David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have received a letter from the honourable member for New England proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:

Effective rural policy now and into the future.

I call upon those members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank those members for endorsing my matter of public importance. The topic is fairly wide ranging, and I am sure other speakers will speak in a different sense on policy issues, but the main thrust of my comments will be directed towards the drought. I think it is interesting that, in the last week in particular, there has been a sudden recognition in the major press and within the parliament that there is still a drought raging out there. To those who have been living through it over the last four or five years, depending on where they live, or in far western areas for nearly 10 years, it is an obvious part of their daily lives. Nonetheless, it is good to see that the parliament and the media, particularly the urban media, have suddenly recognised the importance of drought.

There are a few issues that I would like to raise about some of the myths that are being put about at the moment in the major press in relation to the farming community and their access to drought assistance. I think some of the people writing the editorials and some of the journalists themselves should look very seriously at the messages that they are sending to people in rural communities. There is a tremendous amount of stress out there. There are suicides occurring because of the financial and other stresses involved in coping with the drought. Some people are taking advantage of the water debate, other debates and have their own agendas. They are being painted as people who have their snouts in the trough of some magnificent amount of money that is being fed to farmers. The issue of keeping non-viable farmers on the land is one of a whole range of issues that has been painted up, and I would like to dispel some of those myths.

Firstly, the government has been saying for some years that it has committed $1.2 billion to drought relief. It was saying in 2003 and 2004 that it had committed $1.2 billion in drought assistance, and that has painted the picture out there that there is a mountain of money that has gone to—in the words of some journalists—inefficient farmers. I would like to break down the amount of money that has been expended—and I would encourage all members of parliament to access some of these figures. Drought assistance is divided into a number of areas. The most important area, in my view, and others may debate this, is the interest rate component of the financial business assistance—the actual assistance that is going to the farm business through exceptional circumstances relief to help that farm business tread water so that when it comes out the other end it is in a position to be productive again and make a productive contribution to its own and the national community. That is what exceptional circumstances relief was put in place to do. That interest rate assistance—the treading water part of drought assistance—is what drought assistance should be about: maintaining the line until the weather breaks so that farmers can be given an opportunity to progress. Bear in mind that we have been told that $1.2 billion has been spent on drought assistance. When you look at the exceptional circumstances interest rate relief—the last audited figures on this for the four years from 2001 to 2005, available through the budgetary arrangements—the figure that comes up is $242.53 million. That is the business assistance; that is the money that people at the Australian Financial Review and others are saying is this mountain of money that is going to keep non-viable farmers on the land.

Over the four years of the drought, an average of $60 million a year is this great rort that the farmers have supposedly been absorbing from the broader community. They are a community that makes a contribution of $103 billion and they are getting $60 million per year in the worst drought in history to support their businesses. I think all country members are aware of the support they provide to businesses in the local communities et cetera. To say that that is a massive rort is quite beyond the pale.

Let us look at something comparable: another industry that was having trouble back in 2000. There was an election coming up, and the building industry was paranoid about what the 10 per cent goods and services tax would do to the price of a house and the impacts it would have on developers. They were worried about what it would do to employment and the skills base in that industry and where they would go with the catastrophe. That was government policy, but, in a sense, it was going to be a drought for that industry.

What did the government do in response? It put in place the First Home Owner Scheme. It dressed it up as if it were there to assist young people into their homes. In a lot of cases it has assisted them into debt, and the prices of the homes have gone up, but we will leave that aside. From 2001 through that same period—the audited period—to 2005, $5.2 billion has been spent on that industry, an average of $1.3 billion per annum as against the $60 million in business support for the farming community in that same period of time.

People in the Australian Financial Review and other papers and the Peter Cullens of this world are saying that there has been a propping up of the farm sector, when in the worst drought in history it has had a miserable $60 million shelled out, on average, in business assistance. I am told that the estimates for 2005-06 will be greater in exceptional circumstances payments. I will take that as read, but the average will not go above $100 million. There was $100 million spent on industrial relations advertising, so for people to say that an enormous amount of expenditure has gone to owners of non-viable farms is, in my view, beyond the pale.

What are other people saying about this? We have the report of the new candidate for Parkes, Mr Corish. The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry spoke about it this morning. Mr Corish provided a report to the minister, and the minister endorsed it a fortnight ago. Today, he is talking about the farmers. This week is ‘farmers week’; it is ‘drought week’, because the Sydney media is looking at the issue. In his report, only a few weeks ago, Mr Corish stated:

Many see it—

that is, the interest rate subsidy—

as rewarding poor management, propping up farmers who fail to respond to changed ... conditions or take imprudent risks. It can delay change and reform by keeping otherwise unviable farms in business for longer than would otherwise be the case.

Mr Corish presented his report to the minister for agriculture, recommending that the interest rate assistance be phased out. That was the former president of the National Farmers Federation who recommended that.

The minister is not saying that today, and the Prime Minister is not saying that. Everybody in this chamber this week, since the media has paid some attention to this particular problem again, has run back into their nest about the $60 million a year in business support for one of the biggest industries in Australia, which is experiencing the worst drought in recorded history. Even the Treasurer said the other day that this is dreadful and could cause a recession. That would be a national impact.

The government has expended money other than the $60 million a year in terms of household support. All that is, as many of the country members would recognise, is the dole for people who are not earning an income. Any Australian is entitled to get some assistance if they are not earning an income. They cannot leave their farm to go and earn another income because they are maintaining the farm business. The government—and I mentioned this to the Deputy Prime Minister—keep saying to the press that the government has made these magnificent efforts of $1.2 billion. People appreciate it, and I am not whingeing about that.

What I am saying is that the government is putting this suggestion in the minds of the Peter Cullens, the Peter Corishes and others in this world and there are an enormous number of people who think farmers are being propped up. The fact is that if your farm is unviable, you cannot get exceptional circumstance interest rate assistance. So it is nonsense to say that there are farmers with unviable farms whom the government is propping up through exceptional circumstances payments. It is no more than absolute nonsense. I say to the government, the opposition and some of these people who are trying to run a water debate through the misery of the drought that people are experiencing at the moment: back off and look at the numbers. The numbers are an embarrassment. It is an embarrassment to say that $60 million, a pittance, is being committed to keeping our farm businesses alive during this particular period of time.

As I said, I think the estimates are going to be higher than the last year. That might bring the averages to $80 million or $100 million, but it is still an absolute pittance when you line it up beside $2 billion in 2003-04 for the car industry, over $11 billion of assistance to industry generally and, as I said, this ongoing subsidy to the building industry of $1.2 billion a year. That is nearly $6 billion since 2001. I think it puts it into perspective. If the Australian Financial Review and others want to start talking about those sorts of issues in relation to the farm sector being propped up, I think they should have a close look at some of the other issues that are involved.

