John Madigan (Victoria, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Thirteen billion dollars—it is a lot of money, isn't it? Such large amounts, though, do not trouble politicians; in fact, big figures like this are proudly unveiled at election time. There are big, fat, empty promises laden with money. Of course, $13 billion refers to the total funding for specific initiatives to support water reform in the Murray-Darling Basin. According to the Parliamentary Library, $5 billion has already been spent on what are referred to as 'water programs'. That is a nice, watery, vague term, isn't it—water programs? I have made clear my view on the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and the associated authority. I am not a big fan of the plan and, in my view, it has brought nothing but hardship. It has ruined regional communities, driven farmers to the wall, driven up the price of water and done little for the environment.

Let's get into the real world: $13 billion on one hand, and what have we got on the other? We have real people facing immeasurable hardship, real people facing loss, real people getting out of bed every day and facing the increasing challenge of survival.

On Friday night I received this letter from a real person. June is the wife of a Victorian farmer in the Shire of Gannawarra in northern Victoria. June is not her real name, but that does not matter. I share this letter with the Senate because it explains starkly and clearly the challenges facing our farms. June writes:

Each month my family of four receives $5000 from our farming partnership.

$1600 of this goes on an interest-only payment on the farming land.

$1000 is paid to our farming partners for our interest in the stock — that is, our milking cows heifers calves).

We pay $403 a month on family health insurance.

$470 goes every month on vehicle repayments.

June told me that leaves a total of $1,527 to pay for food, clothes, school fees, household accounts as well as repairs and maintenance of their home for the month. That works out to $381.75 for a family of four. June says there are no discount supermarkets in her area. Fuel is 10c a litre dearer than in Bendigo, just 100 kilometres away. June writes:

Now last week our milk price was suddenly slashed from an already low income.

The cows still need to be feed regardless of if we are being paid or not.

The question was raised of my $381.75 a week allowance … how much could I put back into the farm account to pay feed bills.

So the question is raised do I feed my two children or do I choose to feed the animals that in turn feed us.

June asks:

I wonder is this a choice any of you have to make.

It is a very good question. How many of us have been faced with such an extraordinary decision? June writes:

I have an Applied Science Degree. My husband has his diploma in agriculture. We are a 'higher' educated family. We work seven days a week. We haven't had a day away from work in well over 18 months.

I - as a farmer's wife with numerous ongoing health issues since having our two children aged 6 and 3 - have taken a job to work off farm, to meet just the basic necessities of life. I'm talking school fees, children's clothing and toilet paper not the latest accessory or an iphone!

June writes:

While I work off farm rushing from here to there I am criticised for not staying home to raise my family, for not supporting my husband in his endless work and for not being the house wife I should be.

While my friends who have worked their 9-5 hours 5 days a week enjoy 12 plus months of maternity leave I have bundled my children into the car to take with me to meetings I have sat up all night catching up when I have had to nurse a sick child through the day.

June says:

There are no family days for farmers, no vacation pay, no long service leave.

She writes that she graduated from university in 2012 and has been working in the same job on the same farm for 14 years. Ten of these years were drought declared. June says:

For some of those years it was through the blessings of the Salvation Army that household bills where paid. We have attended services for friends, fellow farmers, who have taken their own lives. We heard how the milk tanker driver found them hanging from the rafters. Did we ask why? No we didn't have too. I knew why. Some have the fortitude to keep placing one foot in front of the other, to keep moving forward while others no longer have the strength.

The farm the bank owns for us was once a thriving dairy farm. The channel system was laid with a bullock team and the system flowed with gravity feed as the farm was carefully planned.

When we moved in the farm had not a blade of grass on it after 10 years of drought. In that time the water right had been sold off it leaving only a stock and domestic usage capability of a mere 19 mega litres.

Fortunately that year we had a break and the farm showed its lush full potential. A dairy was rebuilt, fences erected and the cows moved in.

