Meryl Swanson (Paterson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Have you heard the news today—news of the continued fighting in the Turnbull government's cabinet over the National Energy Guarantee; news that the former Prime Minister, the member for Warringah, will cross the floor on this issue if he doesn't get his way; news about the Turnbull government's incessant campaign to lock in massive corporate tax cuts for business? We could wind back the calendar a day, a week or a month and revisit the headlines and see this pattern ad nauseam, a pattern where an out-of-touch government puts its political priorities ahead of the interests of ordinary Australians, a pattern where the government is increasingly paralysed by party room dysfunction, a pattern where the Prime Minister's grasp on the leadership becomes more tenuous with each and every Newspoll.

Meanwhile, the people of Australia couldn't really give a toss about most of it. To be frank, they're fed up. They are fed up with the government's obsession with itself, at the expense of all Australians, and fed up with a government that seems to want to serve the top end of town while the rest of us hang out and hang on, desperate to try to pay for clothes and shoes for our children and desperate to try to pay the ever-increasing energy bills. They really just want some leadership and policies.

Nothing could be closer to this than this bill on farm household support. I'm glad that the government has decided to support our farming families and extend the farm household allowance by one year, from three to a maximum of four cumulative years. But I ask why this has taken so long. I spoke in the chamber yesterday about my anger that it has taken Prime Ministers Turnbull and Abbott and agriculture ministers Joyce and Littleproud an unacceptable and indeed unforgiveable amount of time to act on this. I spoke about the great hardships that have been experienced by farming families in my electorate of Paterson for many months. Vegetable farmers were unable to grow crops due to hot and arid conditions, tanks were bone dry and salinity levels in the depleted rivers made irrigation impossible. Beef farmers were forced to handfeed and spend exorbitant amounts of time and money on water cartage to prevent stock deaths due to dehydration. The livelihood of our milk producers in my electorate was further threatened by the unavailability of water, which made sanitation of their dairies almost impossible and really incredibly difficult. Carefully crafted bloodlines of really prized animals were unceremoniously sent to market or to the slaughterhouse because it was financially impossible for farmers to keep them alive.

I remind the honourable members opposite that this situation did not suddenly spring up at the beginning of the month when the Prime Minister decided to conduct the whistlestop selfie tour of the big dry. We have properties and communities in New South Wales and Queensland that have been paralysed by drought for the last seven years. So, while my colleagues and I on this side of the House do not decline to give the Farm Household Support Amendment Bill 2018 a second reading, there are some points that really do need to be made and called out on.

I support the member for Hunter's call for an amendment to the motion that notes the Turnbull government's failure to provide timely and effective legislative amendments to support Australia's farming families and, more broadly, the agricultural sector, because this faffing around is nothing new from this Prime Minister and the cohort he has around him. The Turnbull government has a penchant for selectively pursuing legislation that promotes its political agenda at the expense of everything else. Time and time again, the people of Australia are left waiting for this government to govern.

In my electorate of Paterson, where the community of Williamtown is ground zero in Australia's PFAS contamination nightmare, my constituents have been pleading for nigh on three years for this Prime Minister and the members of his cabinet to do something—to publish their anticipated report, to honour their avowed commitments to release their promised policy and to offer a pathway out of the living nightmare my constituents have been trapped inside since 4 September 2015. Yes, there are critical matters that this government could turn its attention towards. But no; far too much energy is spent pandering to the bloke who's going to throw his toys out of the pram if he doesn't get his way or pandering to the pork-barrelling former minister feathering his own electorate nest. This government has had years to put in place a structure that would have helped these farmers, right now, to make a living. It could have provided advice and support for those who aim to droughtproof their operations over the long term. It could have helped farming families make that difficult call about whether they can or cannot make a quid out of farming, given the changed market conditions and ever more volatile climatic extremes, and it could have offered pathways and retraining for people who choose to leave the land. The government could have used the SCoPI process to put these supports in place. It could have done this some time ago and it did not, and that is a disgrace. And now our farming families are meant to rejoice that the government has seen fit to extend household assistance for a further 12 months. Yes, it is something but, as I said yesterday, it's nowhere near enough. It's a small sticking plaster on a gaping wound.

Our farming families are an important part of Australia's agricultural landscape and the fabric of our nation. Elsewhere in our agricultural sector we have primary producers and those who rely on them stuck in limbo waiting for the government to act. My electorate of Paterson is home to beef farmers, dairy farmers, fishers, prawners and oyster growers. They work incredibly hard, and times have been tough. I've spoken before in the House to share the plight of my constituents, who suffered through the driest season in 80 years—stock farmers who were forced to sell or face exorbitant hand-feeding costs. Even water came at a premium in terms of both time and cartage, and, if the tanks weren't dry, as I mentioned earlier, the salinity levels in the river were as high as some farmers had ever seen them. Vegetable farmers just watched entire crops fail.

In the face of the uncontrollable challenges of climate and weather, we owe it to our farming families to appropriately support their industry and, in turn, their livelihoods. We should be turning our brightest agricultural minds to this and saying, 'How can we make this better for those people who work so hard every day and who really have been the best in the world?' It is completely unacceptable that the Turnbull government continues to fail Australian farmers and agricultural industries through legislative delays. Right now, Prime Minister Turnbull and the members opposite have amassed quite a stockpile of outstanding bills while they attempt to ram home their own agenda. This is patently not good enough. The people of Australia are looking to Prime Minister Turnbull and his government to do precisely that: govern in the interests of those who saw fit to elect them. Instead they wait and they wait and they wait some more. I might just add that I find it particularly disappointing that members of the National Party always talk about being agrarian socialists, say that they just want to do the best by the bush, and say that they want to support the agricultural sectors—well, I think that they've put their hands up and stood on the wrong side of the House in many votes and particularly—

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