The Daily Telegraph Bush Summit 2024: Time to listen to heart of Australia
Today’s Bush Summit is a call to arms in the fight for our prosperity and a future that strengthens and benefits us all - no matter where we live in this great wide land, writes Daily Telegraph editor Ben English.
Good morning Orange.
What a pleasure it is to be here at this year’s Bush Summit.
It’s tempting to take this event for granted - given it is now such a fixture on the calendar,
But it only started barely five years ago.
Then, in July 2019, the bush was on its knees. One of the most brutal droughts in modern history had wreaked havoc across the state.
It was so bad that we at The Daily Telegraph decided it was wholly inadequate to report on this from our urban vantage point. We needed to come to the Bush, to listen, to witness and to be seen to be here.
So, we dragged the PM, the Opposition leader, their state counterparts, ministers, business chiefs, industry heads just up the road from here to Dubbo.
There, in what was really just an oversized barn, we did listen.
We heard directly from farmers forced to wipe out their breeders, write off croplands and foreclose properties that had been in their families for generations.
Others, like Terramungamine beef producers Nelson and Susan Carlow, were holding on for better times.
And the Telegraph demanded more than a quick pic fac with the pollies.
As I said on that day, “People in our regional areas do not waste a lot of words and are profoundly practical by nature.
“It would dishonour them if the summit were to be little more than a talkfest.’’
Hence, the ground rules for this event were established.
Now, as then, The Bush Summit brings together the most powerful decision makers in Australia —leaders in politics, business and the community — and puts them in touch with the most important people in Australia: You, It is you, the so-called ordinary people of rural and regional Australia, who are the heart of this nation.
Not in some abstract or symbolic sense or what city dwellers like me might imagine
the “real” Australia to be.
You are its true heart, the great beating centre that pumps life into the nation.
It is the bush that literally feeds and fuels us: That puts food on our table and the
lights on over our heads.
Rural and regional Australia isn’t a still and idyllic retreat from urban life. It is the
dynamic and vital engine that makes urban life possible.
And yet too often the bush is an afterthought of our urban-dwelling politicians, out of sight and out of mind - even as it sustains us.
We see this in law and order, the most basic prerequisite for any safe and civilised
community.
Country cops are under numbered and overstretched and troublemakers know this.
It was once considered that it was the mean city streets that were unsafe to walk at
night.
These days many country towns have residents fearing for their safety after
dark.
Perhaps it is the sheer tyranny of the majority in which smaller communities simply
aren’t treated with the political respect they deserve.
Or perhaps there is a misplaced romanticism in which city dwellers cannot imagine
danger or dysfunction in places they remember fondly from a weekend getaway.
This brings us to business and economic development.
Rural and regional communities aren’t just picture-perfect villages or rolling hills on a
postcard.
They are places where people live and work — often for our own betterment. They
need the same job opportunities and resources as the rest of us, often as a means to
provide for the rest of us.
This tension between the Pollyannas and the pessimist doomsayers is nothing new.
It was the subject of an epic series of versed stoushes between two of our greatest bards, Banjo Patterson and Henry Lawson 132 years ago.
Private-school educated Patterson took the heroic, idealistic view of the Bush. Lawson, raised in more trying circumstances, had a darker perspective. He was the battlers’ champion.
I think most pundits called it a draw.
But that duality has always been there, in our minds and in the brutal and random wheel of fortune of our weather system.
The wasteland of 2019 stands in stark contrast to the lush hinterlands of today.
The Carlows, having weathered the hell storm, are now riding the upsurge.
It’s a precarious and fragile existence. And too often our city-obsessed political leaders make things so much worse.
Many of you would be familiar with the current controversy over Environment
Minister Tanya Plibersek and the decision to block the $1 billion McPhillamy’s gold mine because of the objections of a dissident Indigenous group.
Thus — no doubt with the best of intentions — an immense and potentially life-
changing economic opportunity for the region has been lost because a piece of land
has been deemed to precious to sustain those who actually live on it.
Indeed, it was only days earlier that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese declared the
government’s number one priority in Indigenous affairs was to provide economic
opportunities for our First Nations people.
And yet here one such enormous opportunity has just been denied.
But we still hold out a candle of hope that perhaps we can
change her mind. Because while you will hear a lot of wise words at this Summit — and we hope that they are listened to by those who matter — ultimately this Summit is not about
talking, it is about doing.
It is action, not words, that we need if we are to survive the challenges and seize the
opportunities that are ahead of us. Challenges that are real and profound but
opportunities that are potentially limitless if we embrace them.
The people of the bush are perfectly placed to be the vanguard of Australia’s next
phase of economic growth. They are smart, skilled and resilient, and routinely
overcome obstacles that would stop most of us.
And so consider the words you hear at this Summit to be a call to arms in the fight
for our prosperity and a future that strengthens and benefits us all - no matter where
we live in this great wide land.
Thank you.
Originally published as The Daily Telegraph Bush Summit 2024: Time to listen to heart of Australia
Donna was waiting for a miracle in the bush — then it flew into town
Donna Synnerdahl still remembers the moment she hit the mine shaft floor. It’s this sensation of falling and her memories of the jolting pain that has kept her up at night — for 14 years.
Mine blast: Indigenous leaders lash ban; Minns backs development
As incensed Indigenous leaders say Tanya Plibersek’s move to axe a $1 billion gold mine undermines the planning system and puts their cause back 50 years, Premier Chris Minns moves to fast track it.