Mike Kelly (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Defence Industry and Support) Share this | Hansard source

I'm grateful for the opportunity to speak on this motion, and I support all of the sentiments in it that commend our farmers and the heavy lifting they're doing in relation to our economy. But I do take issue with any claim that the government's been giving them the actual support they need for the future.

I fully endorse a lot of the comments we've heard from speakers. The member for Cowper talked about the dairy industry doing it enormously tough. We do need to seriously get down and look at how this industry is regulated and the way Parmalat and Fonterra, the big processors, interact with our farmers. You should not be forced to take a lower price for a product you produce than it costs to produce it. This market is not working properly. I know that the member for Gilmore has raised this issue repeatedly as well. But I would say to both the member for Gilmore and the member for Cowper: you're in government, so let's get on and fix it. I'm sure you'd get a lot of bipartisan support in addressing that issue.

We've heard about invasive species. That is a critical issue, particularly bad in my patch. We've heard about the deer and the pigs—yes, we've got all of that—but also in the plant space there are serrated tussock, African lovegrass, St John's wort and particularly fireweed, down at the coast, which is a toxic weed that's very dangerous to animals. We need to put much more effort into that space. We know it costs our industry billions of dollars a year.

But the government haven't helped in so many ways. It was farmers who were coming to me in numbers at all of the country shows that I was having stalls at and who were screaming for a royal commission into banking. How long did it take people to wake up to that? Why weren't those country members of this parliament on the coalition side just forcing the government to take that issue seriously? I give credit to Senator Williams, who really fought that battle for a long time, but he was a voice in the dark in the coalition. It was farmers who were calling out for that, and they were ignoring them.

Then of course we had the gutting of the APVMA. We've lost 30 per cent of the scientists of that organisation, and it's that organisation which is going to help to deliver the science and the research that we need to come to grips with for these difficult and challenging conditions. They've been absolutely crippled by this crazy decentralisation policy.

We've also had other measures that have hurt regional Australia, and that is why we saw a 30 per cent swing in Wagga and why we saw a 30 per cent swing in Orange. It's why, while standing on the booths in Gundagai, I saw a 43 per cent swing there. They're not listening to rural and regional Australia; that's the basic take-out from what's going on out there in these results. It's happening and they're not paying attention to it.

Now, one of those examples of not paying attention is what's happening to the councils in my area. We've seen this program to support councils in drought affected areas and not one—not one!—of the six councils in my region received that assistance. We had areas classified as in intense drought in the Bega Valley and in the Monaro. It's really disgraceful that this has been allowed to happen, and I think that it goes back to that former minister politicising a lot of programs in his portfolio.

We saw the regional jobs infrastructure program, where $18 million went to Gilmore and $1 million went to Eden-Monaro. But now he's gone, and this is another reflection of where bad policy is being played out here because of the chaos, confusion and dysfunction in the coalition side. We have a new minister now, and after all the correspondence and lobbying I put in to the previous minister to address this situation we have to start again. And I've had no response to the correspondence I put to Senator McKenzie to deal with this issue of the unfair treatment of my councils. I can say that my mayors are not happy about this at all. So the other side are not listening to rural and regional New South Wales.

On this drought issue: we've talked before about climate change and the need to get to grips with this. One of the things they've really hurt our farmers with was that in killing the clean energy future package they took away the whole market dynamic behind the Carbon Farming Initiative, which was going to help our farmers to diversify income on their properties through a whole range of measures. I've had meetings with farmers in Yass, in community forums there, and in Cooma. And I've just had a meeting with beef and sheepmeat growers down in the Bega Valley. They are screaming for assistance in coming to grips with these dry conditions. I've heard members on the other side say, 'Don't lecture our farmers.' Well, I'm telling them that the farmers are happy to receive support.

The farmers in the Monaro who formed Monaro Farming Systems in the millennium drought reached out and got help from the CSIRO, which gave them a computer-modelling package to enable them to design a 50-year strategy for their properties and to help them work through these difficult cycles. But we're seeing these incredibly changed conditions. The fires in the Bega Valley have been enormously challenging, burning out pastures, and they're screaming for climate change to be dealt with seriously by this government. These are farmers saying this, so do not ignore them—start listening— (Time expired)

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