Another issue that I raise in terms of drought is a freedom of information application that I have had before the minister for agriculture for many months now, in relation to 700 farmers within my electorate. For three years they were not granted exceptional circumstances payments and, all of a sudden, in the fourth year, they were granted exceptional circumstances payments. I have asked for the documents relating to the change in reasoning behind them not being granted for three years and then suddenly being granted. I want to see the documentation in relation to that. The National Farmers Federation, the New South Wales Farmers Association and others are looking at reforming drought policy into the future, and I think we have to look very closely at what happened in that particular area. A similar change of mind has happened only in two areas, that I know of, in Australia.

The minister is refusing to allow those documents to be released. He is actually suggesting that I should pay $4,000 to see those documents, and they are saying that, even then, all the documents may not be able to be released. I think that is an absolute disgrace and I call on the minister, the parliamentary secretary and others from the government who are here today to get the minister to release those documents. They should be available. They need to be available to improve the process into the future, otherwise we will have the same problems developing again.

What about the future? There is a lot of talk about how drought policy needs improvement. I would be the first to say it does. I am not saying you can do that overnight, but I think we have got to look seriously at it. A suggestion that I have made a number of times, and others have as well, is that we put in place a system that recognises natural disaster, a national natural disaster scheme. I have used the term before. One dollar a week from every Australian raises $1 billion a year. It is not a lot of money and it is cheap insurance. There has only been one disaster since 1973 that has cost more than that, and that was the Newcastle earthquake—and that cost only a bit over $1 billion in one year. Normally, expenditure on disasters in Australia, whether they be cyclones, earthquakes or drought, as in this case, runs at about $100 million to $200 million—or 10c to 20c a week.

Why can we not remove drought from this farce that we have with the states being involved, the federal government being involved and the politicisation of the process that has been involved over many years? The government now is saying, ‘We’ve done an enormous amount for the farmers over the last few years.’ It has done nothing for small business so far, and that is another thing that it should be looking seriously at. We could put in place a natural disaster fund that embraced not only drought but also hail, mudslides, earthquakes and cyclones and that covered situations such as occurred in Wollongong and Coffs Harbour. It would be a progressive amount of money, raised by way of a levy or however we wanted to do it—a small amount of money that would quickly grow and would be accessible under certain criteria in the advent of a disaster. I think we have got to look seriously at removing drought from being a spectacle on its own and see it for what it is: an exceptional event, a disaster at a particular point in time.

I would like to finish by quoting the President of the New South Wales Farmers Association, because I think what he says is quite true and it is on a positive note:

The situation is desperate, but it will rain again and we will be back making a living after a couple of good seasons.

Agriculture has done it in the past. It will do it in the future. I suggest to those who are driving people to suicide by picking up agendas all over the place about what, in their view, is a massive amount of money propping up unprofitable farmers: shut up and listen to what is actually going on in the farming sector. (Time expired)

Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you to the member for New England for proposing this very important matter of public importance for discussion here in the House today. Today’s MPI deals with effective rural policy now and into the future. I do not propose to be political. The member for New England has talked about what sickens farmers in these difficult times, and I think one of the things that really does sicken farmers is when opposing parties, relatively comfortable here in Canberra—we have close connections with our rural electorates but personally we are quite comfortably off—start attacking each other across this chamber or in our state legislatures. So I do not propose to do that today. I think it is important that we as a team, if I can say that, of rural and regional members highlight what this drought is doing to the people that we represent, the people that we care about.

So let me just paint a quick picture of the scene we are dealing with at the moment. This will very much be focused on my main area as the member for Farrer in southern New South Wales, an area that starts at the top of Mount Kosciuszko, runs along the Murray River and finishes at the South Australian border. The Snowy Mountains scheme—some 17 dams in the high country there, connected intricately with the Murray-Darling system—and water storages across the region are coping or trying to come to terms with a state of affairs that I do not believe the people who designed and built them ever envisaged. The country in my area looks like it does in the middle of January, and that is a pretty depressing sight. There are no or low water allocations to general security users on the Murray—that is, people who do not have a guaranteed allocation of water are facing zero allocation.

What really annoys me when I travel—as we all do, to events in cities or bigger regional centres—is when somebody says to me, as they invariably do: ‘Well, there you are. You’re growing cotton and rice where you have no business to be growing it in this record drought.’ The point I make here—and I never get tired of making it—is that we are growing precious little cotton and almost no rice in the Murray-Darling system, because the water allocation for those irrigators is zero. General security water allocation is zero.

For the first time ever, high security users have had their water allocation cut back too. If you thought you had 100 per cent of whatever amount of megalitres your allocation was, you were told within the last week by the New South Wales Department of Natural Resources that it has been cut back to 80 per cent. If you had planned carefully and you had some carryover water from last year, if you have used it all, great, but, if not, you have had that cut back to 80 per cent. So you have lost 20 per cent of your water allocation. That has never happened before that I am aware of.

You can imagine the effect that has on somebody’s business. I would like to mention a fellow in my electorate who grows tomatoes. He paid about $400,000 for 2,000 megalitres of water—guaranteed, you would think. He signed contracts with SPC on the basis of that. He is now facing this reduced allocation of 20 per cent less, but he has still got contracts where he is obliged to deliver a product, and he now cannot. That is just one small example. We have had calls in my electorate office, as I am sure the member for New England has, from transport companies, from small businesses in towns, from people who cart livestock, from all over, saying this is terrible.

We are facing—and it is rapidly becoming a bit of a cliche, unfortunately, because you cannot think of new ways to express the same thing—uncharted waters, new territory, somewhere we have never been before. There have been other droughts in Australia’s recorded history—the Federation drought was one, and who knows what happened before white settlement?—but this is pretty bad. Crops are failing and there are forced sales of livestock in record numbers.

As a government we have an obligation, and we are meeting that obligation, to look at the existing policies that we have, modify them where necessary and provide a whole-of-government response. It is not just within the Agriculture portfolio but across Family and Community Services and Centrelink. May I say that even the tax office is looking kindly on people who have trouble with their tax debt. I am sure that not many farmers have a large tax debt at the moment, but, if your quarterly statements are due and you are having trouble paying them, then the fact that you are experiencing a drought is something that the tax office looks at favourably, and I commend them for that.

We have announced changes to exceptional circumstances this week. Eighteen areas are being rolled over. One of the stresses of being in an EC area is: ‘I’m in the area, but am I eligible because of the type of activity that I’m involved in?’ Also, everyone who is in that EC area is now entitled to apply. Sometimes those declarations were done on an industry basis, and that is no longer the case. Not only that, but they have been rolled over for 18 months. That is extremely important, because another stress in exceptional circumstances is: ‘Okay, the declaration’s going to end. What happens next? Do we have to go through another assessment? Does the National Rural Advisory Council have to visit? What’s going to happen to me in my personal circumstances?’ That is taken off the table; there is an 18-month extension. That was announced this week.

