Ted O'Brien (Fairfax, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

As anybody in business knows, the first point to any business strategy, let alone a growth strategy, is to protect and leverage your core, to ensure that your core competency continues to be your strength. As you look at Australia, the agricultural sector is one of our core competencies, and we need to ensure that we continue to hold up that industry and leverage it as much as we can. Of course, it's easy for those who read the headlines to know that we're looking strong in terms of the winter crop—whether it be wheat, canola, chickpeas; you name it, the winter crop is looking pretty strong—but behind those headlines lies an enormous amount of challenge. As farmers in Australia know, they deal in a highly volatile environment. It doesn't matter whether it be the yield, the weather or the global prices, the everyday Australian farmer has to deal with a constant state of uncertainty, which is not at all easy for any business let alone those that also have to deal with drought, with flood, with storms, with fires, with COVID-19 and, indeed, now with mice.

The Australian farmer is the most resilient of our people, but it is amidst uncertainty that they must operate, and this is why this government introduced the farm household allowance scheme back in 2014—in recognition that the farmers need assistance. Now, they're tough; the Australian farmers are the toughest people you find. However, they too come up against financial hardship. That is why this farm household allowance was introduced. What that meant was that farmers were able to receive payments and, in the event of conditions improving, they could roll off those payments, ensuring that there was still some sort of preserved access available to them should conditions again go south.

Like any scheme, you need it to be reviewed and improved. In 2018 an independent review was taken of the farmhouse allowance scheme. It made recommendations to the government, and, true to form, this government again stepped up. Further support was allowed, and we tried to make the scheme even more accessible, easier for the farmer, and we delivered on that. Today, in this House, we debate the Farm Household Support Amendment (Debt Waiver) Bill 2021—another measure of amendment that we are taking on board to try to improve the ease of access and, more than anything, the fairness for the everyday farmer. Let's keep in mind that we are not talking here about a handful of people across the country. We've had 16½ thousand farmers—16½ thousand farmers!—and their partners accessed this household scheme since its introduction, but what we've found is there's another measure that could improve.

What farmers do is they predict their income for the year ahead amidst all of those uncertainties. Then, after the year has gone and they've received some payments, due to their financial hardship, there is a reconciliation that's done based on actual income for the farmer. That business income reconciliation process obviously leads to discrepancy. What we have found is that where a farmer gets the prediction wrong, which one can understand, then, in the event of them receiving more payments than should have been due, the overpayment suddenly turns into a debt to the Commonwealth. That debt hangs over these farmers. And what we see through this amendment bill debated today is the waiving of those debts for up to 5,300 farmers and their partners across the country, giving them alleviation from that debt. It's also ensuring that the integrity of the scheme remains intact.

So, we will, as a nation and, indeed, as a government, continue to recognise the importance of agriculture as a core competency of our nation. We will continue to recognise that, despite the inherent resilience of the Australian farmer, they too come up against hard times. It is incumbent on the government and the people we represent to ensure we provide access easily to those farmers. And where there is a payment that has been made, based on a very fair and genuine prediction, that creates a discrepancy, then those debts, within a very defined period of time, will be waived while the integrity of the scheme remains. With that, I commend the bill to the House.

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