many farmers who would dispute that the climate has changed,” he says.
“And it’s obviously going to get worse.”
The evidence is becoming apparent that the National Party remains sceptical of climate change and is careless about the interests of farmers that it claims to represent. The National Party leadership is more concerned about picking up ministerial crumbs from the Liberal Party cabinet table than representing their farming constituency.
John Menadue is the Founder and Editor in Chief of Pearls and Irritations. He was formerly Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet under Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser, Ambassador to Japan, Secretary of the Department of Immigration and CEO of Qantas.
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