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

I always love points of order, because you know that you are hitting the mark. The member who took the point of order is one of those Nats representing a rural seat who just voted against a plan to bolster child care in rural and regional communities. That is why he jumped to his feet. It was not because I was out of order, because it is pretty hard not to be relevant to this bill when you are talking about the interests of rural and regional Australia. Some of the beneficiaries of the farm household allowance will be the same people who will not be able to access child care, because of what those opposite just passed in that omnibus bill and because of their failure to reject the idea of having a plan to do something about child care in rural and regional Australia.

Mr Husic interjecting—

I do thank the member for Chifley, sitting opposite. It is nice to hear a chorus of support from the government benches. I appreciate it very, very much. Maybe there is hope for decent services in rural and regional Australia, with such a chorus of support coming from the government benches.

I notice that we do have some people in the galleries. This bill is about addressing some of the failings in farm household support. Farm household support is, if you like, an unemployment benefit for farmers doing it tough, farmers who find themselves in a situation, whether it be because of drought or some other influence upon them, where they find it necessary, very reluctantly always, to turn to the government temporarily, at least, for support. We do not call it Newstart as it applies to farmers; we call it farm household allowance. Over many decades, we have had a welfare payment for farmers doing it tough. It has had various names but, under the current act, it is called farm household allowance.

I want to say something about the history of drought policy in this country. Prior to around 2009, we had a drought policy as governments—plural. It existed under both coalition and Labor governments. It was commonly known, or at least highlighted by its key elements, as exceptional circumstances. A Productivity Commission report in around 2009 suggested that the drought support system was broken, that it was not giving farmers the support they required, that it was not doing enough to help farmers transition into a more resilient enterprise and that it was not lifting productivity. In fact, 70 per cent of farmers did not rely upon it, but it was proving to be of no real benefit in making sure that people made that transition. Sadly, at the height of the millennium drought, it was costing taxpayers a billion dollars. So it was a very, very expensive support package, and the Productivity Commission, every state government in the country, the federal government, the National Farmers Federation and many others at the time agreed that something dramatic had to be done and that it was time to revisit and reform drought policy in this country.

The result of that was that the states agreed with the Commonwealth to transition to something new. The first thing they had to do, of course, was make sure that there was continuity in the welfare payment and make sure that, as we moved from the old system to a new model, people would be in a position to access appropriate support during times of drought. First of all, we had what was called the interim farm household allowance support, which was put in place just prior to the 2013 election, I think. It was there to serve until the new payment was put in place on a permanent basis. I should have said when I was talking about support for farmers that there is one big difference between Newstart payments, for example, and the farm household allowance, and that is that the asset and income tests are different. The means testing is much different because, obviously, farmers often sit on a high value of on-farm assets and, ordinarily, with Newstart farmers would be immediately knocked out of any potential for securing the payment. So the farm household allowance has a much different means testing arrangement to accommodate for that very important difference between them and most people who would be seeking assistance through Centrelink.

The great tragedy about that history is that the continuity in the welfare payment was only the first step to developing a new drought plan. There was every intention that the Standing Council on Primary Industries, which was the COAG committee made up of Commonwealth and state ag ministers, would continue to develop the next phase of the process to determine what the broader drought policy would look like. Sadly, five minutes after its election in 2013, the Abbott government abolished SCoPI. It abolished the COAG committee designed to look at agriculture issues including drought. Even more sadly, 3½ years after the initial election of this government, we still do not have a drought policy. Yes, we have a farm household allowance and, yes, we have a thing the minister calls concessional loans. That is big money in the budget, but, of course, it is something that costs the government very little and is a program which is proving only marginally beneficial to a small number of farmers. At times when interest rates are so low and given that they are so hard to access, most farmers just come to the conclusion that concessional loans simply are not worth the effort. So 3½ years, or longer than that, since we started the process of moving from the old system to a new and, hopefully, better system we have nothing, basically. The scientists and the Bureau of Meteorology continue to tell us that a changing climate is getting worse and it is going to be more difficult for farmers in the future than it has been in the past, and we need, as a parliament, to get cracking to determine how we are going to deal with those issues.

I have said many times, and I do not mind saying it again, that it is a fact that around 80 per cent of the farm output in this country comes from 30 per cent of the firms and that the smallest 50 per cent represent only seven per cent of output. They are 2009 figures, I should say, but I have seen no indication that those figures would have changed in proportionate terms by very much since then. As the Productivity Commission says, the bottom 25 per cent of broadacre farms have not made a profit in 30 years. I would have thought that is an outcome that the minister would be turning his attention to and developing a strategic plan for agriculture to determine what are the faults there and what his government should be doing about it. We thought we would have a strategic plan—or we hoped we would have a strategic plan—in the form of the agricultural white paper, but, of course, it could hardly be described as a plan. It was not a plan; it was a cobbled together range of thought bubbles but not a strategic plan in any sense of the word, in my view. It is not too late for the minister to start having a serious conversation about what incentives, reforms and guidance should come from government to ensure that we make the most of the significant opportunities available to our farm sector, both in the domestic market and, of course, in those burgeoning export markets, particularly the emerging middle classes in Asia. That is what we need to be talking about.

