Richard Di Natale (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the motion to suspend standing orders simply because it is absolutely critical that the Senate resolve this crisis today. We have to sort this out. We are about to leave parliament and what we face is farmers who are now watching their fruit withering on the vine or seeing mangoes rotting on the ground. Some of them are facing extreme financial hardship. They are faced with the prospect of us leaving this place for the break, with a massive imposition on backpackers, who provide a really valuable contribution to regional communities. At this stage, without us resolving this issue, it is quite possible that we would have backpackers who would be charged 32 per cent tax saying, 'We are not coming to this country.' That is the risk that we face. Farmers have already lost tens of thousands of dollars.

It is true—I agree with Senator Wong; Senator Wong is absolutely right—this has been a mess. The whole thing has been a debacle, right from the moment the proposal was flagged by the government, right from that moment when they made an announcement without any consultation with stakeholders, farmers or some of the peak representative groups, completely blindsiding them, and then during the election refusing to commit to a particular rate and deferring it until the final few weeks of parliament. So it is absolutely critical that we ensure this is fixed, and that is why we will support this motion for suspension.

What we have managed to achieve through this outcome is that backpackers will be taxed, effectively, a 30 per cent tax rate based on super claw-back. let's be clear about what that means. Yesterday we had agreed that we would have a 13 per cent tax rate. Today, the Greens are saying that we will have a 15 per cent rate but there will be a tax claw-back which brings the revenue basically to where we were at 13 per cent under the arrangement yesterday—which was supported by a majority of the Senate. So we have actually achieved that, but not only that. As critical is that is, we know it is important because we know that the money that these backpackers earn really is put back into regional communities. We know that every dollar that is earned is a dollar that can be spent in a regional economy, helping to boost the livelihoods of many people who live outside capital cities.

Now, at the same time as we have seen this wonderful win for farmers, a wonderful win for people living on the land, we have seen a huge pledge, a $100 million pledge, to Landcare. So there is an additional $100 million for Landcare. Landcare is a wonderful organisation. This is a non-partisan initiative. It is grassroots. It is bottom-up. It is the community coming together in regional areas and looking at how they can enhance the environmental values of the land on which they live, some private land, some public land. In short, it is revegetation programs—for example, along creek beds that have been denuded. So we see lots of trees going in, stabilisation of erosion and a whole range of other biodiversity benefits. Sometimes it is weed management. All of those things bring farmers and conservationists together. It is one of those good-news stories, something we should be really proud of. I have to say, as somebody who has been involved with a local Landcare group, that it is a wonderful win for those regional communities to know that there will be additional revenue for them to do the great work that they continue to do. We are very pleased that we secured not just a good win for farmers but a really great win for the environment as well.

I understand that the ALP have some concern about it. In fact I saw the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, Tanya Plibersek, put a tweet out saying that it would have cost the budget less to support Australian Labor's 10.5 per cent backpacker tax than to do a $100 million deal with the Greens. What she is effectively saying is that we managed to achieve more than the Labor Party was able to achieve. We are proud of that. We are very proud of that. We are proud that we are able to get an additional commitment—the $100 million that goes to Landcare—under an arrangement that is good for farmers and good for the community. It is unequivocally good news, and I would like to see the Labor Party support it, because it resolves a conflict that was going on endlessly. It needed a circuit-breaker, it needed some common sense and it needed leadership, and the Greens today have shown that.

I want to pay tribute to the work of both Senator Whish-Wilson and Senator Rice, our agriculture spokesperson and our Treasury spokesperson, for helping us to negotiate this outcome. We are very proud to be standing here today with what we think is a wonderful outcome.