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

I want to thank the member for Blair for the question and acknowledge his strong engagement with the farmers, including the dairy farmers and the sunflower, lucerne, vegetables, bean and grain crop farmers, all involved in his electorate of Blair. It has been an extraordinary year and a year of great contradictions for many of the challenges that Australia’s farmers have faced during the course of this year.

Commodity prices rose to record highs and there has been some easing but the easing happened at the same time that the dollar fell back as well, which meant that we were insulated from some of the advantages of those farm input prices being eased. There were some good rains in some parts of the country and some honourable members from each side of a House have been giving me reports in recent days. There is some good news. I received a text message from a farmer in Cowra, just as question time began. He has been lucky that his grain harvest is happening today. That is very good but it is certainly not the story across the whole of the country. There are some parts of the country where the harvest did not come off because of drought. There are some parts in recent weeks where the harvest did not come off because of rain. Such have been some of the challenges faced during the course of this year.

While many areas of the country have come out of drought declaration, it is important to remember that 48 per cent of the land mass in Australia remains drought declared. Forty-eight per cent is a fairly extraordinary figure across the nation when these figures are based on whether or not it has been assessed historically that you are dealing with a one in 20 to 25 year event.

The year in terms of our agricultural policy has been a combination of implementing the promises which we gave and commissioning two very major reviews which have now nearly concluded and will form the work program very much for next year. The promises to be delivered on began this year with the wheat marketing reforms—

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