Federal Member for Gippsland Darren Chester has welcomed a fundraising effort in Melbourne this weekend to raise money for drought-affected farmers in Gippsland.<\/p>\n
Rural Aid and the Essendon and Geelong AFL clubs have banded together to raise money for drought relief in Gippsland as part of the Country Festival match at the MCG this Sunday.<\/p>\n
Mr Chester said the day would help to boost awareness of the plight of many of Gippsland\u2019s primary producers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the worst drought in 100 years in some parts of Gippsland,\u201d Mr Chester said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur farmers have been doing it tough for a long time and many are struggling to meet costs such as feed for stock, bank loans, municipal rates, re-establishing pasture or transporting stock for agistment.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s still a long way to go before they will be able to get back on their feet.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvents like this are welcome acknowledgement in the city of what our farming communities have been enduring.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope the event is a great success and that this success translates into practical help that will make a meaningful difference to our farmers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Singer-songwriter John Williamson will perform on the ground before the game between the Cats and the Bombers gets underway at 3.20pm.<\/p>\n
Country Festival activities will begin in the Yarra Park precinct at 11am. Kasey Chambers, John Williamson, the Mik Maks and Adelaide Clark will perform as part of the free event.<\/p>\n
Rural Aid is one of Australia\u2019s largest rural charities. Its Buy a Bale campaign has provided more than 30,000 tonnes of hay to farmers in need.<\/p>\n
Mr Chester said more needed to be done across all levels of government to address the drought crisis.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne thing farmers are telling us consistently is rate relief is urgently needed \u2013 and that\u2019s where the State Government needs to step in and act quickly,\u201d Mr Chester said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Federal Member for Gippsland Darren Chester has welcomed a fundraising effort in Melbourne this weekend to raise money for drought-affected farmers in Gippsland. Rural Aid and the Essendon and Geelong AFL clubs have banded together to raise money for drought relief in Gippsland as part of the Country Festival match at the MCG this Sunday. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":113166,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[200,535],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/darrenchester.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113165"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/darrenchester.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/darrenchester.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darrenchester.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darrenchester.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/darrenchester.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113165\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darrenchester.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/darrenchester.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darrenchester.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darrenchester.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}