Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Farm Household Support Amendment (Relief Measures) Bill (No.1) 2019. The Greens will be supporting this bill, but there are some important things that need to be said about it. In particular, we need to stress at the outset that this bill is only a small part of what is needed to support vibrant, sustainable, healthy rural communities into the future.

Let's unpack what we're talking about. The farm household allowance payment is for farming families experiencing financial hardship for a range of reasons, including drought. It's received over a period of up to four cumulative years, giving time for farmers to adjust and get themselves on a sound financial footing, and it's paid at the same rate as the Newstart allowance. We know from years of inquiry and campaigning that the rate of Newstart allowance is not nearly enough, and here I want to acknowledge the work of my colleague Senator Rachel Siewert, who has campaigned tirelessly to make sure that the voices of people receiving income support are heard. The attacks of the government, in using robo-debt and refusing to take action on the clear evidence in front of them regarding the absolutely atrocious level of Newstart, are appalling.

In 2019, the report of the farm household allowance review panel recommended that the farm household allowance be decoupled from the income support system and that, instead, an approach centred on the needs of farmers be adopted. The Greens wholeheartedly agree that we need to continue supporting farmers experiencing financial hardship, but it would be remiss not to point out the government's odd and unexplained selectivity when it comes to income support. It's clear from this bill and from the government's new drought relief package that the government can understand that some Australians are doing it tough and need some extra support. The Greens agree. But why, I ask, is the government being selectively blind to so many other Australians needing help, including thousands, if not tens of thousands, of Australians living in rural and regional Australia who are suffering on Newstart?

It's clear that almost 715,000 Australians are struggling to survive on Newstart, on under $40 a day, and yet the government is silent about these Australians who are doing it tough. Everyone in this chamber understands that farmers are doing it tough and that they need support to weather times of drought or financial stress, but so are many, many more Australians. Why does the government give some people help and not others? Why is this government punishing some Australians while lifting others up? Why, according to the government, do some Australians deserve support and others do not? We have to stop treating income support payments like a political football.

This bill makes three changes to the farm household allowance. It introduces the expanded off-farm income offset with an upper limit that's now gone from $80,000 to $100,000; it allows people to access the farm household allowance four years in every 10, rather than four years in their lifetime; and it introduces a one-off lump sum payment for recipients who finish their full allotment of allowance by 1 July 2020 and allows the minister to make further one-off payments by regulation. They're all good things that the Greens support. But, returning to my theme that there is more to be done, I would like to take a moment to read from one particular submission to the committee inquiry on this bill. It is authored by Ms Michele Lawrence, Professor Robert Slonim and Ms Georgie Somerset, who were the reviewers appointed by government to review the farm household allowance. They support the specific measures in this bill but they highlight that there is more that has to be done. They say:

We do not believe that the proposed amendment addresses the systemic concerns underpinning the broader recommendations in our report.

Specifically, we urge the government through legislation to explicitly and forcefully recognise that farming households are small business owners, which is the fundamental and critically necessary step towards addressing farmers' and rural communities' longer term financial as well as personal and general wellbeing. Without this recognition, it is hard to imagine the current changes will be more than a temporary 'bandaid' solution and that long term viability prospects for smaller farm household businesses and rural communities will remain in severe jeopardy for the next drought, crop failure, price shock, flood, shift in international market conditions, technological change or any other recognised challenge for small farm household businesses' farm financial viability.

There you have it: the government's own reviewers have described the legislative response as a 'bandaid'. There is so much more to be done to support farmers, to address the drought and to act on climate change.

I'd like to note here that certain members of this chamber and the other place have been accusing the Greens of hating farmers and hating regional Australia. This is obviously a flat out lie. I want to make crystal clear that, when good legislation that supports the needs of our farming communities comes through this parliament, we absolutely support it. As I said, we will be supporting this bill, despite the fact that it doesn't go far enough. What we won't support is a government committed to ignoring what will worsen the drought and continue to make life harder for farmers across Australia—and that, of course, is our climate crisis, which is so real and so pertinent to us today. We won't support a government that turns a blind eye to the climate crisis that is supercharging the bushfires that we are seeing today in New South Wales—a government that ignores the repeated warnings of scientists, experts and firefighters that say that, if we don't quit coal and if we don't cut pollution, we are going to witness more unprecedented and catastrophic fires. We will not support a government that's had every opportunity to minimise the risk of these catastrophic fires but instead has done everything in its power to make bushfires more likely to happen, by governing over record levels of pollution, by being in the bottom three of the G20 for cutting and reducing pollution and for just passing legislation that's going to prolong the life of polluting coal-fired power stations. We will not support the legislation of governments that are doing these things. We will not support a government that is denying the climate crisis that we're in and, in doing so, is not protecting the people of Australia. And we will not support a government that uses moments of national devastation to take cheap shots, calling everyone who is concerned about our climate crisis and earlier fire seasons 'inner-city raving lunatics'.

People both in the cities and in rural and regional Australia are worried about their future. The amount of concern that has been expressed by the people who are suffering the impacts of these devastating fires we've been experiencing this week and who are saying to the government, 'Take action on our climate crisis,' makes that very clear. It is people both in the cities and in rural and regional Australia who are worried about their future. They are worried about the future of their children and their grandchildren.

The Greens make no apology for standing up to the government when they want to divide the community against one another. This should not be about politics. All of us in this chamber should be implementing policies that will best serve and protect everyone in Australia. While the Greens continue to be deeply concerned by a selective approach to income support—the fact that it's not providing support to everybody who needs it and that it is only a bandaid on what needs to be done—we will be supporting this bill today. Despite the consistent attacks by this government on the Greens for calling out that so much of the government's agenda—from the Future Drought Fund to the new drought relief package to this bill—is just treating the symptoms and not tackling the causes of so many of the struggles that farmers face, we'll be supporting this bill. It's absolutely critical that we provide timely relief to our farming communities, particularly those that are dealing with the devastating fires and our record-breaking drought. I commend this bill to the Senate.