Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

There is a devastating drought that is gripping many parts of Australia. We've seen media coverage of this recently, and it includes heart-rending imagery of people on the land managing their properties, managing their stock, managing the economic impacts on their families and managing and responding to the economic impacts in their towns. These scenes move Australians here in the chamber and out there in our communities.

More Australians may live in the cities than ever before—we are a fundamentally urban place—but our sense of national identity is still tied up with the outback and with the people who live and work in it. It's difficult to see those images of struggling farmers and not ask the questions: why is this happening? Why is it like this? Why now? The answer that is offered a lot by people who don't want to come to grips with our present reality is to quote Dorothea Mackellar, 'droughts and flooding rains'. They say: 'It's always been like this. It always will be. Nothing's changed.'