see more crazy cat pics

[S]mall grower Lance Drum, who has a farm between Wagga Wagga and Temora [in New South Wales], told the inquiry on Wednesday that scrapping the single desk because of AWB's actions was like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

"It will be to the detriment of all young and old Australian wheat growers and their families," Mr Drum said.

"It will just absolutely ruin Australian communities and families, especially those who are least able to have cash flow behind them."

Abolishing the single desk would create greater fluctuation in prices and financial uncertainty for growers, and banks would subsequently have less confidence in farmers, he said.

Velia O'Hare, a grower from south-western NSW, said the changes could destroy rural families and communities and force more people into cities.

"Come January, if there's no buyer of last resort ... you haven't seen anything yet in suicides, because the men out there are just getting so low," she said.

"We don't need this. We're down now, don't kick us in the guts," she said.

But David Ginns, chief executive of the Grains Policy Institute, said such "prognostications of disaster" were wrong.

Mr Ginns said the removal of the single desk would force marketing costs down and put more power in the hands of growers.

Doesn't that last part about "forcing costs down and putting more power in the hands of growers" sound like the usual free-market conservative broken record about the free market being the Great White Father of the Lower Classes--especially so "chronic and habitual" welfare cases expected to be "in clear need of empowerment***after years of unconsciously falling for subtle Socialism" because of welfare dependence, "empowerment which only the free market can make all the more possible"?