Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the Rural Adjustment Amendment Bill 2009. I commend and congratulate the member for Maranoa, who is my neighbour in terms of our electorates. His electorate is to the west of mine and the farmers in his electorate feel the same as the farmers in my electorate. My electorate is classified by the Australian Electoral Commission as rural, and so it is. Sixty per cent of the city of Ipswich is rural and I have 70 per cent of the city of Ipswich in my electorate, including all the rural parts. In my electorate I also have the Fassifern Valley, the old Boonah Shire, as well as all the Lockyer Valley. So, geographically, 95 per cent of my electorate in south-east Queensland is rural. I know that the farmers in my electorate feel exactly the same way as the farmers in Maranoa. They do it tough. It is tough for them to make a living. They find tremendous challenges in terms of the provision of health care, giving their kids a good education, getting income support and getting access to markets. The Lockyer Valley alone contributes hundreds of millions of dollars to the Queensland economy. It has been of tremendous benefit to Queensland’s past, present and future.

The reality is that the farmers have had the benefit of exceptional circumstances assistance in the Lockyer Valley—which, of course, has been classified as ‘Southern South-East Revised (Lockyer Valley)’. They received assistance from 15 June 2008 to 15 June 2009.

Minister, I have always found this classification by NRAC puzzling. It really puzzles me, and I have raised this with your office before. The whole of Ipswich and all of the Lockyer Valley were covered by the exceptional circumstances declaration but, for some inexplicable reason, the moment you hit Harrisville, it stopped. South of Harrisville there was no exceptional circumstances assistance.

I spoke to John Brent, who is the Mayor of the Scenic Rim Regional Council. I think the member for Maranoa would have met John Brent on many occasions. He is a well-known LNP figure in Queensland. I get on very well with John, and so does the member for Forde. John and I have both puzzled on numerous occasions why areas like Kalbar, Boonah, Aratula and other areas were not part of the classification.

This weekend I will be opening the Kalbar Show. I will do the Ipswich Home Show as well for three days, but I will be there at the Kalbar Show. I guarantee you that, at the mobile office I do on Saturday at the Kalbar Show, farmers and their families will come up to me and talk to me about the challenges they face in relation to drought, health, education and income and interest assistance. They do it hard. It is a tough life, working seven days a week with their hands.

Concerning my electorate, my family on my father’s side were German farmers from the Lockyer Valley. On my mother’s side, they were railway workers from Ipswich. So I am as local as you are going to get in my electorate. But the farmers in the Lockyer Valley have been of tremendous help to South-East Queensland. Beetroot, lettuce, cabbage—you name it, they grow it. With the climate change challenges, wheat has increasingly become a crop grown in that area.

Recently, I launched the Queensland Farmers Federation report on the climate change challenges that Queensland will face. I launched it in Forest Hill, the home of Linton Brimblecombe, who is a well-known—and I will get this straight for the member for Maranoa—LNP personality in the Lockyer Valley. He and Mel and Linton’s family have been farming for generations in that valley. His father, Alan, has been a pillar of the Uniting Church in Laidley and so have Linton and the whole family. I have talked to Linton and other farmers in that area. They appreciate the exceptional circumstances funding they get and have received over the years, but farmers in the Fassifern area are really mystified about why they did not receive that kind of assistance in the last few years.

We have recently been blessed with a lot of rain in South-East Queensland. It has created some challenges for us. It has caused us some issues. There have been people injured. There has been loss of property, damage done to businesses and, sadly, at the end of last year the loss of the life of a woman in the Lockyer Valley. But the blessing that we received is that the dam levels, which were hovering between 15 to 18 per cent in South-East Queensland, have gone up to about 70 per cent.

That does not mean that the each and every day challenge for farmers to earn an income has gone away. A lot of people running businesses still have prohibitive debt levels. They still often have their partner or spouse working in towns like Gatton, Laidley, Ipswich or Toowoomba just to be able to afford to meet what are often called ‘basic living expenses’. To give their children the kind of life that they expect and they deserve, they need assistance.

Those children receive good assistance through their schools, great schools like Lockyer District High, Laidley State High and the other many schools in the Lockyer Valley. We are providing a lot of assistance through Building the Education Revolution. In fact, in excess of $90 million has been allocated to the schools in Ipswich, the Lockyer Valley and the Fassifern Valley in my electorate. The farmers welcome this.

They also received the one-off payments. There were 119 farming families who received those one-off payments in the last few months. They also received benefits in the Nation Building and Jobs Plan—the nation building for recovery activities that this government is committed to. But they have also suffered and struggled, and NRAC has not always been as kind as they ought to have been to the farmers in my electorate. Those farmers really think at times, ‘What is this all about?’ because, for them, drought and difficulty are not rare and severe events outside of what a farmer could expect to manage. For them, it is a fact of life. It is what they have put up with for year after year.

I know what an EC declaration is. I know that these impacts are supposed to have been so severe and prolonged that they are likely to occur only once every 20 or 25 years. But let me tell you that, for these farmers, it is not their experience. I know that the state government of Queensland has worked with the federal government and, before making an application for EC, they worked to provide substantial new assistance. I know that the state government has declared drought in EC application areas. I know that is what needs to be done.

