Andrew Gee (Calare, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources. Will the minister update the House on measures the government is taking to support farmers in financial hardship during drought, including in the electorate of Calare, and are there any alternative proposals that the minister is aware of?

David Littleproud (Maranoa, National Party, Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Calare for his question, because he knows better than anyone the impacts that this drought is having on his farming constituency. In fact, I was with him last month with a group of farmers in a paddock of wheat that had just been planted and was doing it pretty tough; it needed some rain. I'm also proud that only a couple of weeks ago the Prime Minister, myself, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister for Regional Development, Territories and Local Government went out to farms across New South Wales and Queensland. In Narromine and Trangie; up into my electorate, where we've had drought for seven years, in places like Blackall and Charleville; and then up into Kennedy, to a place called Boulia, we sat at farmers' kitchen tables and we listened to them. And yesterday we acted.

Yesterday we acted as a government, because the common theme that we heard wherever we went was that farm household assistance was important to those farmers. It was putting bread and butter on farmers' kitchen tables and putting fuel in the car to be able to send their kids to sport on the weekend. It went further than that, because what it also does is give them the ability to go and get a skill, to diversify, to get a job in town, to be able to drive a forklift and to be able to diversify their income to get an income stream in town. This is an important issue for those farmers.

Above and beyond that, we've gone deeper than that. We've invested another $20 million into the Rural Financial Counselling Service. What we're doing is putting counsellors in front of these farmers, giving them caseworkers to get underneath the bonnet of their business, to be able to help and to understand whether they need to change their business. In fact, sometimes they'll have to have a hard conversation, and sometimes people won't come out the other end. This is about giving them the time to make those decisions with dignity and pride. That's what we're about. It's about making sure we understand what we are trying to do. It's about making sure that we build a resilient agriculture sector, because the good times are still to come. When the rain comes, the regional communities that support agriculture will thrive, but we need to make sure that we set the environment around our farmers to be able to do that.

Above all that, above all the financial assistance we're going to give to our farmers, one of the biggest investments that we announced while we were out there was a further $2 million for online psychological services. I can tell you: those people that I represent, who have been in drought for seven years, are mentally fatigued. They're buggered. They've had a gutful and they don't know how they're going to get on. It's important that they have resilience and that we invest in them and their resilience. Above all, we need to remove the stigma that, if you do have a mental illness, it's okay to reach out for help. It's okay to ask for help. It's beholden on each and every one of us, if we're okay, to reach out to one another and ask, 'Are you okay?' That's what this government is about. It's not just financial; it's making sure that those regional communities that are doing it tough understand that, when the good times come, we'll be there to help them take advantage of it.

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I ask further questions be placed on the Notice Paper.