James McGrath (Queensland, Liberal National Party, Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to rise tonight to speak on the subject of the government's delivering on another one of our election commitments. In this case it is the establishment of the Regional Investment Corporation, which will streamline delivery of up to $4 billion in farm business concessional loans and also the National Water Infrastructure Loan Facility.

Before I get to the detail of the bill, I think it is important for those who may be reading the Hansard down the track, when it is in the annals of great parliamentary debates, or who may accidentally hear a recording of this to understand that the coalition—the Liberal and National parties—are the only parties for regional, rural and remote Australia. There are five senators who represent the Queensland Liberal and National parties in this place. You've got Ian Macdonald who lives in Ayr, and whose office is in Townsville; Matt Canavan, who lives in Yeppoon and whose office is in Rockhampton; Barry O'Sullivan, who lives and works in Toowoomba; George Brandis, who flies the flag for us in Brisbane; and me—my office is on the Sunshine Coast and I live on the Darling Downs. Eighty per cent of the LNP senators have their offices in rural and regional Queensland and actually live in rural or regional Queensland, so we understand the issues that face those who live in those communities and we understand the importance that farming plays for Australia.

In my office, I have a sugar cane knife. It comes from the family. My dad was a cane farmer, my grandparents were cane farmers and my great-grandparents were cane farmers. You can look at my nice soft, svelte hands; you can tell that they are not the hands of a farmer. They are the hands of a person who has spent a lot of time typing away at computers. But I keep that cane knife of my dad—he didn't cut too much cane with it because he got a harvester—to remind me of my roots as someone who comes from a farming background.

There is also a milk can in the reception area of my office and it has the name C&G Schneider on it. It was from mum's family, who were dairy farmers. It's an old rusty milk can that reminds me that Queensland was built on the backs of farmers who often started off with nothing. They started off with little more than a dream and a lot of hard work. That is what this party is about; this is what the Liberal National Party is about. It is making sure that farmers and their families, that farming communities and rural, regional and remote Queensland, have a voice in this government. That is why we are delivering on the Regional Investment Corporation. That is why we understand the importance of what this corporation will be able to achieve for Queensland and for all of Australia.

It is important as a senator not only that our offices are based in regional Queensland but that we spend our time on the road, travelling around Queensland and listening to the concerns of people. It's not like some senators opposite who claim to understand Central Queensland because they fly there once every three months, but to go on the road because we live there or spend our time travelling on the road.

I spent two weeks of the four weeks that we were away from this place driving around rural, remote and regional Queensland. I started up in Cairns, going up into the tablelands and going to Innisfail and Mareeba, then across to Normanton and Karumba. In terms of the issues faced there, there are the exciting things that can happen in Karumba with dredging to make sure the port is dredged so we can have live cattle exported directly—put onto ships directly out of the Karumba port. That is very, very important. I made sure that I went across to Burketown to meet with the council there, to make sure that they are listened to—as remote as the shire of Burke and Burketown are from Brisbane and from Canberra—in terms of the issues and the impact upon those communities there.

I then went down to Mount Isa and Cloncurry. The issues were all the same in terms of these communities still recovering to an extent from the ban on live cattle exports. They are still angry at why government would make such a decision, but happy to know that the Liberal National Party government is listening to their concerns and is making sure that we are delivering on an election commitment that can help these farmers grow.

After Cloncurry I moved on to two little places called Duchess and Dajarra, then on to Boulia, down to Bedourie and Birdsville, across to Windorah, down to Quilpie, Thargomindah, Cunnamulla, Charleville and up to Roma. In Roma I was looking at the largest sale yards in the southern hemisphere and some very exciting things that the Maranoa Regional Council want to do there. Then it was on to Dalby and finally home.

That was two weeks on the road going through parts of Queensland that are still drought affected. This is one thing that makes me very angry: so many people in the rest of Australia, so many people on the coast and so many people even in the south-east corner of Queensland do not understand that close to 60 per cent of Queensland is still drought declared. There are shires in Queensland that are entering into their sixth and seventh years of drought. The graziers and the farmers are doing it so tough there.

It is this government that, when it was elected, made the decision that it was there to help not just the graziers and the farmers, those on the land, but those who were in the towns and the communities around Queensland and the rest of Australia that are impacted by the drought and continue to be impacted by the drought. Since we were elected, we have delivered over $1.1 billion to support farmers, graziers and communities in need. Our program is designed especially to help build the sustainability and the resilience of farmers, to help them prepare to manage through future droughts, the current drought they're going through and other challenges that are impacting upon agriculture at the moment, especially as agriculture is shifting constantly from an industry that relies on labour to extend, especially those who grow crops, to more of a reliance on machinery. You only have to go up to St George to see what's changed there in how cotton is being picked now. It has really shifted from a labour-intensive industry to an industry where the cotton-picking machines are becoming automated and pulling out the round bales, making it easier and more economical for the farmers to grow more crops and also to invest back in the industry.

When we came to office in September 2013, the cupboard in relation to drought policy was empty. There was nothing in it. That is very sad, because drought is a natural disaster. It is something that comes periodically in Australia, and you can look at the history of Australia and see the great droughts we've had over the years, broken by the wet and by a return to normal conditions. Drought is, in my view, a natural disaster, and it is shameful that any government would not see drought as such and would not have policies to help those who are impacted by drought. Labor abolished the longstanding exceptional circumstances drought support policy. Labor cut the agriculture department's budget in half. Labor abolished Land and Water Australia and threatened the longstanding policy to match farmers' R&D levies. Farmers well recall that former agriculture minister Tony Burke asked the Productivity Commission to review the rural research and development system. Labor wanted the R&D funds, which are matched by taxpayers, to go towards government priorities, in contrast with the policies identified by the farmers who paid the levies.

