Clear vision needed for farming future

You're not likely to hear many eco-warriors call dams a response to climate change, but the fact of the matter is that if droughts are getting longer and flooding more intense, then we need to have strong water infrastructure to maintain our farms, our businesses and our communities.

I heard one farmer on the north coast declare that he had experienced three "one-in-a-hundred-year events" in the past year alone.

This region is absolutely soaked, to the point that you need a bucket for a rain gauge, but we know that there will eventually be a drought to follow these floods.

It is disgraceful that we went for so many years without building a major piece of water infrastructure like a dam, and during the last drought we got very close to seeing the human cost of not investing in water.

For many years we have allowed eco-warriors to get away with their rhetoric (anyone remember the dams that would never fill again?) and shape public policy and expenditure, driving us ever closer to breaking point.

Thankfully, this government has committed the money to build some major dams and I hope we see more of it in the future.

We know we will get more intense rain and floods, and longer and drier droughts, so why not catch the rain now to store for tomorrow?

Who in their right mind can look at Lismore and not wonder what might have been if we could have stopped the floodwater in a dam upstream?

I am sure we will hear the eco-warriors complain about not enough spending in the budget to get us to net zero, but let's focus instead on the practical climate change expenditure: more dams to secure our farms, our businesses and our communities.

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