Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for Wannon for his question. He has a huge electorate—32,000 square kilometres in south-western Victoria. It is a beautiful part of the world. There are a lot of great farmers in that part of the country.

As the Minister for Small Business, who has done an excellent job in helping with this budget, and as the Minister for Agriculture, who has been an enormous help and done a great job in this budget, know we have also focused on the farmers of Australia in helping to lay down a plan that is going to deliver greater growth for agriculture. We have focused on them not only as farmers but also as small business people—because a lot of them have a turnover of less than $2 million. In fact, the member for Wannon has 13,800 small businesses in his electorate that are going to benefit from the accelerated depreciation and the tax cuts. But he also has 4,000 farmers.

In the path of developing the budget we have made a proper appropriation for the upcoming agriculture white paper, which is going to lay down a plan for the future of agricultural production in Australia. There are a number of initiatives that I announced last night which are going to be of enduring benefit for farmers—for example, , instant asset write-off in relation to fencing. At the moment, farmers have to depreciate fencing over a long period of time. There are not many farmers who suddenly have new fencing; everything seems to be fencing repairs for tax purposes which they can write-off immediately. Well, we are dealing with that. If they put up a new fence, it can make a real difference particularly in relation to things like cell farming, which means you have more intensive farming, better management of the land and more productive management of the land and also in terms of the environment, as the Minister for the Environment would be aware.

When farmers fence off new plantings to prevent cattle from going into that area it is expensive for a farmer. Now there is an opportunity for them to instantly get a tax write-off associated with that new fencing, which does make it a hugely beneficial environmental matter. Also, wild dogs and a range of other pests are a big problem for farmers and fencing can help in that regard. So this is common sense, as are our initiatives to improve the accelerated depreciation for drought preparations associated with water management and also with fodder storage, which is hugely important.

I say to the member for Wannon that no-one summarises it better than Jeff Cane, a farmer in Strathdownie, who wrote to him this morning. He said, 'Agriculture—excellent. Three-year deductibility for fodder conservation infrastructure, accelerated depreciation for water facilities and for fencing—good, good, good. I'll make use of them all.' (Time expired)

See this speech in context