From the Barham Baptist church

Basic Premises:

* The small family farm remains the best future for the sustainability of rural life

* Australia needs to maintain a viable agricultural industry

* Rural Australia needs healthy and functional small rural communities to support the agricultural industry and maintain our rural areas * Government action needs to consider social impacts on communities as of equal importance with environmental and economic impacts

Concerns:

The buy-back of irrigation allocations and free market trading in the Murray Darling basin is leading to many farms being left unused and painful reductions in the population that affect viability of communities. The free market lacks any sense of investment in social capital or concern for community. Sadly, when governments have recently begun interfering in the trading, they show a similar lack of interest in communal issues.

We expect there will be constant restructuring and adjustment of the agricultural sector in response to factors such as profitability of various industries or drought or changes in market conditions. However, we view with alarm the decline of the agricultural sector such that the average age of farmers keeps moving upward with little incentive to bring in new generations and enormous difficulty for new players to consider a career in agriculture.

There is also a decline in the infrastructure services that made settlement of the land possible with deterioration of rail, air, hospitals, legal, engineering and medical services.

The prolonged drought is placing enormous pressure of course on the government and the farming community. It is difficult to separate the impacts of the drought from the impacts of other systemic problems.

Families

The negative social effects of drought and rural decline can be extremely destructive upon families. One proven strategy for their mitigation is to develop community social events, especially those that incorporate isolated people into communal events.

* Subsidies toward the cost of putting on social events catalyse the local community into organising and gathering in effective ways.

* Developing projects suitable for older community members such as men’s sheds and community gardens have proven advantageous

* Rural areas have a right to access equivalent telecommunication services at similar prices to those in urban areas

* Homecare for the elderly who are living on farms or in isolated areas needs to be funded so that they are not trapped economically and socially

* Current financial assistance programs need to be reviewed and maintained to strengthen rural families and communities

Community Development

* Those shires that employ a specific Drought Assistance worker, or Community Development person perform better at keeping community support and cohesion. In general, Victoria has done more of this than NSW and is to be commended. However they need at least a 5-year tenure

* The answer for sustainability and future opportunity mostly comes from the people themselves. Experience working in small towns and villages and rural districts shows that it does not take major capital investment but a single personnel investment can raise morale and optimism for the future significantly. The presence of active churches can make a big difference and they should be encouraged. Funding should be directed to work with communities in all areas including spirituality; financial support for community activities is important.

Education and Training

* A perennial problem in rural areas is the filling of positions in both service organisations (voluntary) and private industry (employed). At the same time, local people have difficulty accessing appropriate training to acquire the skills for these positions. There should be greater subsidies to allow those who do not live near regional centres to access training. Extra support should also be offered to improve distance education and support those undertaking it.

* Areas that are declared to be in exceptional circumstances (EC) need to be given help in their schools to care for the children of drought-affected families. Some examples would be training of staff to respond to individual children’s needs, school breakfasts, subsidies for excursions and uniforms, and increased support services for children experiencing family difficulties.

* Those tertiary students whose parents are receiving EC assistance should be granted ‘independent status’ so they can access Youth Allowance for the duration of their course.

* Other areas that struggle are school and preschool fees which could be reduced with a subsidy linked to Health Care Card benefits, and the cost to community groups of meeting OHS requirements with their equipment and projects.

In general, rural churches urge governments to keep the welfare of the community in mind in all policy, and to support family farm enterprises especially as they are more beneficial to the community than corporate agriculture or investment scheme involvement in agricultural markets (and at present are proving more economically viable as well).

Rev Geoffrey D. Leslie, December 2008

Pastor, Koondrook-Barham Baptist Church

President of the Baptist Union of Victoria

Note: This summary has borrowed heavily from a submission on behalf of the Uniting Church in Australia, NSW and ACT Synod to the Drought Policy Review Panel, authored by Ross Neville, Julie Greig and Kel Hodge.