Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I, like the other people on the Labor side, on this side of the House, am here to say that we do support the Farm Household Support Amendment Bill 2017 that is before us today, but I want to point out that it has been a long time coming. We knew that this was an issue, that farmers were struggling to have access to farm household assistance. We knew that they were having issues with this back in 2014. We asked several questions of the minister back in 2014. But rather than addressing the concerns that farmers were raising, that rural financial counselling services were raising and that organisations were raising back in 2014, what the minister did back then was embellish his answer in question time and then try and change Hansard. We all remember Hansardgate. What this minister was trying to do was cover up what was actually going on in this sector.

The fact is that we have a broader problem with Centrelink. The fact is that we have a broader problem with staffing levels within Centrelink, and yet the government has chosen to ignore them since they were first raised. Back in 2014, when this side raised those questions, the minister dismissed them and did nothing until this moment. I cannot believe it has taken three years for this issue to finally be addressed in the House, through amendments to the legislation, to make it easier for our farmers to access this assistance. What was happening then in my part of the world was that our rural financial counselling service was one of the organisations raising concerns about the blow-out in time lines and that farmers were struggling to get support under this system. Rather than listening and taking on board those legitimate concerns, what people might remember is that the minister at the time had a review of financial counselling services. As a result of that review, we lost our rural financial counselling service based in Bendigo. So the people who raised the issue on behalf of the farmers—because the farmers were struggling to get access to their allowance—are no longer in a job. This government reviewed financial counselling services and then, all of a sudden, the service that raised this issue was no longer in service. So, in our part of the world, we are very concerned about the support and the counselling services that people in our region are now receiving, because this government has restructured and reorganised financial counselling services. Rather than admitting that there were problems back in 2014, that was the kind of trick that this government got up to. It is sad to see that it has taken so long for the government to acknowledge that there are faults in this program.

I have had the great opportunity and privilege of meeting a number of our dairy farmers just to the north of the Bendigo area, in regional Victoria. We do not distinguish ourselves based upon artificial electoral boundaries; that is something which we may organise ourselves on, but it is not how our communities organise. I have had the opportunity to meet with dairy farmers in the Gunbower area and with people in the dairy industry around Cohuna. What they say to me loudly and clearly is very similar to what the member for Hunter said, and that is that they do not want loans. Sure, at the moment, they may need to seek loans, but they actually do not want them. They want a sustainable dairy industry. They want this place and this government to get behind them and to help them, not to take three years to make amendments to legislation. Some of them now say they do not need help, but there is a new set of farmers that do need help.

Just how long were some of the wait times that farmers had been experiencing? When I spoke to people in the Murray Valley area in Gunbower, some of them were waiting five to six months to receive assistance. As the member for Mallee said, these are proud people. These are people who have worked really hard. They are proud people, and so for them to walk through that Centrelink door is a hard thing to do—absolutely. And they should not have to wait such a long time to receive support and assistance from their government. I also want to say that any worker who has to fall back onto our safety net is a proud person. For any worker to lose their job, to have a cut-back in hours or to be made redundant, it is very hard to walk through the Centrelink door that first time. Some of the comments from our farmers about how demoralising it has been, how heartbreaking it has been and how hard it has been are the same comments being made by other people who find themselves having to fall back on our safety net.

I am disappointed that this government does not treat workers who have been made redundant or workers who have had their hours cut with the same level of respect and compassion with which they treat our farmers. I call on the government to treat all people requiring the support of Centrelink with the same dignity and respect that they are calling for for our farmers. It does not matter whether you are a retrenched manufacturing worker or a farmer who has been crippled by Murray Goulburn milk prices, you deserve the same dignity and respect. You deserve to have the Centrelink phone call that you make answered in a timely fashion. You deserve to have your Centrelink form processed in a timely fashion and not have to wait five to six months like our farmers and like other people seeking assistance have had to do.

This is a bill that does support our farmers and our farming community—great people who have worked really hard and continue to work hard who do need the support of our social welfare system through moments of hardship, whether it be drought or whether it be a crisis like Murray Goulburn, as we have seen just to the north of the Bendigo electorate—

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