Alan Ferguson (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Hansard source

He did, but, for most of the 16 years I have been here, I have been the only one. I do not want to stretch the point too far because I remember former Senator Geoff Buckland.

Rural communities are amongst the most resilient people I have ever come across in my life. People ask: ‘Why is it so much different living in the country?’ Most people who live in the country, except for those who happen to have a job in the public service or who are schoolteachers or people like that, face a lifetime of uncertain income. This has been highlighted in the last four or five years with the ongoing drought that has affected many parts of Australia and many parts of my home state of South Australia.

I am very pleased to be able to report that there are some parts of South Australia this year that are enjoying a good season. I happen to live in one of them, and you do not know how grateful the people of that community are that for the first time in 10 years they look like having an excellent season—although the season has not finished yet. But there are still large areas of the Eyre Peninsula and other parts of South Australia that are hanging by a thread. And those rural communities are the ones that are not understood by the Labor Party.

We heard Senator McLucas complain about grants that were mostly given to marginal coalition seats. There was a good reason for that—the Labor Party did not hold any of them. If the Labor Party had held a few of those marginal seats, they would have found that they were getting the same grants. In the last parliament and the parliament before, it was impossible not to give most of the grants to coalition seats, because most rural seats were held by the coalition.

The drought, the poor seasons and the downturn in the rural economy have an ongoing effect that is very difficult to stop. One of the things that the ALP does not understand is that, when you have a downturn in the economy, you have a drop in population in all of the smaller rural and regional areas and it has a cascading effect. Once you get a drop in population you have a drop in the number of people who are around to have children who attend the schools, so the number of schoolteachers drops. The local chemist no longer finds their shop viable. You are lucky if you keep your hospital and you are lucky if you keep your doctor.

So you have this enormous ongoing effect on rural communities who over the past five or six years in particular have suffered from this downturn. Yet Senator McLucas says that the ALP absolutely understands the problems facing rural Australia. The ALP understands the problems so well that we had a state Labor government in South Australia that wanted to close more than half of our country hospitals! That was an unbelievable decision but, thankfully, because of public concern, mass rallies and the strength of rural communities standing together it looks as if that decision, I hope, will be reversed in the future. I do not blame governments for trying to do some rationalisation or to improve the health service, but at least it could be done in consultation with the local medical services and the hospitals concerned.

In her comments Senator McLucas one minute accused us as a government of neglect over 12 years and, in the next breath, accused us of spending too much on rural grants. There are a number of things that I would like to mention today, particularly in relation to the comments made about new leadership and new direction for Australia’s rural communities. Let me highlight a couple of the very successful programs that were put in place by the previous government that this government has treated with disdain.

Let us talk first about FarmBis. It provided assistance for primary producers and rural land managers to undertake training activities in how to build businesses and in natural resource management skills. Why wouldn’t you want rural people to learn more, to receive training, so that they can help themselves and then not require government assistance to do all of those things that they need to do? The former government used this program to assist over 165,000 farmers, fishermen and land managers. So what did this federal Labor government do? It cut it by $24 million. The ALP says it will save $97.4 million over five years, but I ask: at what cost will it be to the primary producers who will no longer receive this important training and education?

Then there was the Advancing Agricultural Industries program. This was a program that was aimed at helping primary industries develop their self-reliance, their resilience—which I have already talked about—and their ability to efficiently manage change. Through this program industries could identify challenges and opportunities and address them by developing and implementing industry led strategies. The coalition government assisted over 35 industries and 700 people. The program only commenced on 1 July 2007, but it helped that many people. What did this ALP government do? It cut $26.3 million out of that program which had proved so successful over a 12-month period.

We heard Senator McLucas talk at length about Regional Partnerships and the Growing Regions programs, which have been replaced, of course. The ALP abolished the Regional Partnerships program of $236 million and the Growing Regions program of $200 million, thereby saving $436 million in the budget. These partnerships were designed to assist communities in access to services from community planning to structural adjustment and strengthen communities to increase the opportunities for these people. I ask Senator McLucas to go to any of those areas which received grants that helped them to train to improve their future and see whether or not they appreciated those grants and put them to good use.

The government has replaced those programs with its Better Regions program. How much money was allocated? There was $176 million allocated, which is already committed to funding Labor’s election programs. So no new money will be available for regional projects until late 2009. There has been a cut of $260 million from the Regional Partnerships program and the Growing Regions program and yet Senator McLucas would have us believe that this is going to help rural communities. I do not know any community that can be helped by cutting $260 million out of programs that are designed to help people to train themselves and better educate themselves for the future.

Then we come to the CSIRO and other agricultural research. We heard Senator Carr waffle on today about the CSIRO and what a wonderful job he has done in appointing a new director, and I do congratulate the new chief. But at such a crucial time when rural communities need help in adjusting and adapting to drought and the so-called climate change that these people are saying is affecting these communities so much, the closure of two regional CSIRO centres conveniently placed to investigate and develop trials in those environments is absolutely absurd. We have Mildura and Rockhampton, which are two rural CSIROs—