Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister.

Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Oh!

Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm after the organ grinder.

The SPEAKER: I think the member will withdraw.

I withdraw, Madam Speaker. Prime Minister, in February you and your agriculture minister announced, with much fanfare, that additional drought assistance for farmers was imminent. Why then, more than three months on, have you and your minister broken that promise to farming communities by failing to deliver not one cent of drought concessional loans to a farming family?

Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is an absolute honour to get a question from my shadow. Might I say it is going to be an absolute honour to answer it as well. We have already in our first tranche realigned $420 million of the Farm Finance Concessional Loans Scheme, which they were unable to get signed off by all of the states. On top of that, we put in $10 million for water infrastructure. We followed that up with a second drought package of $320 million, of which $280 million has been signed off by the Prime Minister, the Treasurer and the finance minister. QRAA is already able to lend that out, and they are lending it out through the tranches that have been made available to them within the $420 million. We have also made money available for wild dog control, and we have made money available for water infrastructure—

Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Wild dogs are a problem, but how could they be remotely relevant to drought funding? Not one farming family has received a cent. He has—

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Minister for Agriculture will return to the question.

Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Back on 4 March, we got through the transitional farm family payment, and over 1,300 people have applied for and received assistance. So there is quite a few dollars in that, you clown. We are getting these payments out because we are the side that can get the work done. You are the side that talk about it; we are the side that do it.