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

The high farce we have just seen in this House of Representatives over the course of the last, I'm not sure, maybe two hours is exactly what you can expect when the government of the day shows no respect for the parliament and its processes or, indeed, its conventions. I do want to thank the House staff who have to play catch-up and cover for government ministers when governments decide to break all the rules of the conventions for their own political gain. Surely, this government will take a lesson from what took place here this evening. Surely, it's a government now embarrassed by what some people, at least, in their homes will see, if not tonight, in their newspapers tomorrow.

Just let me make clear, for some of the newer members, what took place this afternoon. By convention, a bill is introduced and then it is adjourned. It is adjourned for a very important reason. It's so that members of the opposition and crossbenches can have the opportunity to study the bill, to better and properly understand what is in the bill. But while there was a draft bill up on the internet and available to those who asked, I don't know what the minister has tabled tonight. I can't be absolutely sure that what the minister tabled tonight and introduced into this House of Representatives, the national parliament, is what's on the website. I can't be sure that they are a replica. I'm now being asked to respond, on behalf of Her Majesty's opposition, to a proposition I can't be sure is the proposition which has been put to us in draft form. The point is, there are reasons we have these rules and conventions. Tonight they have been torn up, and the parliament is the poorer for it.

I say, very genuinely, I felt sorry for the minister for drought this evening. I don't think he believed in what he was doing. I suspect he's as outraged as I am. When you saw him get a bit emotional, and there was a bit of moisture on the top lip, he wasn't reflecting on what's happening to our farmers in this drought-stricken land. I think he was embarrassed to have to stand there and lead the charge in this farce. He was no doubt even more embarrassed when the procedural sloppiness came to the fore. It was not necessarily his fault. He's a relatively new member who should not have been expected to drive this thing through as has been done tonight. But he will wear the embarrassment, and I've no doubt that will stay with him for some time to come.

People watching the debate over the substantive matters in this bill will be awash with information—claim and counterclaim: claim from the government that this is the most important thing the parliament will do this three years; claims that the opposition is just playing politics or posing for opposition's sake. They'll never be sure which is true. I can assure them that the opposition, as always, is attempting to act most responsibly. But when they see a little bit of what took place here tonight, I think they will come to a conclusion: all the evidence in their mind will be that the government hasn't come in here tonight in an attempt to give additional assistance to our drought-affected farmers but rather it came in to play a political game. It came in here to use as a wedge on the opposition one of the most pressing issues facing this country and an issue impacting very dramatically and adversely on our people in the food and fibre sector. Members of the government—no, not all of them; I'll check myself there. Those who are responsible for this tactic—and I suspect very strongly it goes to the top, the Prime Minister—should hang their heads in shame.

There is no reason this bill couldn't have been voted upon tomorrow or dealt with tomorrow. That would have given non-government members an opportunity to check this bill and further study it. It would have given the opposition the usual opportunity to go through its party processes tomorrow—the shadow cabinet, the caucus committee, the caucus—as is the usual course of things. Why are we being denied that process? I fell for the minister when he was trying to argue that it would make some difference if this was dealt with tomorrow rather than tonight. He doesn't believe that, and I have no doubt that no-one listening to the debate tonight believes that. It is just farcical.

This is a policy initiative—not a very good one—announced in October last year, when the Prime Minister, devoid of anything else to say, decided to have a drought summit. We all knew that that drought summit would be nothing but a talkfest. In the absence of anything else to say, the Prime Minister turned up on the morning of the summit and, before a word was spoken, announced this so-called $5 billion Drought Future Fund. So much for the drought summit! It seems the Prime Minister wasn't the least bit interested in what people were going to say at the summit. He'd already made up his mind. His little scheme was to steal $3.9 billion out of the Building Australia Fund, a fund so critical to rural and regional Australia. The Leader of the Opposition gave some very good examples tonight of the good work it has done, including happily in my electorate of Hunter. His plan is to raid that fund and put it into this new Drought Future Fund.

Why? No-one has been able to tell the opposition why. In Dubbo last week, the Leader of the Opposition effectively appealed to the Prime Minister to rethink his approach. He did something I've not seen an opposition leader do before. He said, 'We will back the expenditure, the appropriation, of any amount necessary to do what we need to do for our drought-affected farmers.'

