Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport and Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

The opposition welcomes the statement by the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry on the review of the exceptional circumstances drought program. Whilst the statement does not include any new announcements, it certainly summarises some of the recent events and the government’s plan for the future. As the minister rightly indicated, there has been a degree of bipartisan support for the need to provide support to and assistance for farmers during exceptionally difficult times. Farmers, like other businesspeople, are expected to endure the bad times as well as to enjoy the good. But when there are exceptional events beyond which even the most efficient and competent manager could reasonably have been expected to be prepared then there is a strong case for taxpayer support to help those people through those difficult times.

It is also an important investment in the nation’s future, because if we allow our breeding stocks to disappear and the viability of our farm sector to degenerate then we will not have a capability to produce food and fibre for our nation when the better times return. So it is important for us to maintain—alive and strong—the skill base, the investment, the breeding stock and the technology so that the farm sector is able to respond rapidly when good times occur. As the minister rightly said, the history of Australian farming has been a history of battling the elements. We have regular cycles of drought and these have happened ever since modern history has been recorded. The reality is, therefore, that we need to take advantage of the good times to help us through the bad—a philosophy that enjoys, I think, a high level of bipartisan support.

Many believe this particular drought to be the worst in recorded history. It is certainly the worst in modern history and the worst since Australia has had a sophisticated farming sector. Just before the last federal election, around three-quarters of the farm area of Australia was declared to be in exceptional drought circumstances. One hundred per cent of New South Wales and South Australia were so declared, and more than 25,000 farm families were receiving assistance, at that stage, in a program that had by then already cost over $2 billion—way beyond what has ever been spent on drought assistance in the past. That number is undoubtedly continuing to rise, because many people are still receiving assistance. There has been good rain in some parts, and that has been good to see, but there are still many, many areas where the situation is quite desperate, and it is hard to see that farmers in those circumstances can look forward to normal seasons in the short to the medium term. I welcome the announcement by the minister a fortnight or so ago about extensions of many of the areas that were expiring on 15 June. As I said to him previously, that announcement was too late—a delay which gave people unnecessary concern. Of particular concern was the fact that Centrelink was contacting people to tell them they were going off assistance when in fact many of them did not in the end go off assistance. That demonstrates what can go wrong when these announcements are delayed.

The first two or three pages of the minister’s statement included a fair dose of political propaganda, no doubt written in party headquarters. I am always amused at the way in which Labor ministers rewrite history to take credit for the good things that have happened in history, whether they were there or whether they were not. I notice that the Hawke and Keating governments, in the minister’s statement, are given credit for establishing rural research and development corporations, for creating Landcare and for introducing exceptional circumstances policy. I think that many people would highly dispute such a version of history. True, the Hawke and Keating governments played a role, but some of those things were in place long before the Hawke and Keating governments, and certainly there had been assistance for drought going back a long, long way before those governments. Indeed, the Keating government had to be dragged kicking and screaming to provide the exceptional circumstances drought package at that time, and even then what was provided—though generous by Commonwealth standards at that time—was well below what people now expect.

Of course, the states originally provided drought assistance but, sadly, they have walked away from their responsibilities in that regard. Some of the real challenges that the previous government faced were in getting sufficient cooperation from the states to make the process work. I was particularly pleased to note the rapid turnaround by the states when the minister, a couple of weeks ago, asked them to redraw boundaries. When this process first started and I went to the states and asked them to redraw boundaries, they said, ‘No, we are not going to redraw boundaries.’ We had to take the political flak for knocking back people who were perhaps entitled and, therefore, we were being asked to approve areas which simply did not meet the criteria just so we could pick up a few people who could have been fixed if there had been some willingness to redraw the boundaries in a sympathetic way. Some of the ice has thawed over the years, particularly as we have progressively let the states off their share of the responsibility. They have been a bit more cooperative, but I do think that it is unfortunate that the states are not bearing a bigger cooperative load in meeting the needs of those farmers and of people in the community who have to face the problems of drought.

The minister then went on to comment about some of the great things that the new Rudd government has done, such as the new Caring for our Country program which, of course, cut $1 billion off the assistance for environmental programs around the nation. Then there are the Australia’s Farming Future programs, which have taken $100 million off the programs provided by the previous government to assist farmers. And then yesterday the Wheat Export Marketing Bill was passed in this House. Not everyone considers that to have been one of the great reforms of the modern era, and I note that the Prime Minister, when he was Leader of the Opposition, wrote to scores of Australian farmers before the last election—

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