Griffith Speakers Hold Their Own At Bush Summit

Griffith speakers at The Daily Telegraph Bush Summit 2022 last Friday, August 26 did our community proud.

Mayor Councillor Doug Curran opened the local voice, welcoming delegates and community members and calling for more than rhetoric.

Councillor Curran said Griffith was willing to work with all levels of government and form partnerships with industry to get a better deal for our city.

“We will work together for the common purpose,” Councillor Curran said.

“We’re extremely proud of our city, but we can do more.”

Our mayor said that Griffith had long punched above its weight in the water stakes, and when the panel discussion around the Murray Darling Basin Plan took place, third-generation citrus farmer, Vito Mancini spoke directly and efficiently to the heart of the matter.

Mr Mancini told the story of his grandparents migrating to Australia in search of a better life for a family, doing transient work until finding a place to call home.

“They settled in Griffith,” he said.

“They built infrastructure.”

He said that the nature of today’s plan seems to be quite the reverse.

“The Murray Darling Basin Plan needs to be as adaptive as we are,” Mr Mancini said.

“We’re the ones that are going to have to face it.

“We deal with climate, we’ve been adapting with the environment for years.”

Griffith’s own Bill Calabria said that it was important for us to promote Australia internationally, especially now that we can no longer rely on the Chinese market anymore.

“The biggest challenge for the wine industry is that we relied heavily on the Chinese market and, as you know, the Government put a stop to that and it’s affected a lot of growers,” Mr Calabria said.

“It’s affected wineries and to replace the amount of wine that they were buying, which was over a billion dollars, there's no market out there that’s as big as what that was.”

Mr Calabria said that it was important not to rely on one sole customer.

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