Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Why the member for Parkes keeps grinning I do not know. If he is of the view that maximising the returns to growers is not the fundamental responsibility of regulated wheat marketing, I would appreciate him dropping me a line. The fact is that, if we cannot improve the efficiency of off-farm activities, this House will be asked time and time again to give more EC assistance to farmers as the rainfall difficulties continue.

But there is another aspect that has come to my notice. I have always been a supporter of multiperil crop insurance. It does exist in other parts of the world and it is often subsidised by government. It is my view that we should look at it because of the expense incurred by the various EC legislation that we have introduced and the nature of its effect on the budget. We can put figures in these bills but we can never be sure as to the level of expenditure—and I felt that some comments made yesterday in the debate on this bill really do not stand up; you have to estimate an amount of money and circumstances will dictate the cost. The reality is that, if the cost were transferred, as occurs with private health insurance, to a premium subsidy for growers to insure against these risks, that would give them the choice of self-insurance. For many who rely on their banks to fund their operations, it would become a necessity just as it is with respect to home mortgage insurance. Banks do not give you high-risk home mortgage accommodation unless you insure for it. I have done the figures on previous occasions and I think it is achievable, but it has not been the view of the experts or various government ministers that it is achievable. I think Treasury would be a lot happier to know that they had a responsibility to find, say, $500 million a year to subsidise crop insurance premiums rather than be stuck with $200 million one year, nothing the next and $1.2 billion the year after that.

Putting that aside, a couple of years ago some young men in Western Australia operated a business which, to my recollection, was called AACL. Under the operation of the managed investment scheme, they gave wealthy city people the chance to invest in a crop produced by a wheat grower. I mentioned some farmers in your electorate, Mr Deputy Speaker Haase, who did not get their tractors out of the shed this year but sold some of the rights to their crop to this investment scheme and received the cheque. In fact, that has become their sole source of income. They received a cheque under an appropriately managed scheme in return for a share of a crop that was never produced. In other words, the investor in Perth takes part of the risk. In bookmaking terms, the wheat grower is allowed to lay off some of their risk. This scheme now has the support of farmers, who are saying: ‘I want to buy into the scheme to spread my risk. I have a share in the wheat crop of a farmer who might be 100 kilometres north or south of me in a different climatic zone.’ In these difficult years, the rainfall pattern can be paddock to paddock on an individual farm.

This scheme has been caught up in the government’s response to what is known as agricultural MISs and may no longer be available to farmers. If it became a nationally supported scheme, farmers would be participating in multiperil insurance. People with money do not come only from the major capital cities these days. You have ordinary workers in mining areas and other places wanting to take up these tax effective options and, hopefully, in the process on behalf of the farmers, they will share in a profit. They are shorter-term schemes, and I think it is time the government looked at such a scheme in isolation as a way of giving people the right to self-determination, enabling them to stand up in society and not have to rely on government handouts.

That scheme, like many others, is something the government needs to deliver to make sure that there is no need to pay EC. I applaud EC, but no farmer wants that instead of having their own money in the bank or the chance to do a deal. One of my supporters said, ‘I wouldn’t be in that scheme’—the one I just mentioned—‘as I would have to give someone my profit.’ I said: ‘That’s great. You are a good farmer, you have resources and you can self-insure; others cannot.’ (Time expired)

See this speech in context