I hasten to add that the government is continuing to look at ways in which we can help farmers. It is the topic of conversation this week in the Liberal and National party rooms and around the house generally. We are getting ready, I believe, to respond in a very meaningful way. In the same way that I think this has to be a whole-of-government approach, it has to be a whole-of-community response as well, because the thing about this drought—and there is the fact that urban Australia is experiencing its own problems in terms of its water resources—is that it is not just an issue for rural and regional Australia; it is not just the problem that they are having in the bush because, of course, the farmers need rain. All of a sudden it is something that is everyone’s problem. In every problem there is an opportunity, and I believe that there are opportunities in this for us to do better and get it right into the future.

We would prefer to be dealing with average seasonal conditions, but we are not. Some people are blaming the current circumstances on global warming, climate change induced by human activity and bringing in the Kyoto protocol—our green friends, of course, would never miss an opportunity to do that. This is not helpful to farmers. It is not helpful to farmers to imagine that they are part of some worldwide phenomenon that is accelerating them to a point where their farmlands will be devastated and they simply will not be able to grow anything because the latitudes have shifted 20 or 30 degrees south. It is not helpful. I would encourage those who want to have the climate change debate to have it but not to draw farmers into it as if somehow they are part of it, somehow they are responsible for it and somehow they are completely helpless in the face of it. It may be an inconvenient truth for some but farming and agriculture are here to stay. They are here to stay for the future and for the long haul. They are the best land use for much of Australia.

The member for New England accurately reflected on some comments, particularly in the Financial Review, about what we are really doing out here. It is all wishy-washy rubbish. We have had the Wentworth Group. In fact, in the last parliament, the member for New England and I both sat on a committee which did an inquiry into water resources. I have to say that we did take some shots at the Wentworth Group on that occasion. I understand that they have as their priority an environmentally healthy Australia—that is all right; that is a good thing—but for members of that group to make statements at the moment about the nonviability of farmers—

Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It’s a disgrace.

Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

is a disgrace—thank you. If a group like this has come together, can it not put its mind and turn its attention to something constructive? For example, I talk about representing the Murray River and make the point that about half of the water that flows to South Australia, whose allocation is about 1,860 gigalitres a year, evaporates in the lower lakes. We have lower lakes in South Australia that are held in place by barrages, but they are lower lakes full of fresh water. It is okay to need the water level there and it is okay to have the lifestyle activities there—I am not arguing with that—but why does it have to be fresh water that has come all the way from the high country in New South Wales and Victoria to sit in the lower lakes?

Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Windsor interjecting

Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is not being political, member for New England, but I think that it would be useful for the Wentworth Group to turn its attention to possibly some re-engineering solutions about what could be done on an occasion like this. I remember those solutions being presented to and considered very sensibly by a previous environment minister in this government, so I think we are on the case there. There is certainly some talk about re-engineering Menindee Lakes—another area of significant evaporation.

So what I would say to the Wentworth Group is: thank you for having the health of our rivers at the forefront of your consideration, but remember that we all need to work together and no partnership between farmers and environment groups will work if each side of that partnership does not understand the imperatives of the other. It is no good saying, ‘Okay, it’s a bad drought, but the environment’s important—the environment needs this—and everybody else has to get in the queue behind it,’ because that is not going to work. We need real solutions for real problems for real farmers in the real world. It very much is a real world out there.

I attended a meeting of rural financial counsellors in Melbourne a couple of weeks ago and spoke to the rural financial councillor from Bourke territory, who the member for New England and the member for Page know well. He told me that on the road between Bourke and Wanaaring, which is a road I have travelled in a previous life, there were about 17 properties and about 12 of them have closed down. That is it: closed and gone.

In the back of Balranald, in my own electorate—I have been there recently—it looks like it does in the middle of January. When the Prime Minister visited western New South Wales on a previous drought tour he came out to the west of my electorate. It had been in drought or dry times for about 10 years. It was interesting that members of the Canberra press gallery accompanying us said, ‘What are you doing farming for out here if it is this bad?’ I tried to make the point that it is not always that bad, that the best land use is agriculture and that, believe it or not, the country, if managed and farmed properly, recovers really quickly. Eight months after that tour I was able to show people photographs of that land in western New South Wales, which had looked like the Simpson Desert, with grass half as tall as I am—fabulous feed. Unfortunately, it did not really last.

The MPI talks about effective rural policy now and into the future. Obviously, we are concentrating on farming and rural policy, but that is not the whole picture. Rural Australia is not just about its farms and its agriculture but also about its communities, its people, its social networks and its children and their futures. I do not want to bang the drum, but I want to run through what I think are some important policies that I have observed working in rural and regional Australia. I will preface it by saying again that this is not about policies for the city and policies for the bush; it is about bringing the two together. It is about each side understanding what each other is about and taking on each other’s problems as their own.

AusLink is the national transport infrastructure plan; there are some interesting developments with it. There is a feasibility study for a north-south rail link, which is going to take on an enormous amount of the freight task. Something we are working out now is where exactly that rail line will go. There are further opportunities to link the rail from Mildura north to join the rail that goes from Sydney to Broken Hill. That will be pretty exciting. Councils in my electorate are very pleased with Roads to Recovery money, which is money directly from the federal government to help them with local roads. I do not think we will ever be allowed to take that one off the table.

While I am talking about councils in my electorate I will mention, in the context of the current difficult situation, that visiting the national parliament today to discuss the water crisis is the Wakool Shire Council, which is based around Barham and Moulamein in southern New South Wales. The mayor, Councillor Ken Trewin, is here with Daryl McDonald and Neil Eagle, two irrigators from the area. They sought urgent talks with Malcolm Turnbull regarding the water situation. I was very pleased that the parliamentary secretary was able to see them. They were able to tell a pretty distressing tale about their community and what is going on there at the moment. Councils and local governments are the closest forms of government to the people. They represent the sad situations that you hear in families, communities and small businesses in the towns. I want to thank them for that. We all rely on our local councils for the work that they do at the local level.

Coming back to some other general government policies, there is the Sustainable Regions Program’s $21 million for the Darling Matilda Way sustainable region in western New South Wales and Queensland. There is Work Choices. It is under attack from the opposition but, remember, in regional areas there is a high proportion of small businesses that need a more flexible labour market. Certainly, losing workers in small towns is more of a hit— (Time expired)

Gavan O'Connor (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for New England for bringing this matter of public importance before the parliament. I note that in the chamber there are many members that represent rural constituencies and have an interest in this particular debate. The parliamentary secretary ought not to be upset if I do get somewhat political in my remarks; I thought this was a political chamber. This is a debate about effective rural policy, and I think the parliament certainly can engage in a discussion on the government’s performance over a decade.