By contrast, this government, a government that is unashamedly on the side of farmers and rural communities, confirmed that the farmers' R&D funds should be prioritised by the levy payers towards projects with the intention of boosting farmgate returns. We've strengthened the R&D system with the $190 million Rural Research and Development for Profit initiative. We've established the Farm Business Concessional Loans Scheme, worth $2.5 billion over 10 years. This has provided concessional loans at a 3.09 per cent variable interest rate for 10-year terms, with interest-only terms for the first five years.

I will just divert from our drought policy for a moment, with your indulgence, Mr Acting Deputy President. Part of why government is here and why government exists is to help people when disasters such as drought fall upon them and to make sure that government policies such as the Regional Investment Corporation come into being, but it is also to make sure that the broad economic policies of a government are beneficial to society and the economy as a whole and to particular elements of that economy. That is why this government has invested so much time and effort into making sure that the free trade agreements have become a bastion of economic liberalism, showing to the world how and why free trade is good. For our agricultural sector especially, and also for services and so forth, but particularly for our agricultural sector, free trade has been beneficial. It has made sure that our agricultural produce, whether it is the sugar from Queensland or the cattle from Queensland—clearly, I'm biased; I am a Queenslander first and an Australian second—or the agricultural produce from Tasmania or South Australia, is getting into those emerging markets in Asia with their millions of middle-class people. And that is a fantastic thing.

You will remember that when Labor were in power they did nothing about free trade agreements. They did a lot of talking about free trade agreements. But it has been Andrew Robb, the former trade minister, and now Steve Ciobo, his successor, who have been holding up that flame and going around the world knocking on doors loudly, putting their foot in the door, and then sitting down and talking to people about how trade is a good thing for their economy and for our economy. It is particularly so for our agricultural sector. We want to make sure that—when the drought does break in the 60 per cent of Queensland which is still drought declared, and when people have been able to restock, which will take some time—there will be the markets overseas for the graziers to send their stock to, and to make sure that, for live cattle or live sheep exports, there is a market so that money can go back into these rural communities. Government is working with the private sector to make sure that that happens.

Fourteen hundred farm businesses have been successful in being approved for over $764 million in concessional loans, and 7,600 farmers have been granted FHAs since 1 July 2014. There are currently more than 2,700 farmers and partners receiving FHA payments.

The coalition is also delivering $25 million for the control of pest weeds and animals in drought-affected regions, in recognition of the impact that pests can have on livestock during drought. And weeds can crowd out pastures in drought conditions. So, when I was out in the south-west, looking at the dog fences that have been built there, I saw these fantastic infrastructure improvements, for farmers and those local communities, to make sure that the wild dogs, which are a massive danger to sheep and to cattle, can be controlled and we can eradicate wild dogs from being a pest to our grazing communities.

The government has also provided security of future funding for the Rural Financial Counselling Service, and it has provided additional resources to ensure that farmers in drought-affected communities can access the support the service provides. That is something that I, personally, am very supportive of because my dad was a rural financial counsellor when he left the farm. In fact, he was the first one in Queensland. I understand that, as much as we love the lifestyle, farmers are actually running businesses. The best thing that rural financial counsellors can do is to sit down with farmers and their families and have that discussion about how they can stay on the land—or not, if the business is not operating as a business. Often, you will understand, with farmers and families, there are family partnerships, and sometimes family partnerships work very well and sometimes they can be a little bit dysfunctional. So it was having independent rural financial counsellors coming in and sitting down with the families around the kitchen table, pulling out the old shoebox with all the receipts and so forth—I'm talking decades ago now—and seeing whether their business, that farm, was viable to continue and what they could do to continue farming, or whether they needed to sell up and move on. So I am very happy, personally, that this government is doing such simple things as making sure that the Rural Financial Counselling Service has guaranteed funding and will help future generations of farmers and their families to stay on the land or, if they need to move on, to move on and start other businesses and let their land be farmed by those who may have more capital to invest.

Drought affected communities in regional Australia have also been supported under the $35 million Drought Communities Program. This program is funding community projects, providing employment opportunities in 23 municipalities or shires across Australia. Sometimes we forget about this. When we talk about the drought, everybody thinks it's just the farmers and the graziers who are affected by it. But actually it probably has a greater impact, in a way, on the small towns and hamlets that make up rural Australia. They depend on the income from the farmers coming into the towns, and if the farmers aren't earning any money then money is not going into the towns. Sometimes it's quite hard for the businesses in towns to access support programs, because, while they are being impacted by a natural disaster, by this drought, they can't access programs.

What we've done is made it fairer for those people who live in communities like Charleville in the south-west, or Winton or Longreach. We have made sure that the businesses there can access this funding program, so that they can ensure that our rural and regional communities continue to grow. The last thing Australia needs is for it to become a country that clings to the coastline, while the inside becomes a land of holiday farms and weekenders for stockbrokers from Sydney and Brisbane. We need to make sure that money is invested in the rural, regional and remote parts of Australia, so that the food bowl that is Australia can continue to grow the crops and raise the animals that we can send overseas, thereby making sure that we can not only feed the world but also continue to grow Australia. That is why I'm very proud that this government—and Minister Joyce in particular—has pushed so strongly for the Regional Investment Corporation. The Regional Investment Corporation will be the flagship to make sure that we can continue to invest in these communities.

It is important that those who don't live in the capital cities have a voice in government. They never have a voice in government when Labor are in power. We saw that with live cattle exports and Four Corners. After the TV was turned off, former Prime Minister Gillard then turned off the protein supply to an independent, sovereign country. We saw the damage that it caused to our relationship with Indonesia. We also saw the hurt and damage it caused to families and communities, especially in Queensland, the Northern Territory and parts of Western Australia. This government will never let that happen, because we are on the side of farmers and proud to be so.