AUSTRALIAN FARMERS’ TROUBLES

Waipa Post, Volume 31, Issue 1765, 1 June 1926, Page 3

AUSTRALIAN FARMERS’ TROUBLES

PAYING i'Olt HACKLY PEAK.

AND OTHER PESTS.

A HUGE ANNUAL BILL.

I will pit my loyalty to Australia against the next man’s, says a writer in the “Live Stock Bulletin,” but, for all that, I cannot help expressing the opinion that when, it comes to the big issues we Australians are a pack of fools, totally lacking in unanimity, vision, and the power of getting things done afe a nation. Look, for example, at the horde of pests that take toll of Australia’s wealth to the tune of £30,000,000 per annum, and then notice our pathetic efforts to combat them! The fecund rabbit, according to our most (reputable authorities, costs Australia per annum! That is, were it not for the fact that our pastures have to feed untold millions of this imported parasite, the carrying capacity of our grazing lands would be equal to a further 25,000,000 sheep". Add to this indirect loss what is lost in wages, cartage, railage 1 , etc., and you begin to realise that the figure -

quoted is not extravagant. NoV have I mentioned a word about the direct loss in the cost of erecting wire netting fences, digging out, etc. The rabbit has done more in New South Wales to retard settlement than all other factors put together—including the politicians.

Then we come to prickly peat’, the silent invader that has captured 32,000,000 acres of our fairest lands. No foreign invasion, armed with flashing bayonets instead of spiked thorns, could have more effectively captured and held this great slice of richest Australia. No human enemy —black, brown, yellow, white, or brindle—could have more ruthlessly despoiled the country it has overrun than this green peril. For many year s warning upon warning failed to stir the slothful apathy of public opinion or the traditional indecision of Governments.

Australia’s enemies are not without. They are within. And foremost among them is the lack of a national viewpoint upon national problems—the things that really matter. Apathy and not horse racing, Is our greatest national sin. Such a relatively unimportant thing as' the hanging of a fiendish murderer will arouse the sluggish imagination as nothing else will. But confront it with the alarming spread of prickly pear or the urgent need for more settlers and better settlement conditions, or the appalling annual loss from a horde of parasitic pests, and it is content to leave such tiresome details to the mercy of incompetent politicians. But let me get back to figures and facts. The risk has cost Queensland a 'round £7,000,000 and New South Wales a princely sum. The blowfly costs us a cool two million per.annum; plant diseases demand, on an average, a further £5 000,000; the weevil, 'in our wheat stacks, filches yet another million; tuberculosis in stock is estimated at £750,000; the fruit fly at £250,000; black disease in sheep £4OO- - And then I haven’t said a word about pleuro, blackleg, mamitis, bunchy, top, codlin moth, cut worms, caterpillars, dingoes, or foxes. A cheque for £30,000,000 wouldn’t pay the • colossal damage. And what do we do about it? Nothing! Well, practically nothing. We have, a Commonwealth Bureau of Science and Industry whose job it is to solve all these first class: problems for us, and a miserable £16,000 per annum is all they get to do it with! If the angels have no sense of humour, how they must weep at the folly of us mortals!