Be that as it may, Australian agriculture in this new millennium faces challenges that in the coming decades will test its resilience and its viability. The new global trading environment, climate change and associated issues of water management and salinity, the availability of new technologies, the animal welfare debate, the depletion of our soils and the sustainability imperative are all issues that now challenge farmers, rural communities and national governments, and that will shape Australia’s agriculture into the future. With the ageing of the rural workforce, the overall decline in some rural communities, and the declining contribution of the agriculture sector to the national economy, governments at all levels, particularly at the national level, have a critical role to play in the future directions and development of policy in this sector. The federal government, through its budget and through its involvement in national policy formulation and implementation, plays a central role in the development of the national economy and industry sectors such as agriculture.

There is a particular onus on the federal government and the minister responsible for agriculture to secure the integrity of the policy formulation process and ensure that those policies are administered effectively—which is the subject of this MPI—and that promises made to the sector are promptly and honestly kept. Over the past 10 years, successive coalition ministers of agriculture have not lived up to this reasonable expectation.

Australian farmers and the communities in which they live are, as we speak, under the pump from emerging dry conditions that rival the Federation drought of 1902. I acknowledge in the chamber the member for Kennedy, who has joined us for this debate. Many of those farmers have not recovered financially from the widespread drought that occurred in 2002-03, and they have been plunged into despair as a result of the dry conditions that are now gripping the nation from east to west and throughout Central Australia. Over 95 per cent of New South Wales is now drought declared—and I acknowledge in the chamber for this debate members of the coalition that represent that great state of the Commonwealth of Australia. Grain production is expected to halve. Farmers are offloading stock and saleyard prices have plummeted. Rural businesses associated with the sector have seen their business income plummet, and predictions from the Bureau of Meteorology are for an El Nino effect that is likely to prolong the dry conditions by in excess of 12 to 18 months. This is not the only drought we have experienced in recent times. The drought of 2002-03 put enormous stress on farm families and rural communities.

Labor responded before the last election with a comprehensive policy that we challenge the coalition to match. We maintained that great Labor initiative, the Farm Management Deposits scheme, as it is known under the government, because we saw this was of great value to farmers in working their way through conditions that would be considered extreme in a climactic sense. Our reforms included: the scheduling of regular meetings between the Commonwealth and the states to monitor climactic conditions and emerging issues; exceptional circumstances case meetings between the Commonwealth, the states and rural communities to monitor the impact of emerging drought conditions, to be done on a regular basis; improved advice to communities to assist in the preparation of applications for drought assistance; and more administrative measures to make sure that we streamline processes so that farm communities could be supported effectively in times of drought.

The federal government won that election, promising elements of what had already been agreed between the Labor states and the Commonwealth in May 2002. With the climate change debate and the possibility that another drought event could sweep across this nation, rolling in on top of the adverse conditions in 2002-03 which decimated many farm families and their communities, one would have thought that a government that had its eye on the ball would have implemented those particular reforms. It did not. It did not, because it wanted to play politics with this whole area of drought policy.

We then come to 2005 and the audit report on drought policy, Drought assistance, which is one of the most scathing indictments of any Australian government in the past three decades. In 2005, after one of the worst droughts in Australia’s history, this is what the audit report had to say:

The Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF) did not have a specific preparedness or contingency plan for drought …

Planning by DAFF did identify some risks to delivery of EC—

that is, exceptional circumstances—

… However, there were no specific treatment strategies identified, corresponding to these risks. Nor did risk plans identify the possibility that substantial additional measures might be needed if the drought worsened.

… there was no whole-of-government implementation plan … there was no integrated communication strategy.

As well, there was no whole-of-government framework to support …the implementation of the full range of drought assistance measures.

I say to the honourable members opposite: you can come in here on behalf of your constituents and talk about the enormous difficulties that they are encountering at this point in time, but it is the government of the day that has the responsibility to formulate and implement effective policy now and into the future. Going on that particular audit report, despite all of your huffing and puffing in the media and all the sympathy that you have expressed, I have to say many farmers are seriously questioning your bona fides in this area. I cannot for the life of me understand how your parliamentary secretary here today, the member for Farrer, can say that we ought not to debate the issue of climate change in the context of a debate on effective rural policy now and into the future. I really have to say: you are so wide of the mark, you are a danger to the rural sector in this country.

The government are a danger to the rural sector and to farmers in this country because you have not recognised, and will not recognise, that, while farming communities and land based activities in Australia are a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, they also provide the sector with enormous economic opportunities. Farmers can take advantage of this particular area and how it will evolve. That can spill over, in tangible economic terms, to rural communities. Yet the parliamentary secretary gets up here today and asks us not to be political about a debate that is staring the Australian community, farmers in particular, in the face—one which will impact more than anything else on their future viability.

Let us not pull any punches here; let us just mention as we go effective policy and the mandatory retail grocery code of conduct. That was a Labor policy. We put it all out for you. All you had to do was implement it. You said you would implement it within 100 days of winning that election. The 100 days went by, then 700 days went by. You betrayed the horticultural producers in this country. The matter was taken out of the hands of the agriculture minister by the industry minister, then ripped out of his hands by the Prime Minister when it got too hot to handle. When are you going to implement policies that will impact on the incomes of farmers now, when they most need it? They need an effective policy in this area. They do not want any more backsliding from National Party ministers who betray them at every turn of the screw. (Time expired)

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to contribute to this discussion and follow in the footsteps of the honourable members for New England, Farrer and Corio. I must say that the member for Corio, in true form, was full of rhetoric and full of huff and puff, but I did not hear too much about the facts of the matter. It is fairly clear why he lost his preselection.

Drought is a serious subject and it is a serious subject for Australia for a particular reason: Australia is the driest inhabited continent on earth. Drought plagued this country long before Europeans came here, and it has certainly plagued this country since Europeans came here; drought has been the face of the country. Governments and the people of Australia have toiled and battled with drought for all of that time. Over the years, to be fair to governments of both persuasions, I think they have dealt with drought in a reasonable way. But that does not mean to say that we cannot do it better. Having been New South Wales Minister for Water Resources for five years, New South Wales Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries, and minister for western lands in New South Wales, I think I have dealt with some of these issues on a fairly regular basis.

Let me say before we get into the alarmist talk around the place about what drought is about: there have been many severe droughts. This is a severe drought, but whether it is our most severe drought, I suppose, is a moot point. In the honourable member for Kennedy’s seat, or very close to it, the James Cook University takes core samples of the Great Barrier Reef and there is evidence there of droughts of up to 20 years in Australia. So drought is the continuing face of Australia.

