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

Today I rise to talk of and put on the public record what this government is doing to help our farming communities and our families out there, in relation to the hardships they face because of this exceptional drought, and to compare that with what is happening in Queensland at the state government level.

This government has put forward more than $1 billion over the past five years to help our farming families right across Australia. In fact, that support is now going through to some 53,000 farming families across Australia. However, it has been brought to my attention, through a series of reports in last week’s edition of the Queensland Country Life, that the state government in Queensland are now planning to add to the challenge of farming during this drought. What the Premier of Queensland now wants to do is put more costs on drought-ravaged farm families in Queensland.

So whilst we here in Canberra are supporting 53,000 farm families, and are looking at what other measures are required to help small business—those small businesses that are dependent on the agriculture sector for their income—and to ensure that we can help to keep our rural communities together, we have the state Labor government wanting and planning to put more taxes on our farm families in Queensland.

What we have heard from Mr Beattie today, in terms of his drought policy, is that he wants to pray for rain. That is his latest drought policy. Prayers are fine, and we support prayers—I, like many in this parliament, have certainly joined others in our own electorates and in the parliament praying for rain—but what we are seeing from the Premier of Queensland is merely a diversion to try to get people’s attention off the failure of the Beattie Labor government.

We have an appalling situation in Queensland now where, in some of our major cities, like Brisbane, people are having to water their gardens with buckets. That has not happened in many parts of Australia since federation. It is an image like one from a Third World country, not a modern country like Australia: people—old people, young people, families—having to keep their gardens alive, gardens which mean so much to those people, with a bucket. Can you imagine old people out there with a bucket of water, watering their plants? Imagine them, watering plants that they have had in their garden for years and years—watering them with a bucket.

It is an appalling indictment and, I think, a reflection of just how Peter Beattie has failed Queensland. He has failed to plan for the needs of Queenslanders. He often talks about the 1,500 people coming up into Queensland from the southern states every week. He has been talking about that for years and years, but he has done nothing about planning to meet their needs in terms of investment in infrastructure. That situation could have been, and would have been, averted had he not been re-elected and, certainly, had he not been elected two or three elections ago.

What I find now is that the state Labor government want to bring forward a new regulation to charge farmers something like $10,000 for the construction of a new dam. They have satellite imagery of some 90,000 dams in Queensland, according to these reports. They are now going to start to target those farmers and, if they do not comply with the regulation they bring forward, charges will be made against those farmers, merely because they have a dam wall of more than eight metres high. Furthermore, there are reports that the Premier of Queensland wants to increase leasehold rents by some 2,500 per cent next year—and the list goes on.

Regarding the mulga harvesting, the Premier has failed to implement the Boyland report, which has been out there before the government. He has been re-elected, but he has not got on with the job and people out in these drought-ravaged areas of western Queensland have for decades and decades responsibly harvested that mulga to feed their livestock. The state Premier and his new ministers are failing the people of western Queensland—not only is he failing the people of Brisbane and all of Queensland; he is failing Australia’s farmers. His plan for drought policy is for new taxes that will hurt our farming communities. I call on the state Premier to join with the federal government in supporting our small businesses and our farmers during this drought. (Time expired)