TWO larger-than-life politicians, both characterised by striking hairdos, are likely to help shape the course of events in Australia in 2017.
I refer to Donald Trump, the iconoclastic president-elect of the United States, and our own Pauline Hanson, the reincarnated and recalibrated leader of the no-longer-lampooned One Nation Party.
Trump was elected to the world’s most powerful office with a mandate to “make America great again”, and even if he lives up to only a half of his pre-election rhetoric, he will initiate changes so far-reaching that the effects will be truly global.
Hanson, for her part, could well become the decisive force in Australian politics, either directly – through her party’s crucial votes in a fragmented Senate – or indirectly as a subliminal but potent influence on government policy.
The year ahead will be a watershed one for Australia, and how we face up to the challenges could well determine the nation our grandkids inherit.
Unquestionably the immediate priority is to get the budget under control, and this will call on statesmanship of a high order from Malcolm Turnbull. He must make the case for economic reforms so convincing, and so pressing, that he will take the voters with him, leaving Labor and the minor parties with nowhere to go.
But just as pressing are structural changes needed to get the nation back to work, and to reboot the industries so vital to jobs creation and regional growth.
That means solving our self-inflicted energy problems, upgrading our national rail and water infrastructure and encouraging investment in regionally-based value-adding industry.
On the farm scene, we can only hope for a continuation of the conditions that reinvigorated the sector in 2016, bringing kids back to many a farm and restoring the status of agriculture as a career worth pursuing.
Nor is it just that. Farming is much more than number-crunching and “agribusiness”: it’s a way of life, one that underpins rural communities and defines our national character. That’s why it’s vital that farming remains essentially a family affair and not just a pool for mega-investment by institutions seeking a safe haven for their funds.
This kind of investment clearly has a place in Australian agriculture, but it disturbs me when I see agents setting out to put together a multi-property parcel of potential interest to these buyers, knowing the outcome will be a net loss of families to a district.
It’s an unenviable game of high stakes, as the property owners who are approached know that if they don’t participate, they stand to miss out on a never-to-be-repeated price.How much more heart-warming it is to see families taking up farmland previously resumed for other uses, like at Dunedoo where the first auction was held last month of blocks from the former Cobbora Holdings coalmine site.
