Australia Weather News

Farmers in western New South Wales say they feel let down by the government, after changes to the Bureau of Meteorology regional offices.

Twenty-four weather stations across regional Australian will no longer be staffed including two in the western NSW towns of Cobar and Moree.

This means weather observation stations in the west will be unstaffed at a time when farmers in that region are dealing with drier than normal season and the challenges posed by climate change.

Anthony Gibson is a member of the NSW Farmers Association Rural Affairs Committee, that is meeting in Sydney today about this and other social issues impacting on farmers.

He said the job losses came at a time when farmers were actually lobbying for increased services to help them operate in a very variable climate.

"The rainfall deficiency analyser isn't working as well as it could be," he said.

"And we know there's huge gaps in forecasting and recording information.

He said members of the committee knew the Bureau was looking at putting in more automated stations and said the that the information was just not good enough.

"We need radars out here. Currently the nearest radar is at Mildura and Moree and we just don't think that's good enough."

"We have a strong policy on this. We have actually been calling for an additional radar station to help the farmers of western New South Wales to better plan in conjunction with weather conditions.

"We have been calling for better radar coverage for 10 years, and not just us, but local government as well."

Mr Gibson said the loss of jobs to regional Australia would be read as just one more reduction in services to isolated Australians — more shrinkage in capacity.

"It just feels as though it's a conscious decision to strip regional Australia of staff and investment," he said.