A Modest Farmer [Bert Kelly], “Blooming hand-outs in the desert,”
The Bulletin, December 22/29, 1981, p. 102.

Last week the Eccles Gang urged the task force advising the Commonwealth Government about rural policies, the Balderstone Committee (BC), to look clear-eyed at government hand-outs to farmers. I certainly found it painful to take this attitude, having spent so much of my political life begging for hand-outs of any kind for farmers. I know that some of these hand-outs were a bit silly but I thought that politicians had to behave like that, to recommend policies they knew were wrong in order to make themselves popular. Now that I am no longer in parliament, I naturally adopt a more lofty statesmanlike attitude to these matters, and I sneer at politicians who feel that they have to pee in every pocket. All the same, I can’t help feeling a little uncomfortable while I sternly point out the path to economic rectitude to erring politicians.

All through my political career I used to give tongue about the virtues of Fred and his fellow farmers because they produced the export income so necessary for Australia’s well being. I became so good at beating this drum that even Fred almost came to see himself as one who was not interested in his own health and happiness, he did not farm to make sordid stuff like money, he only farmed for his country’s good. Of course, he never really believed this but I know it sometimes made him glow a bit towards the end of a session at the pub. But now that the exchange rate is floating and mineral exports are likely to expand, Eccles tells us that, just as the worst enemy of sheep is said to be another sheep, so the worst enemy of an exporter is another exporter. So clearly farmers cannot claim a special place in heaven because we produce export income. There has to be better reasons for helping farmers.

I hope the BC will take a hard look at government policies on irrigation. We know that most government backed irrigation schemes supply water to their farmers at less than true cost, so subsidising them. And frequently the government is expected to subsidise the crops grown with the subsidised water. Citrus juice is an example. And sometimes irrigation with subsidised water to produce subsidised crops also puts a lot of salt into the River Murray system and shortly we will have to subsidise the removal of this salt. Certainly farmers would be more careful of the way they used irrigation water if they had to pay a proper price for it.

I know that each election I feel a dam coming on and that opening dams presents a grand opportunity for eloquence about the desert blooming as the rose and that kind of thing. I hope the BC will be more clear-eyed than politicians in this matter.

When I was in parliament I learnt that Australia has been losing farmers and farm workers at an average rate of 5460 people each year for the last 75 years. This made me mad and I used to try to make the government reverse this trend. I pointed out that the clothing, footwear and car industries mercilessly twisted the government’s arm to get great handfuls of tariff subsidies for far smaller figures than that. So I confidently asked Fred and Eccles to put this disappearance of farmers and farm workers high on our list of requests to the BC.

So it was a sad shock to me to hear Fred snarl that he didn’t want to hear any more of that kind of nonsense. “Do you want me to go back to farming with horses or doing without bulk handling of wheat?” he asked sourly. “That’s what you are really asking for.”

Eccles then gave me one of his long lectures. He said it was because farmers always have had to adjust to changing economic circumstances that the industry is as lean and efficient as it is. Then he went on to say that if the sick sections of secondary industry such as the clothing and car industries had been forced to face the same discipline, the would not be in the mess they are now.

“Instead of having to face up to the trauma of change as farmers do, they sit shivering behind their tariff walls,” Eccles said sadly, “Never ask the government to help you like they do. If you do, you will end up as a peasant farmer and you wouldn’t like that, Bert.”

I suppose that Fred and Eccles are right. I realise that the farms in my district increased in size as we changed from horse teams to tractors and as tractors became bigger, so did our farms. I suppose it is a natural development that should be allowed to continue otherwise farmers may end up like the car or clothing people, whimpering for government hand-outs like young magpies squawking for food. That would not be a nice way to end up.

All the same, I can’t help looking wistfully over my shoulder at the opportunities for eloquence and political popularity I forgo by behaving in this statesmanlike manner.