Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

I think, Madam Deputy Speaker, you might find he is, because I don’t think that seat over there will be his for too much longer! Some of the comments made by the Leader of the National Party go to points which he knows full well are completely misleading. For a start, on the quote that he gave from the Land with respect to two-thirds of budget cuts—he knows full well that that figure includes demand-driven funding. He knows that the only way you can reach that figure is to include demand-driven funding with the same forward projections as the previous government had, and because there were better prospects that people would move into periods of recovery with respect to EC the forward projections went down. He knows exactly that that is why that figure was reached. When he ran that fear campaign we told him that, if he won, the simple result would be that people who were entitled to EC protection might fall for his trick and end up not applying for assistance to which they were completely entitled. If he has the victory of his scare campaign, not one person on the land is going to benefit from it, and some of them will fail to apply for assistance to which he knows they are fully entitled.

But the hypocrisy goes further. We heard the argument about trucking registration fees. Members of the opposition coming out against anything to do with any sort of a user-pays system is hypocrisy. The system was not first proposed by this government; it was proposed in a formal submission by the former Deputy Prime Minister. The idea came from the former Deputy Prime Minister. But their biggest objection is to Infrastructure Australia. Why is it that their objection is so strong to Infrastructure Australia? Why is it that their objection is so strong on infrastructure issues? It is this: they have got so used to the pattern of pork-barrelling that they are frustrated and, if we are going to be in government, they want us to have access to pork-barrelling too. They have got so used to the mindset of ‘that is just what governments do’, that anything that goes to having an independent process—anything that goes to actually having an overarching look at the nation to decide where the priorities ought properly to be—the Nats cannot handle it. Because for the Nats anything that is outside a pork-barrelling framework is completely beyond their comprehension. I saw it in my own area with respect to irrigation. You would think with irrigation that there is a need—and a legitimate need—for government discretionary funding, and we did find $5 million that was promised from the previous government for an irrigation program. If you are going to get money out of the NHT, the Natural Heritage Trust, you would think, ‘Okay, if it is going to be for an irrigation program, maybe it will be in Griffith.’ I am sure that the Leader of the Nationals would think, ‘maybe Griffith’. Or maybe you would think ‘Mildura’. No. It was $5 million for the irrigation of Flemington Racecourse. That is what the previous minister for agriculture had promised. And let us just see if the predictions of what his next job will be turn out to be true. Let us see where those predictions end up landing.

The previous speaker, Mr Truss, made reference to the infrastructure fund, but he made no mention of the concept of broadbanding the nation. There was no mention of the concept of actually making sure that Australians have access to the most high-tech fibre-to-the-node technology. There was nothing about that. But the big gap in the entire presentation we just had was with respect to agriculture. We got a spray at me—and don’t worry, I have got a bit at the end of my speech too; we will get there. We had the concept of the budget cuts—which was misleading—and we got one reference to FarmBis. He wanted to talk about the adverse impact of the government’s policies on rural and regional Australia, and those three sentences made up the entirety of his criticisms of this government’s approach to agriculture.

What the members opposite need to understand—and the member sitting at the table, the member for Groom, absolutely needs to understand—is the real pressure of climate change, because there are real pressures. That is why some of the FarmBis programs which dealt with climate change will be picked up through Australia’s Farming Future in the climate change and adaptation partnerships, worth $60 million. There will be some programs—and in tough budget circumstances this is the case—which do not get picked up. That is true. If the position of the Nationals is that we should not be trying to put downward pressure on inflation then by all means, when it is your next speaker’s turn, stand up and declare it. If the position of the Nationals—as the Leader of the Nationals previously declared when he pointed to the position of the United States and their responses to inflation—is that they do not believe we have an inflation problem, then they should get the next speaker to stand up and declare it. If the Leader of the Nationals does not believe that we need to have a tough budget and does not believe that we need to be more conscious of making sure that we have got a sufficient surplus, he should stand up and say it.

This government knows that there are two key pressures coming down on people working in agriculture. They are the pressures of climate change and the shrinking world and the increasing trade that that brings with it. Climate change adaptation becomes absolutely essential. Climate change adjustment programs have become absolutely essential. We need to make sure that our R&D programs deal with the most urgent challenge facing farmers. Farmers have been off doing it on their own, make no mistake. There is no end of people on the land—because they actually live the climate—who have gone out and involved themselves in adaptation challenges. But they have done so with no help at all from the previous government and with no leadership at all from the previous government.

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