And while a public showing of support is surely appreciated by the battling industry, farmers want state and federal action.
As details emerged of a bipartisan plan to help farmers hit by retrospective milk-price cuts, one of the farmers caught in the crisis said what was needed most was a cash injection.
A letter sent by Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce to his Labor counterpart Joel Fitzgibbon reveals a plan to:
OFFER concessional loans to dairy farmers, based largely on the existing drought concessional loans scheme.
PRIORITISE dairy farmer access to support from the Department of Human Services.
PROVIDE additional resources for Rural Financial Counselling services.
Most of the state’s 440 dairy farmers are based in marginal electorates of Braddon, Lyons and Bass.
The plight of dairy farmers has captured the sympathy of the wider community, with some of the Australia’s best-known celebrities and athletes backing a campaign to buy locally produced milk.
Wilmot dairy farmer and Braddon voter Jude Charleston said aid to dairy farmers needed to be sooner rather than later.
Dairy farmers have been devastated by plunging and backdated milk prices by processing companies Murray Goulburn and Fonterra.
Ms Charleston, whose husband has left to work in Queensland to help get them through, said that rural financial counselling was not much help.
“In Victoria they have given $1.5 million to counselling but no farmer in his 50s is going to call. It’s a farmers pride thing,” she said.
“They should divvy it up and give some cash to farmers.”
She said that help for dairy farmers would be welcome, as it was when people rallied around Caterpillar when it closed its Burnie operations.
“With the dairy industry its an industry we want to keep in the state,” she said.
“Most definitely we need help to survive. What they might come up with I’m not real sure.”
She said a concessional loan, similar to a drought loan, could help because fertiliser and feed grain had to be bought to keep cows producing.
Labor yesterday attacked Mr Joyce, saying his proposal lacked detail and had taken three weeks to arrive.
“I can’t help but be disappointed by your correspondence for two reasons,” Mr Fitzgibbon said to Mr Joyce.
“It arrived more than three weeks after the crisis first emerged, two weeks into the caretaker period and 24 hours after you declared publicly you had come to the conclusion that the caretaker conventions were a barrier to you acting.
“You have provided little detail about what it is you are proposing — ‘developing a package’ [and] ‘additional resources’ are vague and qualified terms.
“The true spirit of the caretaker conventions means providing the Opposition and me with all the information you have when determining these matters.”
Mr Fitzgibbon received a letter from Mr Joyce on Friday seeking Labor’s response by 3pm yesterday.
The row comes just days after Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull visited Tasmania and promised that the Government would “put in place the measures to enable [dairy farmers] to get through this,” he said.
“This has been a very dramatic reduction in price and it has had a very harsh impact on dairy farmers,” Mr Turnbull said.
Mr Turnbull’s visit included a call on Fonterra at Spreyton, where he talked up the China Australia Free Trade agreement.
“Our dairy industry is going to be a very big winner from the China Australia Free Trade Agreement,” he said at the time.
“The China Australia FTA will open up the Chinese market more than ever to Australian dairy exports.”
Independent Senator Jacqui Lambie has called for a 50c a litre emergency levy on milk sales.
“I believe our farmers when they say that 40 per cent of Tasmania’s dairy farms will be sold off to foreigners, bankrupted or shut down after the latest official downgrade of Australian milk prices — if no action is taken by our Government,” she said.
The Mercury understands the State Government will provide some assistance to dairy farmers.
Source: The Mercury