iceblue said:
And NO I dont believe in bailouts. The farmers can bail themselves out by having the balls to stand up for themselves.
iceblue,
I do not believe in bailouts either.
But I do believe that we as a community and government do need to support vital industries. Australia is approaching a critical point where self-sufficiency is not possible and this is the death sentence to a nation. All it takes is an interruption of supply, whether war, natural disaster, market forces, disease, etc and the consequences are catastrophic.
This is one thing that the USA does understand and why there is some archiac regulation and laws surrounding some vital industries... best example is shipbuilding which is supported by the Jones Act(google is your friend). While there has been many attempts to abolish this act, the premis of keeping the act in place is that it keeps the US shipbulding industry alive, even at a huge cost to the community. Why is this important? Because there are industries that if left to die, the skills, infrastructure, tooling, and etc. would take years, if not decades to reestablish, which mean that if there was a crisis and the seemingly cheap and easily obtainable supply(ships built in Asia) were to become unavailable, the time lost to rebuild these industries locally to supply the community would be far too long to be able to avert the death of the community.
Australia has become complacent and short-sighted. The loss of the manfacturing and industry could cause a mortal blow the nation. There would be no need for bail-outs if these vital industries were supported and protected.
Correct me if I am wrong, but setting up a fully operation dairy farm could not be accomplished in less the 9 months, if the equipment, feed supply, heifers, infrastructure was readily at hand. Not mention the loss of animal husbandry skills that may have been lost. I see no way that in a crisis situation where the foreign(state or nation) milk supply was threatened, a reliable local supply could be reestblished in less than 12 months. Thankfully milk is not a required to stay alive, but a 12 month lag would cause some serious inconvenience.
Do I think the dairy industry should be bailed out? At the very least QLD would be wise to put in place measures the protect and support their diary industry if the supply of milk is important to the QLD community.