Longreach Pastoral College has been a vital provider of education in western Queensland for over 50 years and a significant number of property owners and station managers owe their livelihood to a facility that provided the practical tuition that created successful rural enterprises. The government needs to ensure the survival of the facility, or the very least, encourage private vocational training providers to use the facility at Longreach. The young people who can study in these rural and regional towns will find employment and stay in these local communities. Some will most likely forgo a rural education program if they have to travel away to secure a diploma or rural competency. The superannuation funds and pastoral companies that are expanding their rural enterprises across the north of the country will be the ones that could suffer the most. To find staff and potential property managers who have a rural background and a rural education will lead to more experienced and better-qualified staff that will want to stay on rural stations for longer.
St Leo’s College Foundation certainly appreciates the fact that opportunities need to be provided for young who that seek an education. The college within The University of Queensland has announced a series of scholarships for those families struggling in drought-affected areas. College Foundation chairman Sam Winston Smith has announced six scholarships would be aimed at helping those families whose sons wanted to begin or continue their university study, but were finding it difficult to continue because of drought-induced circumstances.
A minimum of two full and four partial accommodation scholarships in 2019 will be available. The two full accommodation scholarships will be made available for students attending university for the first time. In addition to this, four $5000 bursaries would be made available to students returning to St Leo’s for the second year in 2019.
“Each scholarship offered will be assessed on a professional and confidential basis. This follows in the tradition of the college supporting catholic young men form rural and remote Queensland to gain tertiary qualifications,” Mr Winston Smith said. Applications are closing late January and further information available at http://www.stleos.uq.edu.au/st-leos-foundation/.
Brad Passfield, a partner in high profile livestock and property agency Hourn & Bishop at Moura in Central Queensland, has had plenty on over the past couple of months with high volumes of feeder cattle from the Moura district into southern feedlot markets. “We usually have most of our cattle heading to processors with the supply chain arrangements we have built up over a long period of time, but this year the season has dictated that we needed to move a larger number than usual to feedlots with our season a litter dryer than is normal”. The Hourn & Bishop lads cover some country with their client base stretching from Augathella to the top of the Belyando. As such, with their backgrounding business, Brad earlier this year travelled into NSW to buy cattle to take advantage of the softer markets. “We purchased some impressive lines of cattle down there that put weight on easily in this country during the winter & hit feeder weights quickly so our clients decided to cash out before Christmas.”
More exciting for Brad and his wife Rachel was that they welcomed their second child late last week – a big week for deliveries Brad!
Former Deputy PM Barnaby Joyce’s suggestion that the ban on MPs employing their spouses should be lifted, as it would help save marriages, has failed the “pub test” even in Canberra as all politicians left the capital for the annual summer break. When former PM Tony Abbott imposed the ban five years ago, some families with a sitting member were racking in up to $500,000 per year in wages and travel allowances. With what Barnaby and his families have been through in the past 12 months, it may have been better for some other member to take up the ball on this one.
