AUSTRALIAN farmers should protest like they mean it writes XAVIER DUFF
In September last year, Belgian dairy farmers opened up the valves on a fleet of milk tankers and sprayed the contents over a huge paddock, making it look as if there had been an early winter blizzard.
In January last year, Greek farmers used their tractors to blockade highways and border crossings creating massive traffic chaos.
The images went around the world giving huge publicity to the farmers' protests over bankrupting food prices brought on by the global financial crisis.
Here in Australia, dairy farmers were facing the same hardship. But there were no blockades, no rivers of milk.
They just shrugged and got on with dealing with yet another assault on their livelihood.
Our farmers are no strangers to the street march, but they are less volatile, more resigned than the Europeans.
It takes a lot to rile them and it has to be something worth fighting for. Protesting against a global financial crisis would have been as effective as an umbrella in a cyclone.
Well, today there is a fight worth farmers getting on their tractors, driving to Melbourne and abandoning them on top of the Westgate Bridge.
While they are about it they could take a few dozen milk tankers to Canberra and empty the contents into Lake Burley Griffin.
The Murray Darling Basin Authority's hatchet job on irrigation communities is the single biggest issue to affect rural Australia since dairy deregulation in the late 1990s and even that pales into insignificance compared to this.
The plan to slash water diversions from the Murray Darling Basin by up to 47 per cent, cuts across all agricultural industries, every district and town, every business, council, club, school and household that depends in some way on the lifeblood of irrigation water.
Make no mistake. This is not some local, parochial minority fringe issue.
It affects not just irrigators, the irrigation equipment supplier, the ag machinery dealer or the milk tanker driver in hundreds of towns and cities across the nation.
It hits the newsagent, the milk bar owner, the publican, the bakery and kindergarten teacher as well. And the ripples go even further.
The staff working in city head offices of Elders or Landmark, the receptionist on the front desk of Murray Goulburn's Brunswick office, even the fluoro-jacketed crane driver on the docks in Port Melbourne are all under threat.
And every single one of them needs to walk off their farms, out of their shops, factories and offices, schools, hospitals and clubs and join in what should be the biggest farm protest ever seen in this country.
There needs to be a sustained campaign including massive turnouts in the nation's capital cities. Some will argue it's a waste of time. Protests never achieve anything, particularly for farmers who, by virtue of their numbers, have little political clout, they say.
Name one rural protest that ever reversed any decision, they will challenge you.
Well maybe. But bear this in mind - no decision has yet been made.
There is a huge opportunity for people to vent their anger and frustration and to correct this looming injustice.
Yes there will be meetings and inquiries in the lead-up to the government's final decision.
But citizens also need the theatre of protest to galvanise public opinion, to make people sit up and take notice of the profound impact this decision will have.
It is crucial the government understands it is playing with the futures of hundreds of thousands of Australians - not the laughable 800 whose jobs the MDBA claims are at risk.
And rural communities have one thing on their favour - a hung parliament which relies on the support of two crucial independent rural MPs who understand what the plan really means. That is power with a capital P.
Few question the need to ensure the health of the Murray Darling's natural environment.
But there are alternatives to simply acquiring farmers' water rights.
This does not have to be a winner-takes-all fight between greenies and farmers, between the environment and the economy. There are solutions that can save both.
Buying back water right is the lazy option, the easy way out, a cheapskate's solution.
It's time for Australian rural communities to stand up and say they refuse to be an easy way out, to cop a cheapskate's solution.
It is time to show in no uncertain terms their futures are not for sale for a few measly pieces of silver.
- Xavier Duff is a senior The Weekly Times reporter
