“One of the greatest post-drought problems will be that of restocking their properties with cattle and sheep. Losses have been so heavy that numbers of existing stock will be most seriously depleted...and the task will take years to complete.”
You could be forgiven for thinking that this was penned this week, but in fact it was a North Queensland Register editorial from October 1965.
Effective drought relief has long been a topic of concern for the Register and its readers, and these days is a matter for resignation as much as anything.
Bill Ringrose is an accountant at Longreach and one of the faces behind the Western Queensland Drought Appeal, and he says there is probably not a lot more that government can do.
“Low-interest loans are about the sum of it, when neither they nor the states have a lot of money,” he said.
“Producers get hung up on taxes but a lot don’t pay tax, or they can average their incomes, use farm management deposits, and utilise tax write-offs.
“Policies are probably the best they can be for the economic times.”
He advocated approaching it from a whole-of-community point of view rather than singling out one sector for assistance, and believed money spent on subsidising exclusion fencing was a good drought-proofing investment.
When it rains and the problem goes away from the public eye, that's the end of the conversation.
- Bill Ringrose
“It’s a relatively small amount of money for governments but it goes a long way in getting people back in sheep, managing feed and giving people economic options.”
Bill said that making drought policy in the middle of a drought was never a good idea but that when it rained and the problem went away from the public eye, that was the end of the conversation.
“How we keep that going is the thing,” he said.
The last word goes to the 1965 editorial: “Fodder stocks on farms at the beginning of the drought were so low that the entire stock would have fed the state’s 1,000,000 dairy cattle for only six weeks. The stores of grain held on properties throughout the state were sufficient for only 11 days. These figures tend to lay a charge of improvidence at the person’s concerned.”