Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Farm Household Support Amendment Bill 2007 amends the Farm Household Support Act 1992 to give effect to some of the measures announced in the 2005 drought assistance package, which the Prime Minister announced on 30 May this year. Some of the changes announced by the government can be done by ministerial direction. This piece of legislation is necessary to provide for changes to the income test for exceptional circumstances relief payments, but I believe they do not go far enough. The legislation provides for an exemption of up to $10,000 for off-farm wages and salaries to a person and their partner as of 1 July 2005. It also provides that, in future, a person seeking exceptional circumstances relief payments will make an application directly to Centrelink, instead of to a state or territory rural adjustment authority.

At present, more than 44 per cent of the country’s agricultural land has been exceptional circumstances, or EC, declared. That covers 63 regions. A further four areas are currently being assessed for EC declarations. Labor is prepared to support the proposed amendments to this act and to the Age Discrimination Act 2004 to allow agriculturally dependent business operators access to the same exceptional circumstances assistance that is already available to farmers who have been adversely affected by drought. Drought is very much part of the Australian landscape and in some years it can be more severe than others—this year being one of them. Not only have farms been impacted; businesses that depend on farms for their livelihoods have also been impacted.

Labor supports the intent of the Farm Household Support Amendment Bill, which includes provisions to broaden eligibility to EC relief payments and other benefits such as the health care card and concessions under the youth allowance and Austudy means tests, because despite some shortcomings it might do some good. While Labor is broadly supportive of this bill, it requires amendment to more realistically reflect business in rural and regional Australia.

This bill has created the unreality that a business in rural Australia that employs 100 employees should be defined as small. This is an artificial definition created by the government to suit its own agenda. The Australian Bureau of Statistics defines a small business as one that employs five to 19 individuals. A business with 100 employees is defined by the ABS as being a medium sized business. In order to make this legislation work, Labor intends to move an amendment to this bill that will be in two parts: firstly, to change the term ‘small business’ in the definitions and replace it with ‘eligible business’ and, secondly, to remove all references in the bill to ‘small business’ and replace them with ‘eligible business’.

The government’s previous attempts to address this issue have been pathetic. This is the second attempt to assist non-farm businesses in relation to drought assistance. In 2002, through the Small Business Interest Rate Relief program, the government forecast 17,500 applications and received only 452 applications, of which 182 were successful. That is a pretty poor record by any government’s standard. We have found that businesses found it difficult to prove that 70 per cent of income comes from farm businesses and that the process of applying was costly and very complicated. So, although the government and members on the other side hang out that they give great support to regional Australia, in reality they give very little.

In my own state of Tasmania, which many believe does not get drought affected, we get no help from the federal government, yet we do have exceptional drought conditions. Last week I visited a number of properties between Millers Bluff and the east coast in my electorate, and it was quite shocking to see the land degradation and the lack of water in the catchment. Tasmania has had a very hard time of it because so little has been done to help our struggling people on the land and, although there has now been an attempt to deal with that, I believe that the amendment should be agreed to because of the failure of this government to act more quickly.

I have also been approached by many farmers in the southern Midlands, and they have had to shoot much of the stock that they would have sold this year, as feed has been almost impossible to find. This has huge impacts on farmers and their families—shooting stock rather than taking it to saleyards is the most demoralising thing to happen—but, if there is no grass and therefore every animal has to be handfed, farmers cannot survive the costs that mount up. It has become so bad in parts that many of the men on the land have been on suicide watch—a sad indictment of the state of the country’s problems.

I have spoken to my state Minister for Primary Industries and Water, responsible for agriculture, Mr David Llewellyn, and he has told me that he has been trying to get some assistance for these farmers. He has spoken to the federal minister and asked for the guidelines to be varied for Tasmania’s exceptional circumstances, because they are very different from those on the mainland but are still in every way exceptional. It is the time factor that is different. I have spoken to members of this House who come from other states, like South Australia, which have similar problems. The exceptional circumstances guidelines seem to have been drawn up for New South Wales and Queensland. Other states have different circumstances and should be given opportunities to be judged under different criteria.

