Andrew Broad (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Yes—it's incredible what you can do with pipeline systems now. What we're seeing across our agricultural regions is the rejigging of stock and domestic pipelines when, in the past, catchment dams may have done that.

People ask, 'Do you believe in climate change or not?' What we do know is that the climate is changing, what we do know is that we're building the tools, collectively, as Australians to adapt to that and what we do know is that our farmers are pragmatic. They're not getting stuck in the intellectual debate around climate change. What they're saying is: 'We see that it's drier on our farm. We see that we have different periods of dry—and it may be because of historic reasons and that we're getting back to our long-term average rainfall, or it may be because of emissions in the air.' They don't really care. They care about how they farm, how they make a living and how we ensure the market's available to them—how do we open up the financial products to them?

Can I also offer something that we haven't moved on and which I think we need to move on more—something that is taking place around the world. Saskatchewan in Canada has a drought insurance model, and I met with the USDA in Washington two years ago to discuss their arable drought insurance. 'Arable' is the word they use for broadacre cropping. We have yet to develop a really effective drought insurance model. I think that where we do need to land—and I'll just put this on the record—is encouraging people to have an FMD of the same value as their interest component. So if they have a million-dollar debt and interest rates are at six per cent, they should have $60,000 parked in an FMD. If it's dry they can then realise that FMD and make an interest-only payment, which will keep the bank out of their way for that 12 months.

We should also encourage an input-only insurance product. So if they're running up a fee for fuel, wheat, seed or fertiliser, they should be able to take an insurance product against what they write out in fees. Then, when we get that dry year and they don't harvest anything—and I have harvested one bushel an acre myself. If anyone wants to check what a bushel is, it's a third of a bag. You can work that out, less the seed that I actually put in the ground. In those dry years, they should be able to get their input components back, service their loans with an FMD and then not be out of pocket. They can roll the dice again and set themselves up for another year, because the most important thing anyone must have at the end of a drought is ensuring that they're well placed for productivity so they can then go forward and produce, because it will rain. It does rain.

To our farmers out there: we hear you and we're standing by you. To our farming families and those women out there in Australia, we pay tribute to you. It'll rain again and we'll be helping you until it does.

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