That's a pretty generous offer. But was it embraced by the Prime Minister? No. And why not? Well, there are three reasons. One is that it would deny the Prime Minister the $5 billion headline, as farcical as that is. That works in the media, and he knows it. He's only spending $100 million a year—that's the truth of it—and not until 2020-21, but he wants them to see the $5 billion headline. The other reason is that this government doesn't like the guidance of Infrastructure Australia—the discipline that brings to government. It doesn't like the fact that under a Labor government we got rid of the pork-barrelling and said that in future these major projects would be funded out of the BAF, but only on the guidance of Infrastructure Australia.

This Prime Minister doesn't like that discipline. He wants to make his own decisions about where money is spent, and we will see evidence of that in the coming three years—no doubt about that. The last reason, of course, is that it would have denied him the wedge that we've been dealing with here this evening. This is the centrepiece of this Prime Minister's week. He went to an election promising to do nothing, that nothing would change, and that looks like exactly what he's going to do. At least he's going to keep that promise. It's the true definition of conservatism—opposition to change.

So, in the absence of anything meaningful to say, he's going to just play the wedge and look for an opportunity every day to, I suppose, politically embarrass, pressure or challenge the opposition. The opposition leader made this point tonight. When those sitting opposite say, 'This bill will test the opposition', we know what that means. It means that this bill and this process is designed to wedge the opposition. There's not much thought about our farmers going on there. The Prime Minister's only thoughts are on those who sit on this side.

I said on Radio National this morning that this parliament is not divided into two groups—those who support doing everything we can for our drought-affected farmers and those who do not support doing everything we can for our drought-affected farmers. No, we are not divided on that front. I don't believe there is a member in this parliament, MP or senator, who doesn't support doing everything we possibly can for the producers of our food and flavour in these most difficult times. And I find it offensive, quite frankly, that this Prime Minister and those who sit with him attempt to suggest otherwise.

For the past six years I've been offering bipartisanship in the agriculture sector. It has not always been easy, I have to say, to keep your head down when a government is performing so hopelessly in the portfolio you speak for on the opposition benches. There was a two-year wait for an agriculture white paper that has completely ignored climate change and pretty much ignored drought. I do wonder whether those who are close to that process now are asking themselves whether they made a mistake in not making drought and a change in climate a centrepiece of that agriculture white paper, but they did not.

We weathered the decision to abolish the COAG committee charged with further progressing drought reform. Think about that; the government abolished the COAG committee—the ministerial meeting of the Commonwealth and state agriculture ministers—and they boasted about the saving they made at the time. We waited patiently for the review of the intergovernmental agreement on drought reform—and patient indeed we had to be. We suffered the folly of what is, in part, the centrepiece of the policy position tonight, the bill: the establishment of the Regional Investment Corporation—a boondoggle, a pork-barrelling exercise designed only to shore up votes in Orange, where the National Party lost a state seat for the first time in something like 69 years. The RIC is designed to do only two things: administer some concessional loans for farmers—something that was already being done by state rural adjustment authorities—and administer water infrastructure loans. If you check, it hasn't done too much of that. Now the government wants to us to believe that this bill has integrity because the minister can't do anything unless it's effectively ticked off by the Regional Investment Corporation. At least they've found them something to do, because we know that, on the basis of the loans they've lent, they're not doing much. They're not doing much at all.

Is this really accountability? Think about it. Who appoints the chair and the members of the Regional Investment Corporation? The minister, of course, makes those appointments. So the minister wants us to believe that the way in which the $100 million a year will be spent will have integrity and accountability because it's run by the RIC, the very people the minister appoints. Of course it won't. It's a farce. We had the drought envoy, the drought coordinator, the drought taskforce and the Drought Summit. Now we have a joint select committee looking at drought. I thought we had a joint select committee last parliament on regional Australia which, given the state of the environment now, might have spent some time talking about drought. Does the Prime Minister really need a select committee to tell him, six years into office, what's happening out there and how the government might respond? It bodes the question: why are we doing the policy before the select committee does its work? It's an interesting question in itself.

