Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources) Share this | Hansard source

Possibly, Senator. The underlying reason for this particular package is the ability for governments to be much more responsive to the needs of our farming community. As you would be aware, having a keen interest in the farm sector, farming takes many and varied forms. In that case, we can have localised distress occur because a particular area is impacted by a localised or regionalised event or activity. Equally, a single industry can be impacted across the whole country, which means that there is a little bit of the industry through many jurisdictions. A classic example of that more recently has been the situation that occurred with the crisis in the dairy industry; probably no state felt it more keenly than the state which you represent as a senator. So the ability for the classes of loans to be immediately responsive and reactive to situations that we find our farming communities getting themselves into or being impacted by without much notice is important. So the answer to your question is yes. The loan classes are, in effect, designed so that they can be quickly responsive to situations to assist our farmers as quickly, effectively and efficiently as possible.