Heating up the rural policy climate.

Abstract

The last months of extreme temperatures have seen extensive coverage of its impact on rural Australia. Reports on the drought, drying rivers, algal blooms and fish kills have appeared across the media. It has also seen the re-emergence on social media of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) program1 showing the levels of collusion, non-compliance and lack of monitoring associated with the Murray-Darling Basin plan. Some governments have signed up to the plan without sufficient commitment to implementation, compliance monitoring and reporting. This implementation failure coincides with the death of hundreds of thousands of native fish. Some of these Murray Cod had survived up to a 100 years of droughts and climate variation. They are now dead and the long-term consequences of this tragedy will be visited on our future generations. Vibrant rural towns with healthy environments, thriving industry and good community amenity are conducive to healthy living and make attractive places for health professionals to live and work; towns with drying rivers and dead fish do not. Some town councils have released advice to boil the town water before drinking, whereas others have not even been able to provide drinking water for days at a time. How did it come to this? What is the short- and long-term impact of this situation on the health of these communities? Why was this failure of policy implementation not recognised and addressed earlier? The situation raises the broader issue of missed opportunities to highlight the link between the health of rural communities and the health of our environment. The ongoing challenge for rural communities is that key decisions are usually made in the capital cities and decision-makers see most clearly that which is right before their eyes. We need to support our parliamentarians and advocates to ensure the issues important to rural Australians are placed in front of the key decision-makers. We are in the lead-up to elections. This is a prime time for advocacy. To inform and support our arguments, we have various recently completed and commenced Senate Inquiries and Royal Commissions, such as The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety and the Senate Inquiry Report on Accessibility and Quality of Mental Health Services in Rural and Remote Australia. It is interesting to note the first two recommendations of the Senate Inquiry report in rural and remote mental health were: These recommendations could also apply to rural health generally and align well with the position of the National Rural Health Alliance3 and the position of the Australian Journal of Rural Health4 who have called for the development of a rural health strategy. The current situation with respect to the Murray-Darling Basin plan highlights the importance of recommendation 2. Effective policy implementation monitoring and regulation require that: Our current situation suggests that governments have failed on points 2, 3 and 4. The ABC ‘Four Corners’ program alludes to collusion between government regulators and irrigators in accounting for its failure to implement the Plan. The Murray-Darling Basin is the 20th largest water catchment in the world and comprises over 1 000 000 km2, 60% of the land mass of Victoria, 75% of the land mass of New South Wales (NSW) and has a population of 2.6 million people. Social media have highlighted that the NSW government has more parking inspectors in the suburb of Five Dock than compliance officers for the entire NSW part of the Murray-Darling Basin river system. Why is an issue as important to rural Australia as the health and viability of the Murray-Darling basin and the industries, communities and the environments that rely on it, given such little attention? What does this say about us and about our policy-makers? As rural Australians, we all have rights, responsibilities and opportunities. We must continue to raise the issue of a healthy rural Australia with politicians, their policy advisors and rural advocates. This includes the issue of the health of our environment and its impact on the health of our industries, the health of our communities and the health of our people. Political parties are now devising and drafting their election policies and funding commitments. Now is the time to ensure that we park the health of rural Australia ‘front and centre’ on their agenda.