On a more positive note, I welcomed the change in language from the minister for drought and occasionally from other senior ministers—even the Prime Minister. I stand corrected possibly, but I even thought I heard the Prime Minister, in Dubbo last week, talk about the additional moisture you can hold in soil as a result of an increase in the carbon content of that soil. Wow! If he said that, that is a development. That is something very, very new from this very conservative Prime Minister, who I suspect, in his quiet moments, doesn't really believe that there's any point in a government acting on climate change. Minister Littleproud has been quite expansive in his comments about resilience, adaption, soil health et cetera. Sometimes I listen to him and I think I'm listening to myself from the last parliament. It's not something I would have heard from any minister on that side even a year ago. That's a good development because we do want to work with the government, because our farmers will be best served if we are all working together.

Language is easy; words are cheap. What really matters is action. The six years that have just passed give me no confidence whatsoever that those words will be turned into meaningful action. I have no confidence that they'll seriously start talking about carbon mitigation and I have no confidence they'll continue to talk seriously about climate adaption. I fear that, once this process is put in place, for the next three years they'll say, 'That job is done.' We should never say $100 million is not a lot of money. One hundred million dollars is a lot of money in anybody's language. However, given the scale of the challenge we face with the ongoing drought—the longest, hottest, driest drought we've had in many regions—it will take a lot more money than that. I say to Australians listening: 'Because the Prime Minister has created a fund which is going to give a magic amount of money to farmers—something sufficient to address this problem—don't believe it. It's not true.'

I've been meaning to check the fact today, but I am very confident that if you go back to the 1992 Productivity Commission report you will find some numbers there that show we were spending more money on drought in 2007-08 than the government is spending now. Watch the clever accounting, because this is a government which loves counting the capital value of loans when it talks about what it's spending on drought. When the government borrows at the bond rate and lends money at something greater than the bond rate that is not spending money on drought; that is creating a headline, and that's what this government does consistently—headlines on concessional loans, headlines on the Future Drought Fund and headlines on the Water Infrastructure Development Fund.

In my view, these loans are designed to fail. This government doesn't want those loans taken up, but the headline figure looks really, really good. The minister boasted about the additional transparency and accountability measures that were put in place by the former member for Indi with the support of the opposition benches. What an extraordinary thing to boast about. It is an admission that the original bill was lacking in accountability and transparency, and the minister wants us to pat him on the back for being forced into putting in those additional integrity measures.

There is a long history here. I mentioned that in 2008 there was a historic Productivity Commission review into drought. Then something else more historic happened, all of the states in the Commonwealth, the National Farmer's Federation and the key leadership groups agreed that all the drought measures, which were in place at the time, needed to go. They were inefficient. It was a moral hazard. They were costing lots and lots of money with what it seemed was very little effect. That is a historic agreement. The job of government from that point was to progress and develop a new drought plan. The agreement established six objectives on which that plan should be developed. But, again, soon after their election in 2013, this government abolished the COAG process. It has been restored in a sense now but all those years have been lost. We have to remember that whatever the parliament does this week on this drought bill it is not going to make a jot of difference. Not one bit of help will go to a farmer, not next week, not next month and not even next year. The $100 million drawdown begins in the 2021 period. Goodness knows how long after that the money will be spent.

The plan the minister was talking about tonight should have commenced six years ago. That is a matter of great regret for all of us who sit on this side. And I have no doubt that it is a matter of regret for all who are working the land in this country, who are so adversely affected by the extreme and current drought, which, by the way, sadly, shows no sign of abatement. Sadly, I've not seen any report from any scientist, the BOM or anyone else, which suggests that that's going to change any time soon.

We stand ready to do all that we can to work with the government to catch up and catch up we must because six years is a long time to wait. I do think that we are finally starting to agree that income support for farmers—which has been a farce too under this government, that's incontestable—is important. The accelerated depreciation is important for water efficiency, fodder, storage et cetera—and I do note that the government has done some effective things there, and I welcome that. But the whole basis of our approach has to be on long-term productivity and sustainable profitability, and the basis of that is an acknowledgement that the climate is changing. And instead of wasting time on what is changing it, we've got to mitigate against it and we've got to help our farmers adapt to what is a changed climate.

