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

It takes a pretty special Leader of the Nationals to be able to deliver a 15-minute speech on the budget without once referring to the revenue downgrades and without once referring to the fact that there is a global recession. He got close. At one point he talked about ‘things happening overseas’. That was about as close as we could get to an acknowledgement of the fact that when there is a global recession Australia is affected by that.

When you have a global recession there are a whole series of impacts on revenue downgrades. When people are not making capital gains because of a global recession, the capital gains revenue does not hold up. When companies are facing a much tougher period because of international circumstances, there is not the same company tax revenue. When you have a hit on the share market, that means a significant number of people who thought that with their retirement savings they were self-funded retirees then go onto a part pension. All of that is an essential part of this budget, but how many times did the Leader of the Nationals mention the fundamentals and the context in which the entire budget had to be framed? Absolutely none.

If there were ever an example of the gap that I suspect exists between what the National Party like to tell their electorates they want to do and what actually happens in here, it will be the gap between the speech we just heard from the Leader of the Nationals and the speech that we may well hear from the leader of the coalition tonight. Every single point that was just made by the Leader of the Nationals was that the problem with this budget was that the government did not spend enough. Every single issue that he just went through was an argument about where we should have spent more. He went through the agriculture portfolio. He has moved from $1 billion down to $900 million; he will eventually work his way backwards, I hope, to $13 million plus $3 million plus $3.4 million, but I accept we have a way to go. Apparently a cut of $3.4 million to the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry is responsible, as he said, for in the order of more than 300 job losses. But this is not as a result of retiring programs—unless there is a belief from the Leader of the Nationals that, when a program is no longer there to manage, you need to keep the people who were employed to manage it doing that job, sitting at their desk and, I don’t know, forming National Party policy or something. Perhaps they could do that—just sort of sit back there and hang around.

Other than the cuts of 13 plus three plus 3.4, what is the reason for the other cuts? It is all retiring programs or demand driven programs where different assessments have been made. The legislation to abolish the 11c dairy levy went through. The Leader of the Nationals voted in favour of it. The Nationals in the Senate voted in favour of it. Now, when it is no longer being budgeted for, they are angry about that. If you want to keep something in the budget then you probably should not vote for the legislation to abolish it. That would be a helpful legislative principle for the National Party to follow.

It is the same with the Tasmanian Community Forest Agreement, which was their policy. It started in 2004 and expired at the expiry date for which it had been implemented. Now that that has expired and the money that was promised has been fully expended, the position of the National Party is that they are very angry that the money that has been spent is not still there. It is the same with the irrigation management grants, a program that received bipartisan support when it was introduced. Those grants were actually extended by this government and then the end of the program was reached. They are complaining that, even though the program has ended—there having been bipartisan support when it began, when the government extended it and when it concluded—they still want it there anyway.

But the most bizarre objection to the budget figures that comes from the National Party is their objection to that part of their 900 figure which refers to the demand driven drought programs. The demand driven drought programs are the parts put in the forward estimates—the same parts that they used to put in the forward estimates—and they are based on how many areas are drought declared. The reason that the projections are smaller than the previous year is that there are fewer areas of Australia in drought. This really angers the National Party! The Leader of the Nationals is clearly furious and is the only person representing regional Australia who apparently hates rain. Demand driven programs that are based on current declarations therefore have to be based of what the demand will be. That is how you do the forward projects. Or maybe the concept from the Leader of the Nationals is that maybe we need to have drought assistance for people who were in drought but who have subsequently had very good levels of rain and are moving forward again, with the money—even though the demand is not there—continuing to appear in the budget papers. There is an insanity at every level of the speech that was just given by the Leader of the Nationals.

I want to move on to some of the infrastructure issues. If you use that wonderful research tool—and I know that it is not always the most reliable one—Google to search for the name of the Leader of the Nationals you will find that there are two Wikipedia entries under his name. One refers to the Leader of the Nationals. The other refers to a form of infrastructure. I want to read one of them: ‘The Warren truss was patented in 1848. It is a form of bridge which alternates between comprehension and tension and is therefore relatively light.’

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