SUNRICE CUTS SHIFTS AT DENILIQUIN AND LEETON
The NSW Government and the Federal Government have just cost the Riverina hundreds of jobs and a massive chunk of our food production, and they have the hide to act surprised.
SunRice has been forced to slash operations at both its Deniliquin and Leeton mills. The Deniliquin mill is down to a single eight hour shift, five days a week. Leeton is going the same way, cut from round-the-clock production to sixteen hours a day, five days a week.
SunRice did not want to make these cuts. They have been forced into it by failed government water policy, including federal buybacks that have driven the cost of water through the roof while stripping away the access producers need to grow the crop in the first place. When you make water too dear and too scarce to farm rice, this is exactly what happens. What did the State and Federal Governments think would happen?
And while our growers and processors are being squeezed off the land, Agriculture Minister Tara Moriarty has been misallocating millions of dollars through the Sustainable Communities Program, yet she is happy to let a business like SunRice suffer so badly it has no choice but to cut production. Why won't Minister Moriarty start supporting rural NSW instead of destroying it?
We can no longer allow governments to destroy our rivers and the rural communities that depend on them, and that is why we need a Federal Royal Commission into water, right now. We need to understand under oath just how badly water policy has failed us over the last twenty years, because only an independent Federal Royal Commission can get to the bottom of this mess and start putting it right.
Support the call for a Federal Royal Commission into water.
