2020 Bush Summit
Prime Minister Scott Morrison addresses the crowd at Cooma
This year’s Daily Telegraph’s Bush Summit was held in Cooma and brought the national focus back to the impact of extreme weather on the landscape and the people who live and work with its repercussions.
Speakers from the Prime Minister down noted the impact drought, floods, bushfires and now COVID-19, has had and continues to have on regional Australia.
Resilience was a key theme throughout the day, resilience, not only of our agricultural land, but also of rural communities and individuals. In that context, there was plenty of discussion of mental health, quite natural given many communities have had the triple whammy of drought, bushfire and pandemic within less than the past year.
TMI’s Chairman Gary Nairn represented the institute and took the opportunity to remind the Prime Minister of his visit to Mulloon Creek in 2018. It was encouraging to receive a positive response from him about supporting farmer led ‘peer to peer’ training to expand landscape rehydration, improve soil carbon, biodiversity and better prepare farmers for the inevitable next dry spell.
The Premier of NSW also attended the Bush Summit, as did Federal and State Opposition leaders along with a number of Federal and State Ministers.