But I really wonder whether NRAC always gives the kind of skills advice that the minister needs to get. I know there are some experts on the panel; there is a person from the National Farmers Federation. I know people are appointed because of their expertise in economics, financial administration, banking, sustainable agriculture, regional adjustment, regional development, farm management or training. But if you go and talk to the farmers in my area they often wonder about that as well. I know that in this legislation we are allowing for the reappointment of people for an additional term or terms. Four of the eight current serving NRAC members cease their second term as of 30 June 2009 and, without this legislation, their terms would expire and they would not be eligible for another term. But, fair dinkum, Minister, we need to have people on that NRAC board who are more sympathetic to farming communities in South-East Queensland as well as elsewhere, because drought is not something that happens occasionally; it happens almost every year for these farmers. I know we have to have this amending legislation we are debating today because otherwise members could not be reappointed and we would have a disaster in terms of the advice that the minister gets. But we need to have a look at the personnel we have put on NRAC because farmers need to have confidence that the people on NRAC are sympathetic not just to their lives but to their lifestyles and their needs.

I know the federal government are doing a lot to help the farmers in my electorate. We have invested a record $24 billion in rural and regional Australia and we are thereby building stronger communities and helping them adjust to the worst global recession we have seen since the Great Depression. I welcome, Minister, the fact that we have provided such support to primary producers. There is the $715 million for ongoing drought support and the $1.7 billion to support local communities. Farmers in my electorate also very much appreciate the fact that we have put $8 million into the Warrego Highway upgrade, and they can see that being done just west of Ipswich and across Ipswich. They appreciate the fact that we have put about $800,000 into the Minden Crossing, a terrible crossing that is actually just past my electorate, in the electorate of Dickson. They also appreciate the fact that we are spending $884 million on the Ipswich Motorway upgrade, which is supporting up to 4,000 jobs locally in South-East Queensland. How do they get their produce from the Lockyer Valley, from west of Ipswich and often from the electorate of the member for Maranoa? The Warrego Highway and the Cunningham Highway connect to the Ipswich Motorway, and that is how the farmers get their produce to the markets in Rocklea and elsewhere, so fixing up the Ipswich Motorway is crucial.

Recently I had a meeting with the Mayor of the Lockyer Valley Regional Council, Steve Jones, another prominent conservative politician in South-East Queensland. The Lockyer Valley, as I said, is not entirely in my electorate, but he was commending us for the fact that we are doing work on the Warrego Highway after many years of neglect and fixing up the Ipswich Motorway. I just cannot understand why those opposite voted repeatedly against doing up the Ipswich Motorway. They did not fix it in the 11½ half years they were in office and they have again voted against it in this place. So I want to let the farmers in the Lockyer Valley and the Fassifern Valley, not just the urban dwellers in Ipswich, know that when it comes to regional infrastructure and road funding and the kind of assistance they need to get their produce to the markets it is the Rudd Labor government that is helping them. It is not just supporting jobs in Ipswich but supporting farmers to get their produce through to Ipswich; and not just the farmers in horticulture but also the beef farmers. I have a number of beef farmers in my electorate. How do they get their beef to the abattoir? I have the biggest meatworks in the country in my electorate, at Dinmore. They kill 18½ thousand beasts every week. I started my working life as a cleaner in the meatworks there. My father worked there, my uncle worked there and my three cousins worked there. Making sure that regional roads are efficient, effective and not subject to obstacles is crucial.

I am pleased, Minister, that we have provided that funding for road infrastructure in my electorate. North of Aratula, the Cunningham Highway goes into the electorate of the member for Maranoa. The farmers in the Fassifern Valley have been arguing and advocating for years that the Cunningham Highway north of Aratula should be fixed, and the Rudd Labor government actually provided millions of dollars recently to ensure that Main Roads Queensland can get that fixed. So 22 kilometres of road north of Aratula will be fixed. It has been a national disgrace under the coalition government for years. I have doorknocked that whole area and spoken to businesses there and they know how important this road funding is. It is important, Minister, that you know how important road funding is for the farmers in my electorate as well as across the country.

But when it comes to the challenge of climate change and those issues, it is very important for the minister to know that there needs to be more sympathy shown to farming communities. There has simply not been enough when it comes to exceptional circumstances funding. It is important for the minister to know that there are many people on this side of the House, like me and the member for Leichhardt and the member for Dawson and the member for Flynn, who represent farming communities. They speak to us at our mobile offices, at our country shows, in our constituencies and electorate officers about the challenges of exceptional circumstances funding. So I would urge you to have a good look at this, Minister, and at the composition of NRAC in the future. We think it is important that when you are making changes in your current portfolio and looking at reappointing people, you should be looking at personnel on that panel who have the necessary kind of expertise to advise on the needs of farming communities. They need to listen to what farming communities have to say and it is important that those communities are not forgotten, not just on roads, health or education but on the challenges of drought and the problems of financial impoverishment that drought causes to those communities. In the circumstances, it is extremely important that this legislation goes through but also that you listen to those farming communities because they need to be represented, they need a stake at the table in NRAC in the future, and I commend you, Minister, for doing that. This bill needs to be passed, but there need to be changes on the board. Only when we get some changes on the board will the farming communities across South-East Queensland get the kind of sympathy that they deserve. I commend this bill to the House and suggest that in future, Minister, changes be made to the composition and personnel you put on the board.

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