To cruel to keep them alive...

Graziers always try, no matter how long or severe the drought, to keep enough stock alive to breed up when rain arrives. And so the cycle of cruelty has gone on repeatedly for two centuries—except now it’s becoming worse. To quote another Australian poet, Judith Wright, who grew up and lived on stations in northern N.S.W and Queensland: it’s ‘cruel to keep them alive.’ Wright was referring, in South of My Days, to a drought in 1901 when the rivers turned to dust. It was ‘cruel’ then ‘to keep them alive’ she wrote, it is just as cruel now.

Tony Abbott criticized Aboriginal desires to live in the outback as a lifestyle choice—it wasn’t. But to remain on drought prone lands is a grazier’s life style choice, a choice we pay for with our taxes, and their stock pays for in pain and death.