When we see articles from the Financial Review or comments from Professor Peter Cullen saying that all of a sudden Australian farmers are unviable, that they should not be out in these areas farming there and that the government is propping up an industry which is unviable, I have to say to them that they are way off the mark. The last time I checked, Australian agriculture was still contributing 25 per cent or more of the export income of this country. That is a considerable contribution. There is no doubt in my mind that the drought relief that we give is very minimal. We are criticised when we go into trade negotiations that we still have subsidies in Australia. The only thing the Americans could point at me about when I was Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries in New South Wales was drought relief. I used to say to them that drought relief provides very minimal support for our farmers. If we do not support them through a drought and if we do not support the core herds and flocks of this country, there is very little use in getting rain. You have to recover from those droughts and if the rural economy is going to recover and the Australian economy is going to keep on growing, you need that production after the drought.

The member for Farrer is quite correct: that country out there is tremendously resilient. I have been out there three or four weeks after rain and it would amaze you the way the grass and the trefoil have grown, as she said, up to your waist within a month. It is very valuable feed. Not only is the growing trefoil valuable but the seed that falls on the ground sustains the sheep during drought. I applaud the member for New England—and I do not often do that. I would prefer to see him on this side of the House, but there is no doubt that he has raised a very serious issue.

I will make some comments about Professor Peter Cullen. It is not the first time that the Professor Peter Cullen has made a comment. Quite frankly, to have him as the Commissioner for Water in this government is very worrying. Professor Peter Cullen parades as a scientist and he gets up there as a scientist having credibility within the Australian community. That is fine if he keeps his comments based on science. But I have to say that the two comments I remember clearly were, firstly, about the Murray-Darling River, which I think came out of the so-called Wentworth meeting in Sydney, when they said that the Murray-Darling was dying. In fact, the quality of the Murray River downstream is now better than it was 10 or 15 years ago because of the intervention schemes and the policies of all governments, state and federal, to stop the contamination and salinity of the Murray system. So, wrong, Professor Peter Cullen.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Murray is going well, is it?

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Then, secondly, to come out and say that farmers cannot and should not be supported is not a fact. We even heard the throwaway line from the member for Corio about the decline in soils. There is no evidence of that whatsoever. That is just a throwaway line. We get exaggeration from the Green groups and from the people like the member for Grayndler with their throwaway lines that these bad things are occurring. They are not occurring and there is no evidence to support that whatsoever. The doomsday criers that we hear around the place about how we will ‘all be rooned’ are not correct.

In New South Wales when I was the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries we addressed drought ourselves. One of the real issues—and it comes back to a point made by the member for New England—is the assessment of the area and whether it is in drought or not. Sometimes some areas of those large rural land protection areas may not be in drought and it causes some real problems on boundaries, I can assure you. The assessment process here is also still a big problem. I have to give credit to the member for Wide Bay, for I think as minister he did try to address some of these issues. But the problem is that all the data is held by the state and we have to rely on the state to supply that data and give advice as to whether the areas are eligible for EC or not. It is still a particular problem.

At the present time the New South Wales government is not making an effort. I saw there was a motion moved in parliament yesterday where the Premier just got up and said, ‘We are not going to give any support for drought.’ New South Wales is the biggest agricultural state in Australia and I would have thought there could have been some support at least coming from the government.

Professor Cullen also said that agricultural practices were destroying the environment in Australia. I disagree strongly with that statement. The member for New England touched on this: farmers are actually the stewards of that land out there. They are the ones managing the land at the present time. They are the ones spending the money particularly in environmental areas in that land out there at the present time. Take them away and you have got nothing.

If you want to see a bad public policy then there is evidence of that at the present time. The environmentalists and the city politicians have locked up all our forests in Australia. They do not believe that forests can be managed responsibly. What have we got now? No government can afford to manage these large areas of public land and we are getting fires destroying the lot. What does that do? It destroys the flora and fauna completely. This is the worst public policy you could ever think of and the same thing will happen in some of these marginal areas of farming land.

Don’t think that the number of farmers is not declining—it is. There is no doubt about that. This business about propping up farmers that are unviable is a nonsense. There has been amalgamation after amalgamation of properties to keep them viable. I abolished the farm management areas in the New South Wales when I was minister. A bureaucrat could sit down and decide what area a property could be and how many stock they could run. That system has been abolished and people can make their own decisions as to what area of land they need and what stock they should be running on that particular land.

Farmers do not overstock their properties; in fact, as soon as there is a sign of drought they start to offload their stock. They know that is a sensible decision and they offload their stock and reduce their carrying capacity. They need the ability—and that is why the farm deposit scheme was such a good scheme—when they get rain to restock those areas. But that does not destroy the environment; in fact, it protects the environment. And not only that, if the member for Grayndler wants to listen I will tell him about the flora and fauna out there. It is the farmers who have provided the water in dams that absolutely guarantees that the kangaroos, birds and flora out in those areas are now in greater numbers than they ever were. In the big droughts of the past, they died back to the rivers, and now we have water across the land that protects the environment. (Time expired)

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

An excellent contribution from the member for Page and my colleague from New England previously. I am quite intrigued by this Mr Cullen from the Wentworth Group. For the statements of an imbecile, the comments made by him would take a lot of beating. In actual fact, the salinity levels on the middle Murray and the lower Murray for that matter are the lowest they have ever been in recorded history and this fellow is getting up and saying the Murray is dying. I have been to Murray Bridge and it is water from bank to bank. I had heard of the likes of this fellow, who calls himself the Wentworth Group—the Wentworths would turn in their graves if they heard the rubbish coming out under their name—trying to ingratiate himself with the famous people of Australia. One of his other many comments and gratuitous wisdom is this: unfortunately, in Australia we have very thin soils so we cannot have agriculture because it will curl up and blow away.

We are the second biggest area in Australia; in fact, Queensland is bigger than Victoria and New South Wales put together. We have two land forms: one is mountains—we have a lot of mountains in Queensland; and we have the great inland plain, which I have represented all my life in various parliaments. These thin soils that he is referring to which cover half of Queensland are 1,500 feet deep. Australia folded and the great inland lake covered it for 30 or 40 million years—maybe someone can take this fact to this lightweight and tell him about it—and there is 1,500 feet of mudstone. Mudstone is black soil. He makes references to thin soils—I do not know what country he comes from but I know which one I would be sending him to.

Let me move on—we are talking about government policy. On my station property, which was 250,000 acres, I estimated that we may suffer a loss in price of 20 per cent. I allocated that in the budget and for interest rates—we borrowed at 6½ per cent—a doubling to 13 per cent. I have never seen 13 per cent interest rates in my life but I was being very conservative. We had two bad years of drought, so I put in a lot of fences and we got a lot of cattle on agistment. I was sitting there comfortably counting my shekels and seeing how rich I was. In 1985, I had no mortgage. It took me an hour to convince the bank manager. He had never met a farmer without a mortgage before, but I was the virgin in the brothel so to speak—I have always been an innocent little fellow at the best of times, I suppose.

