John Forrest (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

He drove all the way up from Melbourne for an appointment on the Friday afternoon at 2.30. At about 2.45 I got a phone call from a desperate family who could not find their father. They were extremely concerned about his welfare. This is a family that has their financier on their case and threatening to send the sheriff in, foreclose, throw them out of their home and property and take complete possession of their entire possessions. I did not hesitate. I jumped in the car with my old phone because I knew that was still working and drove like a mad thing—thankfully his property is only 20 minutes away—hoping that I would not find him hanging in his shed. That is the sort of thing that members from my part of the world and so many of my colleagues are confronted with. I was just so grateful to catch some of his family on the phone. By the time I arrived there, his granddaughters were with him just to let him know that somebody cared. I am not going to have that on my conscience.

That is happening consistently. Minister Burke, that is the kind of state of mind that many of my primary producers are in and they expect you to make a stand and fight for them. They did not see that in the outcomes from the budget a month or so ago. What they saw was the very support base that would assist them to cope with the challenges of climate change being dragged from under their feet. The only department subjected to productivity gains was the department that you, Minister Burke, are responsible for—the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry.

Last year’s budget was bad enough, when we saw $60 million slashed out of the CSIRO’s research funding. Within a month we saw the CSIRO try to adjust their monetary and financial circumstances to that scenario by closing five research facilities. That process is well in place. One of those facilities is located at Merbein, in Mildura, and provides assistance to horticulturists not only with the challenges of climate change but also in planting and inventing new varieties to help them compete in the very competitive export market.

The government’s announcement that it wants to make adjustments to exceptional circumstances might be acceptable to the desperate people that I represent but it needs to say early what it intends to replace it with. I was quite impressed with the member for O’Connor’s contribution to the potential replacement tools. They are quite diverse. This minister has not given us any indication that we can relay to the constituents we represent that he is thinking along these lines. The member for O’Connor has made some suggestions on multiperil crop insurance for broadacre agriculture. It is not easy to achieve. Other nations have tried something like this, particularly Canada, and we are told that the capacity for industry to participate on the scale that is needed to support such an insurance based system has some challenges. That is true.

Each commodity that is produced is different but consider today how we have irrigators along the Murray Valley, particularly in my constituency, who have been on EC and are into their third year on it because of circumstances beyond their control. The water supply system that served them well for over 100 years because of judicious investment has failed them and for the third year in a row the initial allocation of their water entitlement at the start of the allocation season, which they have bought and paid for every year, is zero. Just in the last month that announcement has been made of zero allocation. It is true that in the last two years that allocation has progressively increased as we have had more rainfall in the upper catchment to augment the storages. But for two years in a row it has only got to the mid-thirties in percentage terms. There is still the uncertainty on a month-by-month basis. It is no way to run a business. You cannot prepare a business plan, particularly if you are engaged in irrigation horticulture, if the first announcement is of a zero allocation. How do you go to your banker and ask for some finance to engage in pruning or harvesting or the installation of a more efficient irrigation system when you have to say to him, ‘Oh, well, we don’t have any water at this stage but we might have some later’? That is no way to plan a business with that absolute uncertainty. What is happening in Sunraysia now is many are giving up. In fact, I remember the member for Denison, who is sitting opposite, met me in the street of Mildura one day and said how delighted he was to come to such a vibrant community. Do you remember that, Duncan?

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