Then June makes another salient point. She says:

In the country's wisdom water has been sold away from the land holders. Now it becomes a game for the investors who wait until farmers are desperate. They wait until it's so dry that farmers have to buy water to keep their animals alive. Speculators wait until then because that is when they will make the biggest profit.

June explains that her farm is entitled to have the usage of 385 megalitres on the current market. That would be $103,950 for the use of that water for one season.

If we do not use the water we have purchased in this season, the water body reclaims that water and we are unable to use it next season.

Don't be tempted to pre buy for next year at a reasonable price because you won't be able to use it anyway. Now if we attempt to buy that entitlement permanently it would cost $847 000.

I repeat: for June and her husband to buy a permanent entitlement for their small farm, it would cost $847,000. This is madness. It is extortion. But wait; there's a catch. June says:

The organisations overseeing water will only allocate a percentage of that water for your actual use. So we are left to buy the minimal amount of water to get through. This means we can no longer grow our own supplement feed. So we have to outsource for grain and hay. However, those farmers are also hanging out for the highest price. They have bills to pay too.

June says:

As a normal business would work you add up how much the product has cost to produce and then add on your profit yes?? N0000000! No this is when the CEO's in the city step in and dictate how much they will pay you and you have to try and work in those parameters to make a profit.

No wonder our farmers are committing suicide. June says—and I agree with her:

Surely by now you can see how this system can not possibly work. Farmers are being stripped bare, paying premium prices selling at ridiculously low prices and being charged for the freight. Meanwhile forests are burning down because they are not grazed and there is too much fuel on the ground. Rivers are going stagnant and growing algae because of the lack of flow.

Good healthy Australian produce is being decimated and replaced on the supermarket shelves with imported products not grown to our exacting standards, imported products full of chemicals and enhancers that are being fed to an ever-increasing society with major health issues.

June asks a crucial question:

What happened to common sense?

She says:

While farmers struggle and country towns die, new stadiums replace perfectly good stadiums that already exist. I have seen the floor in the Bendigo market place be replaced three times in as many years. Why when it's made of concrete?

June says:

WASTE so much selfish waste in our country. Australia is a country driven by selfish wants as opposed to what it needs to survive. While other countries come in and buy farm land and water to secure food for their nations, Australia throws a temper tantrum until they get their latest … iPhone. It is a disgrace what this country has become.

June finishes on a poignant note. She says her six-year-old son has a dream:

He dreams of owning the family farm and a contract harvesting business. He has a plan to house a team of Clydesdales so that on the front of his farm he can turn the soil the old way and show people how it was done. Then on the main part of the farm he plans to use his modern day machinery to till and plant and harvest to show people how he grows the food.

June tell me her mission is to outlast this era of selfishness and stupidity and to hold onto her land at least so that maybe her children have a chance. She asks:

How will we do that? We already have a backup plan if the stock have to go. It will be one less farm growing food for Australians.

June says she has learnt this country values money more highly than food. She says:

So maybe we will both have to work off farm to keep our kids alive. But know this while you all eat petrified food imported and kept for months in transport, I'll be eating fresh Australian vegetables, home-grown lamb and beef and I'll continue to at least milk a cow for us. Why? Because I'm a farmer and I know how to grow the best food. Just because Australia chooses not to eat home grown doesn't mean we have to.

June is understandably angry:

Enjoy the destruction Australia, I hope the cash you are bleeding from Australian farmers tastes as good as our steak because the cash is all you'll have.

June finishes off with a solution. She says:

Re-gift the young farmers with water rights. Re-open the grazing land. Ban water being taken from the land. Give the farmers a chance to produce the food you want to eat. Stop importing cheap subsidised products. See to the country's needs. You don't let a petulant child dictate what is for dinner. Stand up and lead with dignity justice and strength. A government is meant to strengthen a country not destroy it.

I do not support the plan, but I will vote in support of these amendments. If they bring only a pinch of improvement and relief for our farmers and our irrigators, they deserve to be passed. But may this be only the start of the return of common sense to our agricultural and water policy in this country.