FEDERAL Agricultural Minister Barnaby Joyce has indicated that the federal government could reinstate funding for the popular Great Artesian Basin Sustainability Initiative (GABSI) during today’s drought tour of properties at Mitchell and Charleville.
Natural resource management and landholder groups were devastated when the federal government cut funding for the vital environmental program on July 1 this year.
Speaking to Queensland Country Life during a tour of a beef property 25 kilometres south-east of Charleville, Mr Joyce said he was keen to pursue the GABSI funding.
“GABSI has emerged as a key issue for people from Walgett to Charleville and its importance is well understood by the Treasurer,” Mr Joyce said.
Joining Mr Joyce on the tour was Federal Treasurer Joe Hockey, who said changes could be made to his government’s drought assistance scheme to enable more farmers to access essential funds.
The Treasurer wouldn’t be drawn on the details of those changes but said some could be made “quite quickly”.
“So much can be achieved with just by making minor adjustments to packages and making them more assessable,” he said.
“There are some things we can do quite quickly and there are other things that will take a little longer.
“If a community has a massive drop-off in its income that not only affects the community, it affects the tax office, so I think there are ways that we can try and smooth over some of the peaks and troughs of revenue collections.”
The ministers initially met with landholders and councillors from the Maranoa Regional Council at Mitchell before continuing to Charleville, where they spent over an hour touring Kelvin and Cathy Rule’s property, Vera Park, before attending a meeting with landholders at the racecourse.
That meeting was closed to media and local banking representatives to ensure landholders could speak freely about the issues affecting their operations.
During the tour of their 25,000-acre property, Cathy and Kelvin Rule showed off a vital water development they were able to complete with funding from the Emergency Water Development program.
“We were able to access those funds but I don’t think we qualify for the low interest loans,” Ms Rule said.
“We couldn’t meet the asset test. When you take into account all your plant and equipment and any off-farm investments you might have you can’t do it.”