Jane Prentice (Ryan, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Social Services and Disability Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the amendments be agreed to.

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

The member for New England has left the agriculture portfolio and tonight we start cleaning up the mess. Tonight we hopefully can move on from the pork-barrelling, the boondoggling and the divisive tactics of the former minister; move on from the forced claims, the sackings of departmental heads and the wasted money on various failed white paper projects. Do you remember the agriculture white paper, Mr Deputy Speaker Buchholz? We waited about three years for it. When it came out, it fizzed. No-one ever talks about it now. When do you ever hear anyone talking about the failed agricultural white paper? You don't, because it delivered nothing for Australian agriculture. It delivered no strategic vision, no strategic guidance, no new ideas about how to tackle the key challenges, including climate change, the need to improve our farming methods and lift productivity and sustainable profitability. It was just pork-barrels and boondoggles. This is what we're talking about tonight—the Regional Investment Corporation.

An amazing thing happened in the Senate today. The Senate unanimously embraced a range of amendments put forward by the opposition in that place. These changes would at least improve the governance of the bill, improve transparency and make decisions of the minister and the RIC board more accountable in this place. In other words, they would allow the parliament to run a ruler over the operations of the RIC and the directions of the minister. This is very, very important because the RIC in itself is a pork-barrelling exercise, an unnecessary entity planned to be established in Orange for one purpose and one purpose alone: to lift the stocks of the National Party in the electorates in that region. Of course, Orange was lost to the National Party in the last state election, and that is the only reason the Regional Investment Corporation is going to Orange.

I would have liked to deny the government or the minister of the day the power to determine where the Regional Investment Corporation is situated. If there is a case for a centralised agency to deal with these loans from the government to farmers and to state governments, let the government make it. I haven't seen one yet. There is no logical reason it's going to Orange, other than the former minister's political intentions. We weren't able to amend the bill to prevent that and, instead, have the board entirely make the decision about where the RIC will be situated. But we have at least won an amendment which will insist that the board make recommendations about where the Regional Investment Corporation goes. Given the board will be appointed entirely, probably by Minister Joyce, it probably isn't going to prevent it going to Orange, because obviously the minister is pretty determined that it be Orange. But at least the board will be forced to provide some policy guidance and some rational explanation as to why it might go to Orange. All we've had up until now is no reason whatsoever, other than 'it will be a good thing for Orange'.

It can't be a bad thing for Orange, obviously. But potentially it could have been a good thing for hundreds or thousands of other regional cities around the country, including in your own electorate, Mr Deputy Speaker Buchholz. At least we hope the board might be able to put forward some logical explanations as to why it believes Orange is the right place for the Regional Investment Corporation. It will be interesting to see what those reasons are. I suspect it won't be easy for the board to put that case.

This bill has been delayed in the Senate since before Christmas. The government really needed to get the bill through the Senate before Christmas to ensure it could have the Regional Investment Corporation up and running by 1 July this year. That is in doubt because we are now into February. It's going to be a difficult task for many people in the department who are charged with the responsibility of trying to make this shocking boondoggle work. So here we are accepting basically the same amendments we moved in the Senate last year—they have been slightly changed, in arrangements with the minister, but they have the same effect—amendments which narrowly lost in the Senate, in one case by a tied vote. That gives you a sense about the will of the Senate at that time. We could have had these amendments done and dusted and the bill through the Senate last year. But no, the former minister, the member for New England, wouldn't have that. Why wouldn't he have that? Because the lack of transparency, the lack of accountability to the parliament, would have allowed the now former minister to further politically abuse the Regional Investment Corporation, to continue the pork-barrelling and make decisions based not on the needs of our communities, our farmers and our economy but on the needs of the National Party. That's why we're dealing with the Regional Investment Corporation Bill in February 2018, rather than in December 2017. It is because the former minister, the member for New England, dug in and insisted that those parts of the bills that would have allowed him to abuse the bill remain in place. Thank goodness common sense has now prevailed, whether it be from the new minister—if it is him, I give him credit—or from the intervention of other senior ministers in the government. I know that Senator Cormann took a very strong interest in this matter. Whatever the case, thank goodness that we now have some form of outcome.

The Labor Party still opposes the establishment of the Regional Investment Corporation. A Regional Investment Corporation is being established in Orange to do two things: (1) to administer new concessional loans to farmers, and (2) to administer loans to state governments for water infrastructure. The latter is being done by the department now and could continue to be done by the department. The minister will remain the final arbiter and decision-maker in the matter, in any case. The loans, which have existed in one form or another since 2013, have been administered quite competently by the various state rural adjustment authorities. Yes, there have been problems; there are always some problems when you are dealing with loans and risk which is partly being worn by the states.