This bill, as I said, seeks to address the deficiencies in the farm household allowance, deficiencies that were obvious from day one. I remind the House that it was the farm household allowance that got the minister for agriculture in a bit of trouble in this place because it was the minister's attempt to respond to my question about the failings of drought policy and the farm household allowance which caused him to doctor the Hansard. In his attempt to embellish the effectiveness of the farm household allowance, he completely misled the House, kept it quiet and doctored his Hansard. The rest is history and a very senior, professional and highly regarded public servant lost his job as a result of that very sad saga. I am talking, of course, about Dr Grimes, who was the departmental head at that time. Dr Grimes's crime was to take the minister on, to question his integrity and to ask him to, please, out of respect for his department, do the right thing, fess up in the parliament, correct his Hansard and take responsibility. But the minister decided he would not be taking any responsibility; rather, he moved the secretary of his department on. That is a sad and tragic event in the history of the department of agriculture in this country.

But the point is, of course, that we have been telling the minister since at least the last quarter of 2014 that farmers were hurting, that they were unable to get access to the farm household allowance. They could not jump through the myriad complexities and application processes, and they could not get anyone to support them at Centrelink. But the minister's response was to say, 'No, it's all great,' and to mislead the House. That was his response.

So after all these years—three years later—the minister has decided that there is something wrong with the farm household allowance. He has finally conceded that the farm household allowance is broken and is in need of repair. This bill in itself is a belated admission that the minister got the original moral thinking wrong, that he was wrong to reject my expressions of concern in 2014 and thereafter and that he should have fixed this three years ago. That is what the minister should have done. We should not be debating this bill today. We should have been debating a bill to fix the farm household allowance three years ago.

But that poses the question: does this bill fix the problem? The bill does no harm, but sadly it does not fix the problem. What does the bill do? The bill removes the ordinary waiting period for those making an application. In other words, currently if you apply to Centrelink for the farm household allowance and you secure approval for the farm household allowance, you wait a week before you qualify. This bill removes the one-week waiting period. That seems like a reasonable thing—I am not unhappy about it; I am pleased the one-week waiting period will be removed—but the Centrelink problem has not been fixed, and the complexities of the form have not been fixed. Now people will be waiting 13, 14, 15 or 16 weeks while they try to get through the Centrelink process—a process which is growing worse by the day as this government continues to cut resources from Centrelink. I do not need to share any of those stories with the House. Every member in this place will in recent times have had experience with a constituent who cannot talk to a person in Centrelink. They walk in and are told either to use the phone or the computer in the corner or to go home and use the phone or the computer there. That is the level of service they receive at Centrelink.

Senator Bridget McKenzie had a bit of a road tour, a roadshow, where she consulted people about the problems they were having with the farm household allowance. She hailed those roundtables as a great success. She finally delivered a report to the parliament, but only because the member for Indi insisted on one—a very clever move from the member for Indi, I must say. I had not contemplated the idea that Senator McKenzie did not produce a report—I suspect she did not—but I think one was written the night after she was asked the question. We now know that Bridget McKenzie produced a report, but none of the key issues Senator McKenzie raised in her report has been addressed by this bill, and certainly this bill in no way fixes the Centrelink problems. The one-week waiting period will be removed, but the 13-, 14-, 15- or 16-week wait at Centrelink will not be removed. That is hardly a solution to the Centrelink problem—a problem which grows worse by the day. We will be supporting the bill. It does not go anywhere near far enough, but it certainly does no harm. It will make things a tiny bit better, hopefully, for some farmers experiencing hardship.

The other provision we are supportive of is a redefinition of some off-farm assets as on-farm assets—things like water allocations and interests in cooperatives—so that those assets do not count against a farmer when facing the assets test. That seems like a reasonable thing to do. I am not exactly sure how co-op interests have been valued in the past, on what basis that has been done, but obviously this can only be beneficial to those making an application. Certainly, it will not be sufficient to address the key issues.

I know the minister will come in here and say that he has a pilot project going on with the Minister for Human Services and that they are going to fix all these Centrelink problems sometime in the future. Well, I will not hold my breath. I am hopeful; I live in hope. But that in turn is an admission that, after 3½ years, the problem is still not fixed and will not be fixed anytime soon because I assume the pilot project will go on for some period of time. There will be an assessment of it, and at some point in the future something might be done about the processes, including Centrelink. But farmers have been desperate now for 3½ years and remain desperate on a daily basis. They will not take too much solace or encouragement from the pilot project being led by, as I understand it, Minister Tudge. We will be supporting the bill, but on behalf of farmers we remain very disappointed.