There will be a lot of work to do helping many farmers change their practices, improve the health of their soil and improve their water efficiency in terms of both soil moisture and storage on farm. We need to do more on research and development. The minister, I'm reliably advised, spent $2.3 million just prior to the election to tell us everything we know about what's wrong with our research, development and innovation system, but here we are, and I've not heard anyone from the government mention it this parliament. It was just $2.3 million to tell us what we already knew about what is wrong with the innovation system, but the silence from that side is deafening. There is a reference in the bill to innovation. Then again, words are cheap. We need action from this government. We've got, as I said, a lot of time to make up now. The action needs to start now. My final message tonight is a reminder that, sadly, there is nothing in this bill that's going to help farmers for the next 12 months and probably a period beyond that.

I move:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

“whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House:

(1) criticises the Government for its failure over six years to develop and implement a comprehensive and effective policy to assist rural and regional communities facing severe drought conditions; and

(2) notes that the inferior response contained in the bill requires the abolition of the Building Australia Fund, which could be used to build road, rail, and other vital infrastructure—including water infrastructure—in these very same rural and regional communities”.

Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the amendment seconded?

Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The amendment is seconded. In speaking on the Future Drought Fund Bill 2019 and in particular on the second reading amendment, I want to make clear what has happened in the parliament in the last half an hour or so. This debate that we are having today is about a bill to set up a fund that won't see a single dollar flow to farmers until the 2020-21 financial year. And it's not going to be an amount of $5 billion flowing to farmers. It's not even going to be the $3.9 billion flowing to farmers for drought. It's $100 million in the 2020-21 financial year and $100 million in the following financial year. It's $200 million. That is what this debate is about. This debate is about $200 million going to farmers.

There is absolutely no doubt that the Australian Labor Party supports $200 million going to our drought-affected farmers. In fact, we have said that these farmers need help now. They need help today. They can't wait for another 12 months. In fact, they have already been waiting the six years during which this government has not taken action to actually try and provide relief and started to look at the infrastructure that is needed to ensure that these droughts are not continuing to affect so many of our communities into the future. That's what this bill, at the crux of it, is actually about.

The government has, of course, decided to trash procedure in this place by introducing this bill and debating it immediately—having not introduced it in a previous sitting period of parliament where 26 or so bills were introduced in the Senate—but also by not according the opposition, members of their own backbench, our backbench and the crossbench the opportunity to actually look at this bill properly. From the outset, I want to say that Labor does support all and any actions being taken to support drought-affected farmers and, of course, the communities surrounding them. As a very proud regional Australian and as someone who travels extensively throughout rural communities across this country, I have seen the effects of this drought firsthand, and I have been devastated, frankly, by the lack of action that this government has taken over the past six years. There is absolutely no reason that the government cannot make an appropriation for drought funding now. We're talking about $200 million in the term of this parliament.

There is no reason at all that the government couldn't make that appropriation now. In fact, doing so would have the same budgetary impact that drawing down on the Building Australia Fund would have. So there's no difference in terms of the impact on the budget. They could've done so anytime during the past six years. They did not. We stand ready to support them if they do, and not only $200 million—we've said, 'If you want more then we stand ready to support that.' That's pretty unprecedented in this place.

But we think action does need to be taken now to alleviate the social and economic costs in drought-affected communities. A strategic plan should have been developed—not just in the next 12 months, which is partly what this bill says is going to happen; it should have been done over the past six years. It needs to be done transparently and on the basis of science and the best available advice to government as to what will work. And that is partly the problem with this bill. The government is not serious about tackling drought. It is seeking to politicise the plight of drought-affected communities to do what it has been trying to do since it got elected: get its hands on the Building Australia Fund, a fund that has a fair bit of rigour around what it can fund, including funding infrastructure projects in regional communities. What this government wants to do is basically open it up for ministerial discretion. That is what this bill is about. It's not about drought. This underhanded attempt by the government to play politics with drought as a means to get rid of the Building Australia Fund is dressing it up as trying to do something about drought in 2021. That's what those opposite are doing.

