02/12/2019 headspace National Youth Mental Health Foundation has today announced the appointment of Robbie Sefton as a new Board Member. Ms Sefton brings with her a clear vision for rural and regional Australia to be a vibrant, prosperous and dynamic place for people to create and work – a crucial element for headspace, ensuring all young people – regardless of location – ...
Continue reading
latest insights.
The Best Time to Fix the Roof is When the Sun is Shining
To plan or not to
plan, that is the question. In recent weeks I’ve
been travelling through some of the driest regions of New South Wales and
Queensland speaking to farmers about the various ways they’re coping with this
terrible drought. These forums have
included presentations from different people offering sound information and
valuable, practical advice in key services such as farm ...
Continue reading
Prime Minister announces his drought relief initiative
The Prime Minister has announced his drought relief initiative – see what Robbie Sefton has to say on ABC Radio – The World Today (Monday 4 November) and ABC Radio AM (Thursday 7 November). ABC AM today, Thursday 7th November at 8am Link to story - https://www.abc.net.au/radio/sydney/programs/am/govt-to-offer-super-cheap-loans-to-drought-affected-farmers/11680254 The World Today ...
Continue reading
Critical for farmers to tell their stories
ABA CEO Anna Bligh (pictured with Bendigo Mayor Margaret O'Rourke with ANZ CEO Shayne Elliott) summarised agriculture's challenge at the NFF conference when she said, "Trust comes in like a turtle and leaves like galloping horses". Credit - The Land STORIES on page three
and five of the Daily Telegraph earlier this month provide another sharp reminder
of not only the agricultural sector’s many ...
Continue reading
Let’s not sleepwalk into regional decay
Our tiers of government have helped give Australians
some of the world’s best living standards. But sometimes the arbitrary
boundaries we draw to define government areas get in the way of common sense.
Exhibit A: the Murray-Darling Basin. Siloed thinking is also proving unhelpful as we grapple
with where to put all our people. An Infrastructure Australia report recently warned that
if ...
Continue reading
Alternative Meats
Making people feel good about themselves has always
been a safe bet for activists, politicians and investors. Right now, this
time-proven principle is behind the flow of a whole lot of exploratory capital
into developing meat-protein alternatives. This money is betting that in the future, a lot of
people will believe that avoiding meat that was once part of a living animal is
a virtuous act ...
Continue reading
Drought brings out resilience in rural Australians
Image Credit - The Land - The Thallon silos following their launch in 2017 While this drought is all pervasive and impacting many
livelihoods, it has also brought out the exceptional mix of strength,
independence and generosity that makes rural Australia so resilient. I recently visited seven small communities in NSW and
Queensland to run workshops, and was uplifted by what I saw and the ...
Continue reading
Basin communities empowered to share assessment views
Image credit - The Land Understanding the
social and economic conditions impacting each and every Murray-Darling Basin (MDB)
community is as vital as the water itself. For without such understanding, we
simply will not have strong, thriving communities. That’s why it is
essential voices are heard, and communities have the knowledge and tools to
shape their own destinies. The Independent ...
Continue reading
Big names join forces to better connect farmers with consumers
31 July 2019 Leading Australian voices have come together to better connect farmers with consumers through the Telling Our Story Initiative. In leading the project, NFF President, Fiona Simson is joined by business people Richard Goyder, Alison Watkins and Robbie Sefton. The National Farmers' Federation has also welcomed Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA) as a founding partner. Ms ...
Continue reading
Migrant settlement in regional Australia
Farming in Australia is very different to many other countries around the world, particularly war-torn regions from where many migrants originate. Image credit - The Land Migrants moving to the bush should be a classic case of need-meets-opportunity: the bush needs more people, and migrants need work and community.
The reality is more complicated, as reality always is.
Some migrant groups are an ...
Continue reading
Biosecurity is paramount
Image Credit - The Land Robbie Sefton says the community can play a part in Australia's biosecurity battle by being aware of purchases during an overseas holiday that could carry hidden risks Australia
is the lucky country in so many ways – not least of which is the island status
that has protected us from many of the pests and diseases that could spell
economic disaster should they ever reach ...
Continue reading
Our ability to trade underpins success
Image Credit - The Land The Indonesia-Australia trade agreement
signed in March was another important deal for Australian agriculture, and
follows a series of similar agreements the current government has forged with
China, Japan and Korea. Australian
agriculture produces far more than our domestic market can consume, and often
needs a greater return on its produce than the domestic market ...
Continue reading
Our times are rich with opportunity, and fraught with risk
Image credit - The Land No matter whether you are conservative or progressive,
I think we all have a sense that our world is changing too fast for comfort. It’s not just the climate, although the implications of
a changing climate is of growing concern to Australians. All our systems - political, legal, economic, social -
are being strained by growing populations, new technologies, and ...
Continue reading
City dwellers have their own struggles
Image Credit : The Land Australia has more land per person than almost any other country, yet about 90% of its population choose to live in just 0.2% of that space — mostly our coastal cities. We are nearly as urbanised as Japan (94%) and more
urbanised than the United States (82%) and United Kingdom (83%). We in the bush
would do well to remember how minor is our minority in the nation’s ...
Continue reading
Robbie Sefton appointed to board of Prime Media Group
Sydney, Monday, 8 April 2019: Prime Media Group Limited (ASX:PRT) is pleased to announce the appointment of Ms Robbie Sefton as a non-executive director of the company, effective 8 April 2019. It is intended that Ms Sefton
will stand for election as a director at Prime’s 2019 Annual General Meeting. Chairman of PRIME MEDIA, Mr John Hartigan said: “We are delighted to welcome
Robbie to ...
Continue reading
Value adding agriculture
Robbie Sefton From the start, Australian agriculture has specialised in selling raw commodities, and has done so to great effect. Despite home to some of the oldest soils on the planet and an often-challenging climate, we have built one of the world’s resilient agricultural sectors. But it’s clear we need to remain competitive as other
countries modernise their agriculture, often helped by ...
Continue reading
Rise of women in agriculture an encouraging sign
Of all the various ways that humanity has devised for splitting itself into tribes, gender tribes are surely the most pointless. Men and women are undoubtedly capable of widely differing viewpoints, and are perfectly capable of exasperating each other, but we are literally nothing without each other.
That's why it's been wonderfully encouraging to watch the rise of women in agriculture over the ...
Continue reading
When the going gets tough, throw a festival
Agriculture’s rapidly growing efficiency has been challenging for many of the regional centres that were built around a large agricultural workforce. Truckloads of possibilities for reversing the stagnation in the economies of many rural townships have been discussed over the decades, but the only sure recipes for growth seem to be either a large regional centre with the critical mass for ...
Continue reading
We haven’t left the starting line for Murray Darling Basin Plan
As a small population in a big country, Australians have long enjoyed the idea that we have enough natural resources to go around - enough for agriculture and wilderness, and everything in between.That notion has been challenged over the past couple of decades. Like everywhere else in the world, we’re having to make tough decisions about how we manage the balance between environment and ...
Continue reading
Digital divide is not just a country issue
Imagine if Australia had stayed as it was in 1861, when nearly half the population could not read. We are today (almost) universally literate, thanks to the compulsory schooling introduced in the 1870s to overcome Australia’s literacy problems. But we now need more than the ability to read if we want to access education, government and financial services, and information in general. All these ...
Continue reading