Monitoring Agricultural Drought in Australia - Monitoring and Predicting Agricultural Drought: A Global Study - page 373

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G overnment's Response to Drought
Constitutionally, Australia is a federation of effectively seven states (figure
29.1) with governments at both federal and state levels concerned with
agriculture and drought. With respect to drought monitoring, the fed-
eral government is responsible for meteorological observations through
the National Climate Center of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology
( http://www.bom.gov.au). The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS; http://
www.abs.gov.au) compiles, at a district level, annual statistics on crop pro-
duction and livestock numbers from individual properties. Similarly, the
Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resource Economics (http://www.
abare.gov.au) conducts annual surveys to obtain district-level economic
information. The federal government is responsible for policy develop-
ment through the portfolio of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry-Australia
(http://www.affa.gov.au) and the Bureau of Resource Sciences ( http://
www.brs.gov.au), for objective analysis of claims for “exceptional circum-
stances” assistance. The federal government also sponsors national-scale
research projects through various funding agencies (e.g., http://www.cvap.
gov.au). State governments are responsible for land-use including drought
management, drought monitoring, and, in some cases, administration of
drought relief.
During severe droughts, the federal government provides welfare sup-
port to eligible primary producers and, together with some state govern-
ments, provides various forms of business support. The national drought
policy, established in 1992, proposed that federal government support
would be initiated once it was ascertained that rainfall and agronomic con-
ditions were rare and severe enough as to be likely to occur only once in
20-25 years and to last more than 12 months. The “drought exceptional
circumstances” (DEC) policy revolved around the assessment of six cri-
teria: meteorological conditions; agronomic and stock conditions; water
supplies; environmental impacts; farm income levels; and scale of the event.
In 1997, the federal government broadened the concept of DEC to include
exceptional events other than drought (e.g., insect plagues, disease, and
water logging). Based on new declaration procedures for exceptional cir-
cumstances (EC) approved in 1999, economic criteria now take precedence
in determining whether federal government assistance is warranted (White,
2000). Each Australian state has its own approach to managing droughts,
but state governments are working with the federal government to align
details of the drought policies and the development of objective criteria for
government intervention.
Government intervention has, in the past, aimed to help primary pro-
ducers survive drought. Government policies now aim to further increase
the self-reliance of primary producers during drought. To this end, gov-
ernments and primary producers are looking at ways to better manage and
plan for rainfall variability.

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