It's not the first time that the government has tried to dismantle the Building Australia Fund. Since being elected three terms ago, the government has tried on four separate occasions to dismantle it. The BAF was established in 2008 under the Nation-building Funds Act. The purpose of this fund is to finance capital investment in transport infrastructure—roads, rail, urban transport and ports; communications infrastructure, such as broadband; energy infrastructure, desperately needed; and, of course, water infrastructure. We established the fund to try and stop some of the political pork-barrelling, frankly, that had happened under previous governments, to try and take infrastructure funding out of the political cycle that we see, where some communities benefit and many communities do not. It was about taking the politics out of infrastructure funding.

Under the Nation-building Funds Act, criteria were developed which must be applied by Infrastructure Australia before projects can be recommended for funding, and the criteria are set on four important principles. I think it is important to take some time to reflect on the extent of rigour that was built into the Building Australia Fund as a way to ensure that the funds were spent appropriately and that they delivered best value to the Australian public, free of political interference. This is particularly important at a time when the Reserve Bank is highlighting the need for infrastructure spending to support Australia's flagging economy. The opposition believes that the Building Australia Fund could be used in these current economic conditions to help stimulate and support the very communities that are affected by drought. Instead the government is seeking to take $3.9 billion—and frankly it does not make sense that they are not drawing down on the Building Australia Fund now for projects that have been recommended by Infrastructure Australia to get investment into the economy now in communities across the country.

The fund is based on four key principles. Principle 1 is that projects should address national infrastructure priorities. Under this principle, projects need to demonstrate a positive impact on national productivity and on economic growth. Principle 2 is that projects should demonstrate high benefits and effective use of resources. Under this principle, projects must stand up on their own merits and be justified on the basis of evidence and data. Principle 3 is that projects should effectively address infrastructure needs. This principle seeks to ensure that projects are delivered efficiently and that they are able to leverage co-investment where possible. Principle 4 is that projects should demonstrate that they achieve established standards in implementation and management, and the project goes to risk—in particular, this principle goes to risk—against ensuring that taxpayer dollars are spent in an open, transparent and efficient way.

These principles demonstrate why the Building Australia Fund was set up by the former Labor government and they demonstrate exactly why the government hate it. They want to get their hands on this money with ministerial discretion to do what they want in their communities without actually having any proper rigour in the process. What I note in particular, I know that the crossbench and the former member for Indi worked with us to try and put—where we thought we wouldn't obviously have the numbers to do what we wanted to do with this bill—some rigour into the process, and I acknowledge that the government has attempted to do that. But I've seen this playbook before. I've seen it with the Medical Research Future Fund, where medical researcher after medical researcher, including some who are on the government's own advisory panel, will come to me—and I'm sure they're now coming to the shadow minister for health, Chris Bowen—to tell us that they are extremely concerned about the lack of transparency, the lack of any proper application process and the lack of any peer review for projects and government decision-making that surrounds the Medical Research Future Fund. So, I caution those crossbenchers who think that, by having an advisory committee and the requirement that there be a plan into this legislation, that will somehow stop what we know this government does time after time after time—pick pet projects in the seats that it wants to target, that it is interested in, and not actually looking at where regional communities need assistance with drought and doing something about that equally across communities.

So I caution the crossbenchers very strongly that I have seen this playbook before. This bill, the establishment of the Drought Future Fund and the way in which the government has set up advisory committees and requirements around a plan does nothing. At the end of the day, this is a bill that enshrines ministerial discretion in the way this fund will be spent. And that is what the government will do. And that is what the minister will do, and there will potentially be very little rigour. That is what the government is proposing.

It was important when we set up the Building Australia Fund to take the politics out of decisions relating to infrastructure. It was critical for the economy and it was particularly critical for many National Party seats that had projects funded. They included things like the Pacific Highway in New South Wales, the Ipswich Motorway in Queensland and the Regional Rail Link in Victoria that my seat, the seat of Corio, the seat of Corangamite and the seat of Bendigo absolutely benefit from improving regional rail infrastructure.