We are concerned about another matter. While the government are reducing the official waiting time for farmers, they are increasing the waiting time for other welfare recipients. We on this side think farmers are pretty special people. They produce our food and are a very important part of our economy and our regional communities. But why are we reducing the waiting time for one group of people in our society while, at the same time, increasing it for others? Why do unemployed youth or pensioners have to wait weeks, when farmers will not face any waiting period? This is not an expression of regret about farmers having their waiting period reduced—in fact, abolished; it is an expression of concern about the inconsistencies of the government. It raises questions about their priorities. Indeed, it raises questions about their moral thinking. Why do people who might have a disability, for example, have to wait, but farmers do not? The minister needs to help us fully understand the logic of that, the rationale, and where that fits into his moral compass. Is he saying, 'We don't really support people who find themselves unemployed because they are dole bludgers'? Is that the difference? Is it that farmers are great people—and they are—but if you are a dole bludger you will wait? That is what shines through for me in this bill and that provision. The minister needs to come in here and help us reconcile that.

There is a concern of an even higher order. I go back to what I was saying about the lack of a drought policy. What I did not say about the farm household allowance is that it is for three years. It is not necessarily for three concurrent years. People can go on the farm household allowance for a period to get through a tough patch and then go off it in the hope of living under more profitable arrangements on their farm enterprise. If they find the going tough again, they can go back on it. But, in aggregate, they can be on the payment for only three years. There will be, I suspect, some people who will have been on it continuously for three years by the time we get to the end of this calendar year, if not earlier. So the question is: in the absence of the development of any other drought policy in 3½ years, what is going to happen to those people? What is going to happen to those farmers in three, six or 12 months when Centrelink rings up and says: 'That's it. There is no more farm household allowance for you. You're on your own.' The farmers will ask: 'Can we get some other form of payment? Can we get Newstart, for example?' No, they will not be able to get Newstart because their assets will be too great and they will never pass the means test. So these people are just about to fall off a cliff. They are going to find themselves in big trouble. When the minister returns to the dispatch box to close debate on this bill, he needs to tell the House what is going to happen to the farmers who are about to reach the end of their eligibility for the farm household allowance.

I hope he is not going to say that they can go and get a concessional loan. Surely not. Surely the minister is not going to stand here and say: 'Oh, well. They can go and get a concessional loan. We've got lots of money on the table for those.' Yes, they do. The minister—although I have not heard him say it lately—likes to talk about the capital value of the loan. I do not remember the figure exactly, but he said something like, 'We've put a billion dollars on the table for concessional loans.' Yes, but that is not the cost to the budget. The government's borrowing costs are almost zero by rate. The cost to the government is the administration involved in delivering the loans where they are delivered. This is pretty rare, and there is a very small interest rate. It is not giving billions of dollars to farmers in concessional loans. He is offering them, but very few are taking them up. He is using the same strategy in northern Australia—'We've got money on the table for dams and infrastructure. As long as someone matches the funding, we'll give it away. We'll give it away, but we want it back. And we want it back with interest.'

This is the folly of the policy approach of this government. They give false hope by putting these so-called benefits out there. People listening on the radio or watching on television hear about them and think, 'Those are good things they are doing for the people who will be the recipients of those programs.' But because they are not people who are ever going to seek to be the recipients they do not hear the real story. The real story is that the money never gets given out because the conditions attached to the loans are too onerous and too hard to meet. So the minister needs to talk far less about what he might do and what he is offering and start talking about what he is prepared to do for farmers and, more particularly, going back to an earlier part of my contribution, what he is going to do about a strategic plan for agriculture in this country.

I started on the press conference that was largely—for me, at least—about the relocation of the APVMA. The minister can start there. He can drop this dumb idea. The Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority have no interface with farmers. They are in charge of making sure the chemicals and veterinary medicines that multinational companies want to put into the Australian system, whether they be a shot for a horse or a spray for a crop, are safe and efficient and are not going to be detrimental to human health. Every time that we eat something that has been grown in Australia and will have been subject to crop protection we rely on the APVMA to make sure that that crop protection, as important as it is, is in no way detrimental to our health.

Farmers rely on the productivity level and profitability level of the APVMA to deliver to them the latest and best proper protections and animal medicines in a timely manner. If they cannot rely on the APVMA to do that then—guess what?—productivity and profitability further decline. The APVMA plays a role in the export market. If we cannot get data out of the APVMA, exports go down the tube. Every person in this country with a pet relies on the APVMA to ensure the medicines they give to their loved pet is safe and beneficial and not harmful to their pet.

A very good start would be to dump the pork barrel. We know the minister struggles in Armidale. We know Tony Windsor beats him there every time.

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