Cotton Australia General Manager Michael Murray, Queensland Farmers Federation CEO Jo Sheppard, and Cotton Australia Board Member April Cavanagh attended a small workshop on Climate Adaptation. The event was co-hosted by the Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) and the University of Southern Queensland, with strong senior representation from the Queensland Treasury.

Cotton Australia made a number of key points, including that farmers in general, and cotton growers in particular, are always adapting to climate variability, and that probably the best assistance government could provide is accurate and consistent forecasting of what climate change will mean for the geographic areas we operate in. Michael Murray also made the point that there is a tendency in many circles to suggest that how we allocate water resources in Australia has to fundamentally change due to climate change, but those people lack an understanding of how water is currently allocated, which already takes into account climate variability and merely allocates what is available following a strict hierarchy.

In terms of immediate fiscal actions that government could take to assist Queensland growers manage their own climate risk, Mr Murray told the meeting that government should remove the 9% stamp duty on crop insurance.