The Building Australia Fund was not a political slush fund, and that's exactly the government's problem with it. It was a major economic reform. It was a sensible, transparent means of allocating scarce resources to achieve maximum benefit to the community. Labor supports the government in addressing the impacts of drought on farmers and on regional communities. We've supported all recent and immediate drought measures put forward by the Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison governments, including the additional supplementary farm household allowance; increasing the farm household allowance extension from three to four years; increasing the farm assets threshold from $2.6 million to $5 million; and increasing the farm management deposit scheme to $800,000. That's what we have supported, and we're also saying we're willing to support further appropriations for drought funding for sensible infrastructure projects to mitigate against drought. However, this bill is not doing that. It doesn't put any money onto the table until the 2020-21 financial year, some 11 months away. If the government was serious about assisting our farmers, real money would be on the table now. The Building Australia Fund would not have been left to sit idle, frankly, for six years, not drawing down on the dividends—you have to actually go and ask them for a dividend if you want to do that; the government doesn't appear to have even realised that it needs to do that to get one—to fund projects. And without it being able to do that, it creates significant problems for regional communities going forward. The government needs to develop a proper plan, as it should have done during its six years so far in government, to help drought-affected farmers.

Droughts are a reality of life in many parts of regional Australia and have been for a long time. The government has had plenty of opportunity to bring forward real funding to support farmers and their communities, but under these bills farmers in regional communities have to wait until at least 1 July 2020 for any of these funds to be able to flow. Not a cent will be flowing next week, or next month or in fact even in the next year. Sadly, action is needed now if many of our drought-affected communities are to survive. I note that the government, as I said, claims that they're going to establish consultative committees around this bill. But, again, I say to the crossbench; be very careful with what you wish for when it comes to that.

Again, we say to the government that we stand ready and willing to support bringing forward appropriations for our drought-affected communities. But the abolition of the Building Australia Fund will hurt regional and rural communities. I don't think many of the regional MPs have really thought through the implications of abolishing this fund and what that will mean for the future funding of infrastructure. That is why the member for Hunter and I have moved the second reading amendment, and I commend that amendment to the House.

Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable member for Hunter has moved as an amendment that all words after 'that' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. The question now is that the amendment be agreed to. Before calling on the debate, I remind the House that it has been agreed that a general debate be allowed covering this bill and the Future Drought Fund (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2019.

Damian Drum (Nicholls, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's quite staggering to stand here in this House and listen to the Labor Party preach about what it would like to do for our drought-affected farmers. We have to be very careful, when it comes to the Labor Party, not to listen to what they say but to look at what they do and look at what they did in the lead-up to the election when they thought they were going to be the incoming government post 18 May. They were the ones who then were shaping water policy—you would not believe this—to actually make it worse than it was for our drought-affected farmers. This is the most incredibly heartless series of policies that were put out there in the months leading up to the election. As if our dairy farmers and our croppers and our horticulturists were already without enough water to run their businesses, here was the Labor Party putting out this policy.

(Quorum formed)

It is totally disingenuous of the Labor Party to say that talk about the bill we're passing is offensive. What we really have to look at is what really matters: the actions of a political party. The Labor Party, in the lead-up to the last election, brought out some of the most horrendous actions. What they showed the Australian farmers, what they showed the people who were needing more, cheaper water, was that all of their policies were directed towards making the cost of water more expensive, more unaffordable than what it already was.

As farmers were walking off their farms, as suspected farmers were committing suicide, here was the Labor Party putting out its water policies to take to the elections, which were all about taking more water out of agriculture for the environment. They were making the problem worse. They were making the heartfelt pain, agony and sorrow of our farmers worse, and deliberately making it worse. They were not making it worse for something inconsequential: 'We're trying to help the dairy farmers so we're going to make it harder on the horticulturists.' No, they're just making it harder on all of the farmers up and down the Murray-Darling Basin network.

This is what the Labor Party did. This is what they set their sights on achieving—making all the agony associated with having to walk off your farm, walk into a situation where you're going to be bankrupt for five years, where you can't pay your bills and you can't afford to buy a house. You can't do anything. You're on the verge of a total mental breakdown. The Labor Party thought this was a good group of Australians to go after. This was a good group of Australians to make it harder for them to get ahead, to live their lives. This is a good group they can inflict some more pain on by water policies that are all in favour of the fish populations, up and down the Murray-Darling Basin, but they're not too happy to associate and assist with any of the 2.3 million people living up and down the Murray-Darling Basin.