Cattle prices did not go down 20 per cent; they went down 30 per cent. Interest rates did not go from 6½ per cent to 13 per cent; they went to 18 per cent for everybody except for us gulf country cattlemen. We were an at-risk group, so we got an extra 2½ per cent lobbed on top of us. Because I was battling against 21 per cent interest rates, I spent a fair bit of money on fencing and waters and I then got hit with another 2½ per cent because I was at risk. With bank charges, I went up to 29 per cent.

The member for Page in his very intelligent contribution and the member for New England have said: do not impose upon us in times of trial the extra 10 per cent interest rate burden that is dumped on top of us by the banks. That is why every intelligent person and great intellect who walked through this place—and I do not hesitate to mention King O’Malley, Ted Theodore, John McEwen, Ben Chifley and Doug Anthony; all these great men—had a development bank to carry the farmers through this period of trial. Quite frankly, over the longer term when John McEwen left this place, he said: ‘Every one of our rural industries was under a stabilisation scheme. Farmers in Australia may not be rich and may not be wealthy but they have a decent living and the security of a decent living. It was with great pride that I left this place and left the farmers of Australia in that state.’

All the stabilisation schemes have been removed, which means that the farmers of Australia have to ride the cycle. Because of the subsidy levels of other countries, the cycle has got lower and lower. The cycle is still there but it is a much lower cycle than it was in the days of John McEwen because of the massive subsidies that are coming in.

We can ask: why has government policy failed us so miserably? Government policy has failed us: 50 per cent of our sheep have gone; 26 per cent of our cattle have gone; 10 per cent of our sugar has gone; 10 per cent of our dairying has gone; 20 per cent of our butter and cheese production has gone. This is as a result of government policy. No droughts, no natural disasters, no calamitous collapse in world market prices have taken place in the last 20 years.

This situation has been created by this place. Let me be very specific and very quick in saying that, when wool was regulated in this place and the statutory marketing scheme came in, the price of wool ascended 300 per cent over the next six or seven years. When Mr Keating removed it, within three years the price had dropped clean in half. Half of our wool herd is gone and it will never come back again. It was the nation’s greatest asset. In 1990, it was 10 per cent of our entire income.

In dairying we know the story. There is not a person in this place who does not know the story. After deregulation, within five years we had lost 30 per cent of our income and the price of milk in the stores had gone up 42 per cent. Why is this? Why have the government’s actions been so misguided? I will give you one of the reasons: the NFF, who are a bunch of traitors to the farmers of Australia. Mr Corish is a man that actually wants to get elected to parliament. I will tell you what is going to happen to him if he puts himself on the parapet. I am quite sure that the member for New England and the member for Calare—and I will most certainly be going down to help—will see how far he gets. I will tell you where he will be going, all right—it will be into the water hole that has no water in it. That is what we will do to him. Mr Corish recommended:

... the removal of interest rate subsidy support during the worst drought in living memory ...

He is also quoted as saying:

Many see it [the interest rate subsidy] as rewarding poor management, propping up farmers who fail to respond to changed conditions or take imprudent risks.

Mr Truss and Mr Anderson have said continuously—I was assailed with it when I was in their party—that we only need one in seven of the farmers that are out there. People waved it in my face in great rage and anger because the message was out there: ‘Six out of seven of you have got to go.’

They are going, all right. Mr Kennett recently said in the Victorian papers that every four days a farmer in Victoria commits suicide. In the sugar industry, we have one a month. In the wool industry after deregulation we scored one every two months in western Queensland. They are going, all right. The government and the NFF can take the responsibility for it. Mr McGauchie, as I said in an earlier speech, became head of the NFF and he sold out the farmers. He ratted on the farmers of Australia. He was then appointed to the Reserve Bank and then he ratted on the NFF. The NFF said, ‘We desperately need a lower dollar.’ He is out there advocating the exact opposite. He ratted on the NFF. Then the government, not seeing that this person had a consistent record as a rat, put him on Telstra. Surprise, surprise, he ratted yet again. (Time expired)

Alby Schultz (Hume, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

At the outset, I compliment the member for New England for bringing this very serious issue into the chamber under the banner of a matter of public importance. It is always refreshing to hear the member for Kennedy speak. He is very vocal and very committed to what he believes in. Many of the things raised by various speakers in this debate today have been very constructively put and much of it is because of the great care and concern that they have for their rural constituencies.

Picking up on the final comments of the member for Kennedy about comments made by Peter Corish, we all know that Peter Corish was the former president of the NFF. If he had concentrated on his rural constituency when he was the president of the NFF instead of looking at his future as a rural politician and being focused on that all of the time, farmers might have been a little bit better off and had better representation in this place on both sides of the House. Professor Peter Cullen is a constituent of mine and, to be quite frank, I am absolutely disgusted that he, as an alleged eminent scientist on water, would make the comments that he made about people out there struggling to survive. There are always people that do not handle their businesses well but, in the majority, people have been very responsibly trying to plan to keep their farms viable.

I heard the member for Corio talk about droughts. This drought has been going on for five years. It is now in its sixth year. Responsible farm managers are making plans to ensure that in the next season they will have sufficient feed—fodder and grain—available to feed their animals should a dry occur and to keep their properties viable. They are being confronted year in and year out with this ongoing drought. People are seeing their dams dry up; they have no water on their properties. Springs and streams that have never dried up are now drying and people are spending significant amounts of money to put in bores to try and get some water supplements onto their properties to keep their livestock alive. It really does make you wonder where these people who are making these absolutely disgraceful comments—that people in the farming industry are rorting the relief packages that the government gives them through either EC assistance or interest rate subsidies—are coming from. A rort? I think not. I condemn them for the comments that they have made in that regard.

In taking the action that I needed to take as a member of parliament I spoke to a number of people on farms that have been badly affected and have been in drought for some time. I also talked to rural lands protection boards. I would like to cite a few figures for the information of those irresponsible elements in the media and people like Peter Corish and Professor Peter Cullen. I have spoken to the Yass Rural Lands Protection Board. They have a division that covers the areas around Yass, Gunning, Burrinjuck, Binalong, Crookwell, Sutton, Hall and Brindabella. For the current year the rainfalls in all of those areas are as follows: Yass, 51 per cent; Gunning, 20 per cent; Burrinjuck, 41 per cent; Binalong, 36 per cent; Crookwell, 34 per cent; Sutton, 64 per cent; Hall, 70 per cent; and Brindabella, 53 per cent. That is a percentage of the average yearly rainfall that has been occurring over a five-year period.

