A Modest Member of Parliament [Bert Kelly], The Australian Financial Review, February 25, 1972, p. 3. Reprinted in Economics Made Easy (Adelaide: Brolga Books, 1982), pp. 18-19, as “Droughts.”

I have a country electorate with much low rainfall country. Mavis and I thought of launching a campaign urging the Government to either abolish droughts or to protect Fred and his fellow farmers from the effect of drought.

We felt that there surely must be votes in this. We are used to seeing TV programs about droughts, showing the parched, cracked soil in the bottom of water holes and the bleached bones of cattle carcasses.

Usually there is a picture of a housewife wiping the tears from her eyes with her apron so that she can peer hopefully at the horizon searching for a rain cloud no bigger than a man’s hand.

Good heart-wringing stuff it always is!

Then there is usually an interview with a leader of the local community who is asked with menacing overtones: “What is the Government in Canberra doing about this?”

“Nothing,” he replies with a catch on his voice, “nothing at all — they don’t care.” You can’t help booing!

So we made up a statement with phrases like, “the driest State in the driest continent in the world,” and “this dread spectre that stalks our land” and “the desert shall blossom as the rose,” and we were well away.

We resisted the temptation of overdoing it and asking the Government to abolish droughts, but we certainly intended to demand that the Government forecast when droughts were coming and to protect Fred and his fellow farmers from them when they did arrive.

Good stuff it was too.

Bitter experience has taught me not to let Eccles see this kind of effusion, but I took it to Fred with some pride.

He read it with difficulty because some of the words were indeed rather long.

Then he said sourly, “Well, you may get votes out of it, my dear fellow” (he always calls me this when he is displeased with me), “but it’s a lot of nonsense and you know it too.”

I’m afraid Fred is right. There is only one really effective measure that we can take against drought in the inside country and that is to have a lot of conserved fodder to feed our stock.

But I know from my own farming experience that the best person to conserve fodder is me, not the Government.

The Government can help by taxation concessions on fodder conserved and that kind of thing but the biggest part of the problem is mine.

I should not expect the Government to store fodder for me when I can do it cheaper myself.

And the more the Government conserves fodder for me, the less I will do it for myself.

The same thing happens if you have a bushfire. The chap who gets most of the relief money is the chap who isn’t insured.

The provident person who insured himself only gets abuse if he lines up for assistance. “Why should we help him?” people snarl, “he was fully insured.”

So the next time he doesn’t insure; why should he?

The same with drought — the Government comes clumsily to the rescue (and the Government is so big that it can’t help being clumsy) so there will be less incentive for the provident farmer to do his own providing.

If the Government comes in it will, in both fire and drought, help the wrong person in the wrong way in a great many cases. And it will certainly destroy the incentive of the farmer to help himself.

This is one of those rare periods when there is not a bad drought in any large area in Australia. At this time too southern Australia is packed with stock.

I am told that Victoria has 25 per cent more stock than before the 1967 drought. We know that each year brings a drought one year closer.

We would prepare for it with more enthusiasm if we knew that the responsibility was ours and not the Government’s.

We should be given financial inducements to encourage us to prepare for drought but, I repeat, it is really our job, not the Government’s.

But there are no votes in this kind of thinking. Blast Fred!