The member for Hunter stood up here in the House three months ago and came up with the idea that he'd like to introduce a floor price for the dairy industry, knowing full well it was an absolute and total hoax.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You've got to be joking! We've had it for 100 years. It's no hoax.

Damian Drum (Nicholls, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And he knows that it can't work. He knows that it wasn't going to cost him one cent. He wasn't prepared to put one cent into creating a floor price. How do you create a floor price in milk when you're not prepared to pay one cent?

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was there for 100 years and never cost us a single cent.

Damian Drum (Nicholls, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I don't interrupt when you're talking, so I'd appreciate you not interrupting when I'm talking.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's a debate, in this place—

Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Nicholls has the call.

Damian Drum (Nicholls, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The very best that they could come up with was that they thought we could have a floor price above the cost of milk production. Where do you set the cost of production? Is it someone who owns their own water, someone who has scale of property, someone who has low debt, someone who owns all their property, someone who has a rotary dairy, someone who's providing their milk to an organic processor or someone who's providing it to a niche market in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne? How do you set the cost of production? It's absolutely impossible. The Labor Party knew it was impossible and they thought it was a great idea to go down that path.

Mr Katter interjecting—

Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Nicholls will resume—

Mr Katter interjecting—

Wait a moment. The member for Nicolls will resume his seat. The member for Kennedy will wait till he gets the call. I now call the member for Kennedy—on a point of order?

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He accused me of interjecting. I wasn't interjecting. I was trying to debate. I was trying to tell him that, for a hundred years—

Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Kennedy—

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

we had a scheme—a hundred years.

Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Kennedy will resume his seat, and, if he interrupts again like that, he will leave the chamber. I call the member for Nicholls.

Damian Drum (Nicholls, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This totally disingenuous policy was put forward by the Labor Party, turning their backs on our farmers. They're also making out that because this money is not arriving now, this money is not arriving next month, we're doing nothing for our drought-affected farmers. Yes, we are, with our farm household allowance, with our low-interest concessional loans, with the encouragement into the farm management deposits scheme. There are a whole raft of initiatives from this government that assist drought-affected farmers. And, yes, we need to do more, but we need to do more in their favour, not make their lives worse, which is where the Labor Party ended up going.

This $3.9 million Future Drought Fund is to generate $100 million for each and every year that the fund exists. That's what we're doing for the long term. Yes, we have our immediate plans that are ready to go right now. So, when our farmers are in trouble and they need assistance, we've got our farm household allowance and we've got low-interest loans. Together, they can total over $50,000 per annum. What we're trying to do is keep that in place but also build on resilience for the future. How do you do that? What are the types of projects that we might do into the future that are going to build on this resilience within the agricultural sector?

Well, right now, many of the horticulturalists around the Goulburn Valley are talking about a netting program to be able to shield their fruit from the extreme heat throughout the summer. This has been seen to increase the production of fruit and protect it from hail, birds and insects, but it also increases productivity and uses less water. We also see virtual fencing programs. Yes, they cost money, but they mean that farmers can effectively chew down their pastures at a rate that suits them, rather than losing those pastures in one great go.

Greater carbon levels need to be held in soils, as reported by Major General the Hon. Michael Jeffery, and we are investing $2 million to make sure of that. These carbon projects also cost money to get up and running, but they can be great earners for our farmers as well. As I say, many of our farmers are in fact early adopters when it comes to many of these programs. So, while we are helping our farmers right now, this $100 million will be built on each and every year into the future—therefore, building greater sustainability and greater resilience—putting in place some real changes that mean we're going to be able to take that industry considerably further forward.

It's also really interesting and worth looking at what some of the early adopters among our farmers, who are some of the best environmentalists in Australia, are actually doing with their farms. They are using great amounts of compost—again, to retain more moisture, more water, within the soil. No-till farming, or zero tillage, has now revolutionised the whole cropping industry, again making sure crop production increases, but using less water. We're also seeing on-farm efficiency programs—spending millions of dollars increasing productivity and decreasing water use. That's happened throughout the Goulburn Valley, and water efficiency programs will continue to spread right through New South Wales.