I have spoken to a number of farmers about just how hard the prolonged drought has been hitting them. Across the board in all of those districts under that division of the Rural Lands Protection Board, small livestock—for example, sheep and lambs—are down to about 25 per cent of what they were two or three years ago. You can understand why they are in this position. They planned to put in crops, oats, to continue feeding. They spent money on buying in additional fodder, only to see all of their money wasted because the drought continued. That is one of the reasons why—and I think the member for Kennedy mentioned it—the suicide rate on rural properties is increasing. This is something we have to keep an eye on. I know that the Prime Minister, to his credit, is picking up on the information he is getting from people such as me and my parliamentary colleagues; he is being informed. The drought has been so bad for the last five years that many farmers have been unable to put away money in superannuation for their retirement. They do not have the luxury of doing that. It also affects any succession plans they had to hand over their properties to their children—their sons, daughters or whatever. Those plans have been shelved because, as I said, for the last five years they have not been able to put money away.

Despite people being critical of what the government has done, there has been a $1.2 billion drought relief package available since this government recognised the need to keep these programs going. The recently announced $350 million assistance package to enhance the EC program is good news. There is more to come. I cannot talk about that at the moment, but I can assure the member for New England and my parliamentary colleagues that there is more to come. In terms of tightening up some of these areas, I have been a very vocal critic of the EC application process and what it has done.

I have been a very vocal critic of the NRAC and the stupidity of having somebody from Western Australia coming over to the eastern states, blowing in for about two or three hours, and then going out and writing a report to the minister to say that those areas—in this case I am talking about Braidwood, which many of my parliamentary colleagues know quite well—did not meet exceptional circumstances criteria, despite the fact that they were in drought. I went out there and talked to the people on the ground. I inspected the properties myself and wrote a submission to the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister had that decision reversed in a matter of days. But you should not have to do that. When you put people in to undertake these very important processes on behalf of the country, and more importantly on behalf of the government of the day, they should be competent enough to understand what they are doing and make the right decisions.

I close by quoting a comment by one of the people I spoke to:

Many of the decisions we have made would not have been possible without the government assistance we have been given. While we would rather that this would not have been necessary we are extremely grateful and can for the first time in five years see that if exceptional circumstances were to continue for a further 12 months we would be able to move into a recovery year. Finances are depleted but with a decent autumn, which would be the first for five years, and EC we could divert money from fodder to regenerating pasture, the application of fertiliser, spraying of weeds which have become rampant and re-pasturing where necessary. One more year of support would really see the benefits of the previous years of subsidies.

That is what it is all about: people who are already planning to deliver what they have been delivering in this country for decade after decade—and making a significant contribution to the prosperity of this country. We should be looking after them and doing all we can to ensure that they continue to do so. I thank the member for New England for giving me the opportunity to speak on a very important issue that he has raised in this chamber—and I emphasise: that he has raised in this chamber.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I congratulate the member for New England on proposing this discussion of a matter of public importance today. I certainly associate myself with comments from all sides of the House in praise of the work being done by men and women, families, on the land who are doing it extremely tough. I indicate that drought assistance has been bipartisan in terms of a recognition on both sides of the parliament that people need assistance. I do, however, take exception to some of the comments that have been made in the debate. In particular, I was intrigued by the comments by the member for Hume. He just said that there is more to come, implying that announcements will be made when they are politically convenient rather than when they are actually needed. In terms of playing politics on the issue of drought, surely that statement by the member for Hume was quite extraordinary and completely inappropriate.

I do find some of the comments attacking the Wentworth group rather over the top. The Wentworth group, by and large, is made up of people who have worked for the CSIRO and scientists who have brought their scientific expertise to the policy debate. I certainly do not think that these people of goodwill should be subject to personal abuse, as has occurred in this debate.

We have heard in this debate, quite extraordinarily, from the member for Page that the Murray is going well. I have been to the mouth of the Murray with my colleague Steve Georganas, the member for Hindmarsh, and I can assure the House that the situation whereby the mouth of Australia’s most important river system has to be dredged for the river to be kept open is just beyond belief. The truth is, of course, that the Murray is in a dire situation and there has never been in more than 100 years of our recorded history less water in the Murray. We know that the Darling system is also in total crisis. I have seen this with my own eyes. I find it quite extraordinary that there are members of the government saying that this is not an issue.

We also want to make a contribution to this debate on the issue of climate change and what that means for our future water supply and, particularly, how these issues affect rural Australia. In her opening contribution on behalf of the government, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry said that we should not talk about that because that would politicise the debate. This is a debate about politics; this is the Commonwealth Parliament of Australia. Unless you address climate change you certainly will have no opportunity to address the issue of water. Australia is drying out because of climate change and yet the Prime Minister is sceptical that it is even happening. We heard the Prime Minister on 27 September state that he was not interested in ‘what might happen to Australia and the planet in 50 years time’. That was an extraordinary comment from the Prime Minister given that climate change is happening, it is real and it is happening right now. The fact is that today in the Bulletin the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister and responsible for water, Malcolm Turnbull, said that it is happening now and that it is real. The government has a dual strategy. On the one hand, there are people such as the Prime Minister and the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources, Ian Macfarlane, who said on 20 August:

Well, I am a sceptic of the connection between emissions and climate change.

On the other hand, people like Malcolm Turnbull go out and say that it is real and that we really need to do something about it. But, of course, we do not see anything happening.

Peter Cullen has been discussed in this debate. The member for Kennedy dismisses the CSIRO, but one of the things Peter Cullen has said is that the climate we are now seeing in some parts of Australia is what the CSIRO climate change model seemed to predict for about 2050. So either it is happening much faster or we have a gradual climate change with a severe drought on top of it. What we really have is a Prime Minister who prefers to stay 50 years behind.

Addressing Australia’s national water crisis is an urgent task which requires leadership and action from all levels of government. Australia’s water resources are highly variable and range from heavily regulated rivers and groundwater resources to rivers and aquifers in almost pristine condition. Over 65 per cent of Australia’s water run-off is in the sparsely populated tropical north, but Australia’s large urban areas are in southern Australia and irrigated agriculture is principally located in the Murray-Darling Basin. This is where only 6.1 per cent of the national run-off occurs. As a nation, we have never really valued water. Our water supplies have been taken for granted, undervalued, overallocated and misdirected. We are starting to see the early development of a water market, something begun by the Keating government with its COAG reforms of 1994, but the fact is that we still see a very slow move to action.

