Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the minister for his contribution and his willingness to work with me when it has been necessary over the last couple of years to settle some very important issues in the agricultural sector. We had a little stoush the parliament today, so we are enjoying ourselves immensely. He knows my greatest disappointment in his government's performance is that two years into the government we still lack a strategic plan for the sector. We were promised an agriculture white paper by Christmas of last year. We still do not have one and, unfortunately, the minister has been unprepared to tell me when we might see one. Until we see it, I will not be in a position to assess whether he has delivered a strategic direction for the sector or delivered nothing more than a wish list of spending promises. We will wait and see. Again, I ask him on behalf of all the commodities sectors when they might hope to see that document. He told the House today that the northern Australia white paper was 'imminent'—a word is quite fond of. But he is not prepared to say the same thing of the agriculture white paper and I therefore fear that it might be some way off in the distance still. He might be able to give us some guidance in that respect.

The minister did tonight what he is fond of doing—that is, to take credit for prices in a range of commodities. He likes to take credit; he never talks about commodity prices which have fallen. I do not quite understand nor do people out there in the broader community why it is he that it takes credit for rises but no responsibility for falls. But tonight I challenge him again. He gave us a number of examples about commodity price rises. I challenge him again to tell us what indeed he has done which has caused these commodity price rises. I will be very interested in the answers, if he is willing to do so.

Tonight I am not going to take too much of the chamber's time. I want to focus on just a few areas. I want to delve into drought assistance just a little. I want to talk about the new FIRB rules. And I might just ask a couple of questions, if I get time, about some of the appropriations for legal advice and assistance for the department.

Drought in Australia is very bad. We know that many parts of Queensland and New South Wales have been without rain now for three years. Now, of course, the bureau is predicting an El Nino, so things are not likely to get better. My perspective is that the government's drought policy has been a failure. Its focus has been on concessional loans that have not suited the needs of the farming community, and on that basis the take-up rate has been poor. The minister will get up and say that, when he came, only so many concessional loans had been taken up, but he deliberately forgets that the concessional loans put in place by the former Labor government were not about drought, because we were not all that far into a drought. Drought had not become an urgent consideration. They were about farm debt, not drought. Certainly, if someone was in debt because of drought, that was a consideration and would make them eligible for the loans, but it is mischievous to compare the take-up rate on the concessional loans with the later introduced drought loans program.

Where I get a little bit curious is on the numbers. We were told in estimates at the end of April that $280 million had been allocated for drought concessional loans and $114.9 million had been spent. If my maths is correct, that leaves about $175 million not allocated. And then, on the original farm finance loan, which was $420 million, $167 million had been spent, leaving $253 million. So there is a total of about $428 million not allocated, and yet the money the minister announced in the budget equated to $250 million. So I simply ask the minister: what has the take-up on the most recently announced loans been, and where is the difference between the $400-odd million not allocated under the two original programs and the $250 million—only—allocated under the new program?

See this speech in context