AAP has this story which shows that if you actually speak to farmers, rather than look at facebook polls, you’ll find that they care about climate change. Which makes sense – it’s their living, and in many cases their family land, and they can trace the changes better than most of us.

Beef and wool producer Marcus James says agriculture is more exposed to climate change than just about any other industry, and farmers are feeling it.

“Our seasons are changing,” the Tasmanian farmer told AAP.

“We’re having to adapt our pastures, we’re having to make changes into our animal breeding.

“That variability is really challenging.”

Mr James has been in Canberra for a two-day conference held by Farmers for Climate Action, a farmer-led advocacy organisation.

His views were shared by the majority of the 618 farmers surveyed ahead of the Farming Forever event, with 57 per cent pinpointing climate change as the greatest threat to agriculture.

This was up from 55 per cent in 2023, according to the report from the advocacy group and NAB, with the rates of farmers reporting unpredictable growing seasons and unusual rainfall patterns also ticking higher.  

The polling also revealed broad support for renewables, with 65 per cent looking to produce and store clean energy on their farms and 80 per cent supportive of local infrastructure upgrades to allow them to participate more easily in the transition.

The rollout of large-scale wind, solar and transmission infrastructure in pursuit of renewables targets has become a fractious issue in some regions.

Last week, the prime minister was pushed on the costs borne by the regions from big clean energy projects by hecklers at the News Corp Bush Summit, prompting Anthony Albanese to concede community consultation had fallen short. 

Farmers for Climate Action chief executive officer Natalie Collard said Tuesday’s survey and other polling of farmers consistently pointed to broad support for renewables and climate action.

“We see a lot of media telling us what farmers are thinking – well here’s some actual data,” she said.

“We listen to farmers, not Facebook comments.”

Mr James has already installed solar to power the irrigation system on his north Tasmanian property, an investment that paid itself off after four years and is now saving the farm more than $10,000 in bills annually. 

He and his wife Eleanor want to go further and have been looking into a big solar array to power the fast-expanding suburban development neighbouring their property, but regulatory barriers have so far made it too difficult.

The pair take a holistic view to operating a low-emissions and sustainable property that supports the economic viability of the farm and maximises co-benefits.

By participating in a soil carbon program, for example, their arable land becomes more productive and resilient to seasonal changes.

Eventually, Mr James is hopeful the soil project can generate carbon credits to offset the property’s diesel tractors and other hard-to-avoid emissions, with the view to producing carbon-neutral beef down the track.

Most farmers care about climate change and “want to do better”, he said. 

“Sometimes the challenge is not that they don’t want to do anything – it’s that it’s really hard to do some of the things that you want to do.”

Workplace relations minister Amanda Rishworth is on the Nine network, where she is asked about the weekend rallies. There is a bit of a move on within some of the media to reframe the marches as ‘good people who were snowed by Nazis’ which discounts the amount of information available before the march about who was helping to organise it and support it. As well as the themes of the march. Which was not just ‘good people want to support Australia’. The grace given to protesters at these marches, where neo-Nazis were platformed (and we are yet to hear condemnation from the anti-semitism envoy Jillian Segal, who was very quick to criticise anti-genocide protests) compared to those who attended Palestinian marches is very, very clear.

The debate has turned to ‘when will you release the next migration target’ rather than ‘how do we counter growing white supremacy and fascism in our community’.

Rishworth:

Well, firstly, I would say that there should be no excuses for people behaving badly like we saw on the weekend, making people feel uncomfortable in their own communities.

So I think we all need to stand up and say that there is a no place to be calling for people, particular groups of people, if they don’t look like you, to be excluded from this country. So I’ll just make that point.

When it comes to migration policy, we’ve been doing a lot of work when it comes to migration policy. And for example, we have seen a reduction in the net overseas migration from the peak of Covid levels, down 37%, particularly as a result of a number of things, but including sustainability around student visas. 

So, look, we continue to work on this. Obviously, we’re working with states and territories on the permanent migration figures, but we do need to recognise there was a large bump as we came out of Covid, but we are working on a sustainable migration system across the board.

The government’s bill for cheaper medicines, which lowers medicines on the PBS from $31.60 to a maximum $25 passed both houses late yesterday.

Health Minister Mark Butler was up early doing the media rounds. He told the Seven network:

This will make a huge difference. It follows four waves of cheaper medicine policies in our first term of government that have already saved people about 1.5 billion dollars at the pharmacy counter in payment. This is on top of that. It will save another 200 million dollars every year for patients and make it easier to ensure they are actually able to fill the scripts that their doctors have said are important for their health.

We’re hearing far too many stories of people going into pharmacies and asking for advice – if they had a number of different scripts in their hand which did they have to really fill and which could they go without because they couldn’t afford to fill all of them. That’s why we’re so focused on delivering cheaper medicines. It’s good for the hip pocket, which is important. But it’s also good for your health. It maximises the chance that people can afford the medicines that are important for their health.

The fallout continues after the weekend’s neo-Nazi supported marches. Independent senator Lidia Thorpe spoke directly to Indigenous Australians following the (unprovoked) attacks on Melbourne’s Camp Sovereignty.