The Living Murray is almost on life support. In November 2003 we were promised by the Howard government 500 gigalitres within five years. The promise was warmed up in the 2006 budget but, despite that, we have not seen a drop of water returned to the Murray. The parliamentary secretary has said that 35 gigalitres have been returned. He said that on the 7.30 Report two nights ago. He repeated that in the Bulletin today. But the truth is that 35 gigalitres was not recovered following action by the Commonwealth under the Living Murray first step program; 25 gigalitres was in fact recovered from the Snowy River and there was a donation of 10 gigalitres from South Australia. The parliamentary secretary must know this, but again we have a situation whereby the federal government wants to be seen to be doing something.

The reality is that a lack of investment in national water infrastructure has brought us to this crisis. We must stop our profligate waste of water, both in our cities and in agriculture, mining and industry. Climate change will have a massive impact. The government’s own reports say that by the year 2030 water supplies for cities will drop by 25 per cent, rainfall in the Murray-Darling Basin will fall by 25 per cent and evaporation rates will rise. Climate change and water are the two sides of the same coin. Rising temperatures are cutting rainfall and increasing evaporation in rivers and dams. Rising sea levels threaten to increase salinity. This is happening in the Pacific and it threatens Australia. Increasing temperatures increase our thirst for water while, of course, our population is growing. With less water, more people and increased temperatures, this drought is a terrible crisis for rural communities. I honestly think it will get a lot worse unless we are prepared to take action to avoid dangerous climate change. I have had good discussions and dialogue with the National Farmers Federation, who are increasingly of the view that there is a direct link between climate change and drought. The processes that have been there in the past—the Landcare program and other programs—point towards the way forward. (Time expired)

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for New England for putting this on the agenda today as a matter of public importance; I certainly appreciate being able to contribute to this debate. Effective rural policy now and in the future is underpinned by effective governance of this country. Unless you have effective governance and good economic management of the economy, it will be very hard for people in rural Australia, our farming sector, to have and implement even the best of policies. I am reminded of the economic management of this government and what we have achieved in the last 10½ years, going on 11 now, and the levels of interest rates today compared with what they were in that disastrous period when Labor were in government, when we had ‘the recession we had to have’, which was the statement made by the then Treasurer Paul Keating, who later became the Labor Prime Minister. Under a Labor government’s mismanagement of this economy, official interest rates rose to 17½ per cent. Unless you have good economic management, it is impossible for people on the land and in our rural communities to implement effective rural policy now or into the future.

One of the most useful, valuable tools for anyone on the land today as they prepare for, and have in the past been preparing for, drought is a reserve of cash. Since coming to power, this government has reinstated an effective mechanism that is tax effective in the form of Farm Management Deposits. I am reminded at this time that when Labor was in government the old scheme that had been implemented in a previous coalition government was taken away by the Labor Party. The income equalisation deposits, as they were known then, were taken away and the legislation was repealed. That is not effective rural policy. What is effective rural policy is what this government has done in relation to the cash reserve to assist our farm sector prepare for drought. The Farm Management Deposits today are a better tool than the old IEDs. They are more effective, provide greater flexibility and allow farmers to utilise the cash surpluses when they can achieve them and put them aside for when they are required in a drought. I acknowledge that not all farmers have been able to do that since we implemented those Farm Management Deposits under the Agriculture—Advancing Australia policy, but it is effective rural policy now and it will allow farmers into the future to better cope with extremes of seasonal conditions and downturns in commodity prices.

Another effective rural policy now and into the future is this government’s Roads to Recovery program. One of the things that are important in our rural community is being able to bring commodities from the farm to the market. Because of the effective economic management of this government, we have been able to implement the Roads to Recovery program and, in the last budget, we doubled the allocation of funds to local governments under the Roads to Recovery program. That is what effective rural policy is now and into the future: being able to assist these communities with their infrastructure—in this case, the road infrastructure that otherwise would have been borne by local ratepayers, which, of course, becomes a burden on the farmers. That is what effective rural policy is: being able to assist local governments to upgrade roads in rural communities, to help bring down the cost of doing business and to transport goods faster and more efficiently. At this point, I want to point out that the Roads to Recovery program was an initiative of the former Deputy Prime Minister and former Leader of the National Party John Anderson. All local governments across Australia—cities and county towns—are benefiting from that program. That is effective rural policy that is a legacy of this government. Another effective rural policy is the extension of mobile phones across Australia. Along the highways and the byways, out into rural communities, to many parts of my own electorate and in the middle of the mulga lands and the Mitchell grasslands of Central Western Queensland there is effective mobile phone coverage because of this government’s initiatives.

At this point I am reminded of the policy of the Labor Party, prior to this government coming to power, when they abolished the very effective and useful analog mobile phone service without an effective replacement. That is policy failure for all Australians that the Labor Party introduced. Effective rural policy now and into the future is what we have been able to do with assistance through Connect Australia, Clever Networks and mobile phone extension subsidies to help the rollout of mobile phone technology into many rural communities and across our rural roads.

Another effective rural policy now and into the future is being able to assist those children of people who live in rural communities to gain access to basic education. Only this week we have had the Isolated Children’s Parents Association in parliament, seeing many members of parliament on both sides of the House. I would like to hear from the Labor Party whether they support what the organisation is trying to achieve in their discussions with government in relation to access firstly, to basic education through the Assistance for Isolated Children Scheme, which we increased after the last election to be on average about 55 per cent of average boarding costs across Australia. We never hear the Labor Party talking about that.

I would be interested to hear whether the Labor Party are going to talk about the Isolated Children’s Parents Association, who have been around this parliament this week working on another initiative which I strongly support. We need to extend that assistance for students who are geographically isolated and have to go away for postsecondary education to gain access to perhaps a TAFE or technical college education, further education, upskilling, or university. We allow it in this place for those students to gain access to secondary education. Many of them will be leaving secondary education at the end of this year as we near the end of the academic year and considering their future, going on into further education. These students, whether they are from families on the land or whether they are workers’ children living in rural and regional communities—for parts of my electorate it might be the child of the local police sergeant or the CEO of the local council—are seeking a payment from government.

I would be interested to hear whether the opposition would support this if we were able to achieve funding of an access payment to assist those students from rural Australia who have to leave home to go on to further education post their secondary education. That is effective rural policy now and into the future because it will help students from rural Australia to be upskilled. Our assistance through the Assistance for Isolated Children Scheme helps children who have to leave home to gain access to secondary education. The fact that we increased that allowance after the last federal election—a commitment we gave before the election—is certainly testimony to this government’s approach to good and effective rural policy to help communities across rural Australia.

I could go on but time is now limited. I want to close by saying that the drought support that this government is giving to our rural communities, our farmers, is invaluable. The extension that we have made this week is welcome and it is because we have got the economy in such a strong position that we as a nation and we as a government are able to provide that additional support that is so important to keeping the fabric of our rural communities together. (Time expired)

Michael Hatton (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The discussion is now concluded.