We have a major food shortage looming, not just in dairy foods, but poultry and pigs from the lack of feed and possibly vegetables from a lack of water.

Charities like Buy a Bale provide relief but shadow the true picture facing farmers. There are 100,000 drought affected dairy cows to feed in NSW, each needing 25kg/day or 2500 tonnes in total or 100 semitrailer loads. Every day. Beef and sheep feeding multiplies the number many times. 

Karl Marx said “Charity keeps the status quo.” There still remains a drought after charity help, so true change is required. Prices for food must go up, yet we are months into this drought and the major supermarkets are still discounting food from drought ravaged farmers. Why is there no pressure on the supermarkets?

The monstrous power of our supermarkets is frightening. The milk industry has lobbied supermarkets for months to have prices lifted so as to reflect the ever increasing farm costs of production which are now close to $1 a litre. Farmers like myself are now culling premium livestock, rather than lose everything we have worked for over a lifetime. We are all losing money.

The status quo must change and can only happen with the consumer action. The supermarket price wars was started by Coles with milk. It needs to end. Now. Australia agriculture is now vulnerable, flowing on to all rural communities and to all the jobs in processing farm products.

Consumers must send a message to the supermarkets that this behaviour is unacceptable. Coles must stop discounting fresh food from drought devastated farmers. Now is not the time for farmers to be subsiding consumers with cheap food. Australian food security is being put at risk.  

Childcare improvements have made big inroads for local families. One family let me know that $11 per week, per child, now comes back to them. As the mother said, that’s her milk bill paid each week. I’m looking after the mums and dads on low and middle incomes.

Labor is worrying about families at the top end of town. Families earning more than $186,000 up to around $351,000 have a new capped rebate of $10,190 a year instead of $7500. Five thousand families in Gilmore are benefiting. Across Australia, we are injecting an extra $2.5 billion of funding into the system. Labor has no policy or plan for child care and they can’t say how they would make the system more affordable for families in Gilmore.

We’re putting an extra $1300, on average, in the pockets of families each year for each child in child care. More families can choose the hours of childcare that suit their work, rather than having to work around what childcare they could afford. We’ve abolished the $7500 annual rebate cap and we’ve locked in funding for preschool for this year and next. This gives us time to work through attendance issues, including the fact that about 30 per cent of children don’t attend the full 15 hours per week.

As a former teacher and someone who championed the continuance of funding for 15 hours of preschool teaching per week, I am proud of these reforms we’re making to education.