Thorpe said she will not let “a far right, white extremist group…take away who we are, take away what we are about. And we are about love and we are about bringing people together.”

Anthony Albanese is also drawing criticism (and some comparisons to ‘good people on both sides’ Trump) for saying there were some “good people” at the weekend marches. Here is the context:

Q: Do you think there were good people with legitimate concerns at these anti-immigration rallies this weekend?
 
Albanese:

Of course, there’s always good people will turn up to demonstrate their views about particular issues. But what we have here is neo-Nazis being given a platform. That’s what we saw on the weekend. And the tone of course of much of the rallies was – unfortunate is the best way that you could put it, but hateful in some of the extreme examples. And the idea that an open neo-Nazi was able to give a speech from the steps of the Victorian Parliament is something that isn’t the Australian way.

And later in the same interview:

Q: So, is your message to these people, we are getting the numbers down?
 
Albanese:

Well, we are getting the numbers down. But migration also is important and multiculturalism is a part of who we are as a modern nation. And I just say to people of – and I have no doubt that there would have been good people who went along, heard about a rally, are concerned, have views –
 

Q: I’ve seen them talk about long housing queues for rentals. They’re concerned about their access to housing.
 
Albanese:

Of course. But you should have a look at who you were with on Sunday, I think, and the motivation that they have. Which isn’t actually about housing or our economy or anything else, it’s about sowing division. And neo-Nazis have no role. The fact that people are openly identifying that way –
 

Q: What did you think of what they did in Camp Sovereignty in Melbourne, where they went and destroyed that?
 
Albanese:

Well, it’s just – exactly. Here you have people who are saying they’re against migration. Well, the first Australians were here before any migrant or descendant of migrants. And that just has no place, that sort of violence has no place.

Hello and welcome to another day of parliament.

We’ll let Bob Katter sum up the feelings for all of us:

(Photo by Mike Bowers)

After yesterday, which was a bit of a mess if we are honest, there seems to be some actual domestic issues taking precedent over the international stories which have dominated for the last few months (years if you also take into account the Gaza genocide, which is continuing as you read this).

The calls for some sort of population plan, or at least more information on what the government expects to happen with the population and what is being planned, are getting louder. In an interview with the ABC on Monday afternoon, Anthony Albanese said:

Well, we are getting the numbers down. But migration also is important and multiculturalism is a part of who we are as a modern nation. And I just say to people of – and I have no doubt that there would have been good people who went along, heard about a rally, are concerned, have views –

… But you should have a look at who you were with on Sunday, I think, and the motivation that they have. Which isn’t actually about housing or our economy or anything else, it’s about sowing division. And neo-Nazis have no role.
 

Australia’s migration intake is not out of control and anyone describing it as ‘mass’ is either deliberately misleading people to inflame tensions, or is repeating terms unthinkingly. Population growth is actually slightly under when it was predicted by the Morrison government before the pandemic. The intake numbers have slowed following the re-opening of the borders after the pandemic closures. The issue is not one of migration, but if a lack of planning on behalf of successive governments, and an out of control housing market, where prices, artificially inflated by tax subsidies such as negative gearing and the capital gains discount have been turbo charged beyond affordability. And with enough vested interests trying to deflect attention from their culpability to migrants, combined with a few doses of racism and boom. Tinder box set.

(Photo by Mike Bowers)

Meanwhile, the government is still dancing around its 2035 climate target, setting up the circumstances to do the least amount possible. It has delayed releasing the national climate risk assessment report, which was described to me as “really, really confronting” by someone who has knowledge of it, with speculation it doesn’t want to release the report until after it has set the target. Meanwhile the Coalition continue to tear themselves apart over what they want to do with the literal bare minimum – net zero, with the fallout continuing from Barnaby Joyce’s warning to Liberal shadow frontbencher Andrew Hastie not to speak in support of his private members’ bill to end net zero. Hastie would have to resign from the shadow bench to do so, and that would set off the fight over Ley’s leadership (already without much authority) and potentially lead to out and out in-fighting among the Liberals. The story was one of Labor’s favourite’s yesterday, but Labor is facing its own pressure to put a number on it.

Meanwhile Tony Burke and other senior government ministers are being asked more about the Nauru resettlement deal (which may be up to $400m to resettle no one if the courts strike out the new legislation Burke has introduced to the parliament – but the details are secret, so no one knows, let alone the human cost of sending people to a third party nation they have no connection to, limited prospects of building a life, and also face the threat of potential deportation to a country of origin which could result in their torture or death.)

And Sam Rae, the aged care minister, is getting a first hand experience as to what it was like being Andrew Giles last year, as the aged care home care wait list unites the Greens, the Coalition and the independents in demanding answers. The Coalition actually seem to have stumbled on to a social policy issue that matters and needs answers, and the rest of the parliament are doing their job in ensuring the issue stays on track (which the Coalition need help with)

So we enter this Tuesday with the party room meetings about to happen, on-going tension in the Coalition, Labor facing some of their first actual tests, and the independents and Greens really starting to find their own on how to get issues that need it, airtime.

So grab your coffee – it is a three coffee morning over here. Ready? Let’s get into it.