Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Hansard source

Then, secondly, to come out and say that farmers cannot and should not be supported is not a fact. We even heard the throwaway line from the member for Corio about the decline in soils. There is no evidence of that whatsoever. That is just a throwaway line. We get exaggeration from the Green groups and from the people like the member for Grayndler with their throwaway lines that these bad things are occurring. They are not occurring and there is no evidence to support that whatsoever. The doomsday criers that we hear around the place about how we will ‘all be rooned’ are not correct.

In New South Wales when I was the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries we addressed drought ourselves. One of the real issues—and it comes back to a point made by the member for New England—is the assessment of the area and whether it is in drought or not. Sometimes some areas of those large rural land protection areas may not be in drought and it causes some real problems on boundaries, I can assure you. The assessment process here is also still a big problem. I have to give credit to the member for Wide Bay, for I think as minister he did try to address some of these issues. But the problem is that all the data is held by the state and we have to rely on the state to supply that data and give advice as to whether the areas are eligible for EC or not. It is still a particular problem.

At the present time the New South Wales government is not making an effort. I saw there was a motion moved in parliament yesterday where the Premier just got up and said, ‘We are not going to give any support for drought.’ New South Wales is the biggest agricultural state in Australia and I would have thought there could have been some support at least coming from the government.

Professor Cullen also said that agricultural practices were destroying the environment in Australia. I disagree strongly with that statement. The member for New England touched on this: farmers are actually the stewards of that land out there. They are the ones managing the land at the present time. They are the ones spending the money particularly in environmental areas in that land out there at the present time. Take them away and you have got nothing.

If you want to see a bad public policy then there is evidence of that at the present time. The environmentalists and the city politicians have locked up all our forests in Australia. They do not believe that forests can be managed responsibly. What have we got now? No government can afford to manage these large areas of public land and we are getting fires destroying the lot. What does that do? It destroys the flora and fauna completely. This is the worst public policy you could ever think of and the same thing will happen in some of these marginal areas of farming land.

Don’t think that the number of farmers is not declining—it is. There is no doubt about that. This business about propping up farmers that are unviable is a nonsense. There has been amalgamation after amalgamation of properties to keep them viable. I abolished the farm management areas in the New South Wales when I was minister. A bureaucrat could sit down and decide what area a property could be and how many stock they could run. That system has been abolished and people can make their own decisions as to what area of land they need and what stock they should be running on that particular land.

Farmers do not overstock their properties; in fact, as soon as there is a sign of drought they start to offload their stock. They know that is a sensible decision and they offload their stock and reduce their carrying capacity. They need the ability—and that is why the farm deposit scheme was such a good scheme—when they get rain to restock those areas. But that does not destroy the environment; in fact, it protects the environment. And not only that, if the member for Grayndler wants to listen I will tell him about the flora and fauna out there. It is the farmers who have provided the water in dams that absolutely guarantees that the kangaroos, birds and flora out in those areas are now in greater numbers than they ever were. In the big droughts of the past, they died back to the rivers, and now we have water across the land that protects the environment. (Time expired)

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