The Telegraph says: Labor’s cringe-worthy leadership photo
It is difficult accepting the peace-and-happiness show put on by Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard. Perhaps they bonded over their stabbings by current Labor leader Bill Shorten.
Even the truest of Labor’s true believers would have had a hard time accepting the peace-and-happiness show put on yesterday by Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard.
The duo were all fixed smiles as they entered Labor’s official campaign launch together. Perhaps Rudd and Gillard have lately bonded over their stabbings by current Labor leader Bill Shorten.
Maybe for their next trick Labor’s unity police will arrange a healing between Rudd and his former treasurer Wayne Swan.
Or they could try something just a little bit easier.
Why not attempt achieving permanent peace in the Middle East?
OUR FARMS DESPERATELY NEED YOUR HELP
The psychological and social costs of the ongoing NSW drought are impossible to calculate. They are so immense as to be beyond any simple form of measurement.
The financial costs, however, although similarly gigantic, can actually be put into figures.
And what absolutely heartbreaking figures they are.
According to the Department of Agriculture’s latest farm business performance analysis, farms across NSW are this year projected to cop an average loss of nearly $70,000.
That average includes all farms, including those nearer the coast where the drought’s cruelty is not quite so destructive. The average losses suffered by farms in our drier inland regions would obviously be substantially greater.
The extent to which this drought is a phenomenon hitting NSW the hardest may be gauged by the economic outlook for farms interstate.
In Queensland, where the continuing drought has had much less of an impact, farms are expecting losses of $1000. In Victoria, by comparison, farms are actually looking at average profits in the low five figures.
“A lot of areas had basically no crops last season and they incurred all the costs associated with trying to get it off the ground,” NAB agribusiness economist Phin Ziebell said of the situation in NSW.
“In a season like that you wouldn’t expect to be really profitable.”
As farms lose their profits, every business throughout their areas also face significant financial hardship, as Ziebell explains.
“That (income fall) obviously flows through to regional towns because a lot of these towns have farming really at the heart of their income, so if you don’t get income coming through then it will affect every aspect of that economy.”
The Daily Telegraph’s Adopt a Farmer campaign aims to help our farmers make it through these tough times and to renew their properties’ viability once the rain returns.
With the help of schools, our program aims to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for Rural Aid to give every farm family on their register a $100 prepaid Visa card.
When drought-hit farms are forced to pay hundreds of dollars for hay imported all the way from Western Australia, the need for immediate cash is clear.
Our farms need your help.
ICE CHILLS COUNTRY CHARM
Life in country towns presents challenges unfamiliar to those in larger cities.
Floods and employment-sapping droughts are two naturally occurring difficulties. And then there are issues with access to higher education, hospitals and other facilities taken for granted by city residents.
Against that, regional areas provide levels of community spirit difficult to find in Sydney. Regional zones have heart.
But now that prized feeling of community fellowship is under threat from the menace of ice.
Lismore, in the northeast, is known for deep community feelings. Those feelings are turning to fear as ice takes hold.
“We find it quite problematic when we intervene and disrupt people who are using ice,” Richmond District Superintendent Toby Lindsay notes.
“Problematic” it certainly is.
“I tell people I’ll hang out and basically if you don’t give me what I want I’m going to run a knife through you,” Lismore man and $1200-a-week ice user Lance Reavley explains.
Lismore has beaten other challenges. This is clearly among its more difficult.
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