Water

I've been doing a bit of thinking lately. It's ok, I made sure that I wasn't using power equipment while I was doing it. What I've been thinking about is the recurring outbursts of abuse directed at farmers in general and irrigators in particular. Personally, I don't like to get involved in these sort of arguments as I'm not interested in converting anybody to my point of view and I've already considered - and disregarded as lacking merit - other points of view. I particularly don't like to get into arguments on popular sites because these sites by their very nature attract a lot of groupies and hangers-on whose idea of rational debate is to go "Yeah!, What He/She said!" followed by assorted regurgitated insults.
That sort of schoolyard groupthink annoyed me at school (where, believe it or not, I had a small coterie of hangers-on - for all of whom I had contempt.), in adults, it's just pathetic. TSSH, which was one of the first blogs I ever read, and which remains a favourite, has such a coterie who are, admittedly, a lot wittier than the run of the mill groupies you get on political sites. I couldn't be bothered trying to reason with them, but I felt like venting my opinion regarding some of the comments left on this thread. In particular, I wanted to address this comment:

I wish I had the ability to amortise my annual tax bill over five years.
"Hi you're from the ATO right?"
"...Well fuck off - I'm not gonna pay any tax for the next five years sucka..."
I also wish I could enjoy a cosy fuel subsidy.
And a machinery subsidy as a primary producer...which I know I should use to buy a new tractor, but I just gotta have me one of them new fucking Fairlanes for the farm.
And I wanna know the answer to just one question:
Why do we grow rice in this country?
It's bad enough that the cunting farmers sell all their best produce overseas and push the shit into the shops for us city folk at ridiculous prices, they use 75% of our DRINKING water to irrigate fucking rice paddies.
This ain't 'Nam.
This 'salt of the earth' shit is getting mighty tedious too.
Just because you get up at sparrows and pull on gumboots instead of Hush Puppies don't make me any less of a hard worker if I work in the Metropolis.
'Farmer' is Latin for 'whinger'.
Face it, most are Collins and Macquarie Street farmers anyway - so you can take your cheap rural lifestyle and retirement vineyard and soft goats cheese churning and jam it with supersonic force up your ass.
M.E.N.(former Murray Grey & Hereford breeder)

Which was submitted by a Major Elvis Newton. I don't know Major Newton, nor do I have any particular animus regarding him/her, it's just handy to have all the ignorant, misleading stereotypical bullshit wrapped up in one handy package. Let's start at the top shall we?

I wish I had the ability to amortise my annual tax bill over five years."Hi you're from the ATO right?""...Well fuck off - I'm not gonna pay any tax for the next five years sucka..."

You could do that, I suppose. Particularly if you were very stupid. I must admit to not being the most knowledgable person in the world when it comes to taxation law, but I know what amortise - or as the Americans and therefore, the interweb would have it; amortize- means.

Main Entry: amor·tizePronunciation: 'a-m&r-"tIz, &-'mor-Function: transitive verbInflected Forms: -tized; -tiz·ing: to reduce (an amount) gradually: as a : to pay off (as a loan) gradually usually by periodic payments of principal and interest or payments to a sinking fund b : to gradually reduce the cost of (as an asset) esp. for tax purposes by making periodic charges to income over a time span —see also DEPRECIATION —compare CAPITALIZE, DEDUCT —amor·ti·za·ble adjective —amor·ti·za·tion /"a-m&r-t&-'zA-sh&n, &-"mor-/ noun
Source: Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law, © 1996 Merriam-Webster, Inc

I'm not entirely certain that Elvis's plan fits in with this definition. He follows up this piece of stupidity with another one:

I also wish I could enjoy a cosy fuel subsidy.

Here we come to one of the great hypocrisies of the anti farming brigade. In one breath they will proselytise about how farmers are really socialists who want to live a subsidised life and be supported by everyone else, then in the next breath they will complain that farmers aren't subsidising them. The alleged subsidy is, in fact an exemption from a portion of the taxes which are payable on diesel fuel, provided that the fuel is only used on-farm (audits on fuel use are fairly common, so is creative book-keeping) - ULP is not affected. I was under the impression that it was a Queensland only thing, but I'm too lazy to research it. Be that as it may, in Budget after Budget, Policy Speech after Policy Speech and complaint after complaint by motoring organisations, we are reminded that these taxes are raised specifically for the construction and maintenance of transport infrastructure. If we're not using it, why should we pay for it? Britain has a similar scheme, but a much more elegant way of administering it; fuel for on road use is dyed one colour and off road fuel dyed another colour. Get pulled over with the wrong coloured fuel in your Scania and you're in deep do-do. Moving on...

And a machinery subsidy as a primary producer...which I know I should use to buy a new tractor, but I just gotta have me one of them new fucking Fairlanes for the farm.