Science has played a big role in agriculture—using less water, learning how to stress your plants and then hit them with a quick rush on laser-graded paddocks, There are many more water-efficiency programs out there, but all of them cost money. They are expensive, and they're going to need some assistance from government into the future.

The dairy industry is moving heavily into corn and maize as a way of turning dry matter into milk productivity. This is something that, again, is going to see the average dairy farmer becoming able to stay in the water market beyond the term of maybe $180 per megalitre up towards $220 and way beyond that. If you have a barn-style concrete feed pad and you're looking at moving into maize and corn, you may be able to stay in the market and pay up to $400 a megalitre for water if you can generate your feed systems in a way that is going to take advantage of this.

Again, these barn-style feed pads and these rotary dairies are incredibly expensive. The early adapters are going to move into this space. Some of the bigger family and corporate farms are going to need some assistance from government. This is where this fund, into the future, is going to be able to play a major role in assisting these farmers to be those early adapters and to be those farmers who move into a new way of milk production or horticulture, with increased productivity and less water reliance. They will be able to pay more and be able to complete with some of the commodities that, at the moment, can pay $500 and $600 per megalitre for their water.

Farmers might not be perfect; but when they were kneeling at the altar we didn't come up behind them, take a knife to their throats and effectively try to finish them off the way that the Labor Party has threatened to do. In the lead-up to the last election, the Labor Party threatened to bring back buybacks. We all know that that is the most inefficient, lazy, dangerous and detrimental water policy program you could ever have. The Labor Party were going right down the path of water buybacks. The Labor Party were going to push ahead with the $450, taking more water out of agriculture to go into the environment. This was right at the time when the dairy industry and the horticultural industry were crying out for some of that environmental water to maybe be lent back to agricultural in dry days, in the way of the original Murray-Darling Basin Plan that was put forward by John Howard. It never got designed in that manner. Unfortunately, we now have environment being the biggest holder of water. They have no capacity and no want to actually assist with helping our agricultural sector through this drought. That is because they have their own objectives that they want to meet.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The extraordinary ignorance that is voiced in this place never ceases to amaze me. The previous speaker has a complete misunderstanding and ignorance about the foundation of milk marketing in his own state.

Damian Drum (Nicholls, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Sorry, Bob. You're right; I'm wrong! Everything you say is right!

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I could explain it to you, but you wouldn't have the brains to understand it. You wouldn't be able to comprehend it.

Damian Drum (Nicholls, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Get it out. Come on. Spit it out.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

For his information, the party that he belongs to is the child of the Country Party. The Country Party was formed by Jack McEwen, who formed the Milk Marketing Board in Victoria. When he says it can't be done, the founder of his political party did it. It is a very famous story, which bears telling. He was only 28 years of age. He was actually a city boy, but he loved the country and he just went bush. He called a meeting of all of the dairy farmers in Victoria. He said he was sick of sitting on a dirt floor, eating rabbits in a galvanised iron shed, and that from now all the milk would be sold through a milk marketing board, called a cooperative.

There were a few big farmers—and obviously this bloke here would be representative of them—and they disagreed with him. Jack McEwen said he had to explain it to them privately. He kept the meeting going. He took them out the back of the meeting, and he belted the living daylights out of all three of them. He then came back in and said, 'Does anyone else want it explained to them? I'm quite happy to explain it properly to all of you if need be.' From that moment forward, he was called Black Jack McEwen. We got our dairy marketing plan. We stopped living on dirt floors, thanks to the likes of this fellow. We stopped living in a galvanised iron shed and eating rats because somebody said, 'We can get a decent price for our product, if we pull together and sell it as a unit.' That was called statutory marketing.

The foundation of the Country Party was statutory marketing. It was formed to deliver statutory marketing in wheat in Western Australia. At the meeting, after the single-desk seller for wheat concluded, no-one left the room and they then pulled themselves into a meeting to form a political party to deliver statutory marketing in the wheat industry. This fellow here knows nothing. This fellow here says you can't have it. We had it for 100 years, but he says you can't have it. We had it for 100 years.