The ministers in the various states have been keen to shape the loans to suit their own states. For example, the conservative Western Australia minister wanted to have a productivity component in one of the loan programs. People would be eligible for the loans only if they could establish that they had a new way forward for their struggling farm business—a plan to lift productivity. That's a good thing. I congratulate the former conservative minister in Western Australia. But now, because the former minister's loans have been somewhat unsuccessful in assisting farmers, the member for New England is looking for someone to blame. He wants to blame the states, so he's going to take loans off the states and have them administered by this central authority. I correct myself: he's going to have new loans administered by the new central authority, but any existing loans—some of which have a 10-year life and may have been secured only a year ago—will continue to be administered by the states. We'll have the central authority administering new loans for the next 10 years and we'll have the various state adjustment authorities administering other loans for the next nine or 10 years, so we have this crazy duplication—something so typical in our Federation.

To make it worse, what has the now former minister done? He's charged the people designing the RIC to go to the states and ask them how to do it. They were so hopeless at administering loans that the people who were establishing the Regional Investment Corporation have been charged with going and asking the states how to do their job. If that's not inconsistent and just plain madness, I don't know what is.

This minister had nearly five years in the portfolio in which to do some things. But, no, he was not prepared to look at the long-term interests and sustainable profitability of the agriculture sector.

Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Hunter.

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

No, all he wanted to do was play the game, play to his base, and keep things going just the way they were—and in many cases just keep farmers poor, basically. He had no interest in lifting their sustainable profitability. He comes in here every day and claims credit for the free trade agreements, which, of course, are a matter for the trade minister. But he never talks about the non-trade barriers, the protocols, that still exist for so many growers and producers in this country. They are not getting access to those markets, because of non-tariff barriers and the failure of this government, of which he is a part, to put in place the protocols that are required for that market access.

There is another point here. It goes again to the unnecessary delay of the government's own bill. The intergovernmental agreement on drought is about to come to an end; the minister abolished the COAG committee which was charged with further progressing drought policy in this country; and, of course, farm household allowance, the ultimate safety net for farmers in drought or facing other problems, which is effectively Newstart with a more generous assets test, under this government is now only available to farmers for three years—and guess what? Many farmers on farm household allowance are coming to the end of their three years.

So what do they now face? What help do they now hope to have from a government in this very dry period? I think that, if he were at the dispatch box, the member for New England would say: these new loans that are going to be administered by the RIC. Well, I question whether that is going to be of sufficient assistance to farmers at all. But let's hope, if we take it as written, that it may assist some. Let's hope that this delay between December and February won't deny farmers the opportunity to apply for those loans on 1 July because the department hasn't been able to implement the program because the former minister refused to put his ego and his aspirations for further pork-barrelling behind him and just allow these amendments to go through last year. That's what he should have done. That would have been the right thing to do by the agriculture sector and the broader economy. But, of course, he refused to do it. He wanted to hold all the power. He wanted to pull all the strings. He wanted, at the click of a finger, to send some money here, there or elsewhere in the name of political expediency.

It wasn't about what was right for farmers generally or for the sector generally. It wasn't about productivity, sustainable profitability or dealing with the challenges as well as the opportunities that farmers face in this country. The minister can't even articulate what these loans are going to be, what their real purpose is and what the criteria are. These, of course, are still up in the air. We don't know. He'd say it's a matter for the board, but he also wanted to ensure that he could change whatever they said.

I am very pleased that the government has backed down. I'm glad we've got a new minister who, from time to time in recent weeks, has talked some common sense and has indicated that he might be up for a discussion about the big issues that are facing the agriculture sector and about how we make the most of the opportunities ahead of the sector in the face of growing global food demand. I look forward to doing what I hoped to do five years ago and maybe work with him in a bipartisan manner so that we can ensure that Australia's farmers are able to make the best of those opportunities.

We still think the RIC's a terrible pork barrel and a shocking boondoggle. We remain opposed to it, but the Senate's made its decision. It has passed the bill—33 to 31, by the way, on the third reading. If one senator had voted differently, it would have been a tie. I think that again reflects, in large part, the Senate's will and views. That doesn't happen on a bill like this if the bill before the Senate isn't very flawed, and this bill is a flawed bill.

Question agreed to.