I don't see how the Fairlane relates to the subsidy, nor was I aware of the subsidy. Farm machinery is eligible for a rebate in the form of GST input credits, as is Murdoch's printing press. Fairlanes aren't. For a farm motor vehicle to be eligible it must be diesel powered and of a commercial type (4WD ute, truck, etc.) However most urban business people seem to find a way to write off the leasing costs of their SAABs and BMWs. That's ok, though; they aren't farmers therefore they're clever, not crooked. I wonder how many dirty weekends on the Gold Coast find their way onto tax returns as 'seminars' and 'field trips'?
Now we get to a really good one:

And I wanna know the answer to just one question:
Why do we grow rice in this country?
It's bad enough that the cunting farmers sell all their best produce overseas and push the shit into the shops for us city folk at ridiculous prices, they use 75% of our DRINKING water to irrigate fucking rice paddies.
This ain't 'Nam.

This is stupid in so many ways; first the classic Green Left Weekly language of identifying a crop and asking why is it grown in this country as if the mere presence of agriculture is going to cause the end of life as we know it. The short, blindingly obvious reason that rice is grown in this country would be that the people growing rice believe that they can make money doing it. It isn't some dark plot by the Secret Planet Raping Overlords™ to destroy the environment - it's a business decision made in the interests of profit in much the same way every other business decision is made. They assessd the geology, geography, hydrology, climatology and regulatory environment and decided it could be a profitable venture. I would also ask how Major Newton arrived at his ridiculous water usage figure. Rice Growers don't use ANY of my drinking water, nor that of anybody else in Queensland, Northern NSW, eastern NSW(including Sidderny). They use very little water of anybody in Victoria and, unless they're growing rice on the Ord these days (research it yourself, lazypants) they don't use any West Australian water. Which leaves the people around- and downstream of- Deniliquin. The major population centre of this area is, of course, Adelaide.
Leaving aside the interesting development that somebody besides the cotton industry is getting the blame for Adelaide's woes, if the rice industry really is depriving Adelaide of 75% of it's drinking water, then more power to the rice industry. I think that it would be immensely satisfying to cause 75% of the morose cousin fuckers living in Adelaide to die a slow, agonising death. You could sell tickets for that. Adelaide is a shit hole with very few redeeming features. The Penfolds Winery in Magill and some of the roads in the hills are worth saving, apart from that it is already a wasteland filled with generic colonial architecture that croweaters rave about because they have nothing else to speak of.
Also, how DARE those filthy ricegrowers sell their produce to the highest bidder?!?!? That's..., that's..., capitalism!! Not that I can remember buying a kilo of rice and thinking "Shit, now I'll have to put the hotpants on and go and sell my arse a few times to pay for that."
It's rice. It isn't all that prohibitively priced. Moving on:

Just because you get up at sparrows and pull on gumboots instead of Hush Puppies don't make me any less of a hard worker if I work in the Metropolis.

Agreed. This annoys me, too. Most of the people who talk like this wouldn't work hard if they were test pilots in a brothel. The most tiring job I've had was when I was an insurance agent. You can't disagree with somebody over everything, despite what the political parties would have you believe. Anyway:

'Farmer' is Latin for 'whinger'.

Whatever. See my earlier comment re; regurgitated insults.


Face it, most are Collins and Macquarie Street farmers anyway - so you can take your cheap rural lifestyle and retirement vineyard and soft goats cheese churning and jam it with supersonic force up your ass.

Don't get too many of those around here. I imagine they'd be fairly annoying to have around.

M.E.N.(former Murray Grey & Hereford breeder)

Not sure of the relevance of his status as an ex- cattle breeder, except to say that graziers, out of all sectors of the agricultural industry are the most deseving of the title of whinger.
Oh, and the Murray Grey Breeders' Society had a seminar or something to celebrate the 100th anniversay of the breed this week.

Leaving aside Major Elvis's little outburst for a second, I also got to thinking about the water situation in this country, particularly the way that farmers have been scapegoated over it. The reason is obvious, of course - their aren't as many farmers as non-farmers and most farmers are white; therefore it's ok to vilify them. I would ask all those urban psuedo-greenies just what they are prepared to do - personally - to help alleviate the problem. Here is where I have some respect for genuine greenies; they are prepared to back their words with actions. I don't agree with them on much, but you've got to respect someone who has the courage of their convictions.

How many Elvis Newtons have lobbied their local council to get rainwater tanks made compulsory? Ditto grey water re-usage? Waste water recycling plants? Why aren't we deveoping desalination plants? Adelaide is the capital city of the driest state of the driest inhabited continent on earth. To the best of my knowledge it has done none of these things, preferring to shift the blame rather than assume responsibility for it's own predicament.

Sydney has an annual rainfall of approximately four feet. All 4,800 points of it go out sea through the storm water drains. This may have changed in the last year or so, but until recently, rainwater tanks were banned. But farmers are wasting water.

Why do we need golf courses? They use more water per acre than rice and cotton combined, are the single biggest contributor of the nitrogen necessary for outbreaks of blue-green algae and spunky chicks don't play it; not since Jan Stephenson, anyway. Which reminds me of a story about the Greatest TV Blooper Ever. Ms. Stephenson was playing a tournament on a windswept course in Scotland wearing a mini skirt. In the commentators booth the monitor was showing an overhead shot of the hole she was playing. The picture going to air was a rear on shot of Ms. Stephenson lining up her putt. As the wind blew her skirt up, showing her derriere, the following conversation took place between the commentators:

Commentator no. 1: What a lovely tight little hole that is.

Commentator no. 2: Yes, and I can tell you from personal experience that it used to be even tighter.