Rain may come and might just register on the rain scale, but if it is accompanied by wind the water evaporates almost instantly and brings no good to the ground. It remains dust dry and in any one day driving through these areas you see the wind whipping the topsoil off and blowing it away. We have asked the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Peter McGauran, to reconsider these guidelines because the circumstances are exceptional; yet because they vary from the standard model of drought he has turned us down. I believe we can develop a prima facie case for drought relief.

I know that, despite recent rain across significant parts of Western Australia, Victoria and New South Wales, and parts of South Australia and Queensland, around 45 per cent of Australia’s farmland is currently drought declared. In New South Wales the figure is closer to 85 per cent. Some of the most productive areas of Queensland are also in drought, as are parts of Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia. In fact, large parts of New South Wales, southern Queensland and northern Victoria have been in drought since late 2002 or the early part of 2003. A significant number of families in these regions have derived little or no income from their properties for three years in a row. So in some ways their ability to claim is really no better than it is for those in Tasmania because of the way ‘drought’ can be interpreted. This government builds legislation that deals with the loudest and largest states, but every person on the land has a right to be considered in this assistance. Whereas the eastern states are the ones that will benefit most, states like South Australia and Tasmania have different needs and different assessment criteria are needed.

Drought can have enormous effects outside the industry, as we have noticed this year in our northern Midlands town of Ross. The low level of water in their feeder dam has led to algal blooms, which means that all drinking water has to be boiled. It is not a good look for the tourists who come to that lovely town. So this small farming town has not been backed up by tourism in the last year, which of course has major economic effects on the local businesses.

We need to put more emphasis on drought proofing and the assistance programs, as well as have some flexibility in the guidelines to allow states such as Tasmania to help the farmers, the rural workers, their families and the businesses that support their communities. I am concerned, too, that my state will not get proper consideration during the allocation of funds for ongoing drought proofing if we have to adhere to the guidelines set down by this government.

Water is going to be one of the most important commodities of the future. We need to act now to develop more research on water saving, water pricing and water recycling to help our rural industries to expand and develop sustainably. We have to understand that Australia will always be a drought affected nation and that our use of water has changed over the last two centuries—there are more people now in the cities than in the past and many of our newer crops are intensive and some are very thirsty. So we have to relearn water usage.

This legislation really is a bit of a bandaid exercise. We must continue to assist farmers to grow crops with less water. For instance, in Tasmania this year we have grown considerably fewer potatoes because of the lack of water in many of our catchments, for example in the northern Midlands. Drought has effects right through to the school level and on employment in our rural and regional towns. Businesspeople who service farming communities and employ workers are affected when farm businesses struggle, so there are ongoing effects. That is addressed by this bill.

We need to work hard on new storage opportunities for capturing some of the winter run-off in Tasmania. I think Tasmania comprises one or two per cent of the landmass of Australia, but we get around 12 per cent of the rain run-off. We need to be able to capture a little more of that and store it successfully to help us have a more productive, sustainable farming position. And there are plenty of opportunities for us to be able to do that economically, especially in the northern and southern Midlands of my electorate.

There is also great scope to increase the opportunities for young people to develop skills. I have just finished a report on the lack of skills opportunities in regional and rural Australia and the need to improve opportunities to develop skills into the future. This is where they are urgently needed. Perhaps we can increase production of vegetables and some grains by capturing more of the water from the winter rains that usually run right through and spill over the dams.

So we have to do better than we have in the past. We have to do better than the current minister is prepared to do with the effort he is putting into this. I think we need to do a lot better. As I said, this legislation is only a bandaid exercise. But there are many out there in terrible circumstances and we just have to help them get through this—and these measures will help them get through. Hopefully, more people will have an opportunity to claim some of this EC relief. That will help them, this year, to have an income—one which will allow them to have some sort of quality of life and maybe keep their business intact. Then, as crops get planted in the future, those businesses will still be there to give support to many farming enterprises in rural and regional Australia.

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