Alby Schultz (Hume, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

At the outset, I compliment the member for New England for bringing this very serious issue into the chamber under the banner of a matter of public importance. It is always refreshing to hear the member for Kennedy speak. He is very vocal and very committed to what he believes in. Many of the things raised by various speakers in this debate today have been very constructively put and much of it is because of the great care and concern that they have for their rural constituencies.

Picking up on the final comments of the member for Kennedy about comments made by Peter Corish, we all know that Peter Corish was the former president of the NFF. If he had concentrated on his rural constituency when he was the president of the NFF instead of looking at his future as a rural politician and being focused on that all of the time, farmers might have been a little bit better off and had better representation in this place on both sides of the House. Professor Peter Cullen is a constituent of mine and, to be quite frank, I am absolutely disgusted that he, as an alleged eminent scientist on water, would make the comments that he made about people out there struggling to survive. There are always people that do not handle their businesses well but, in the majority, people have been very responsibly trying to plan to keep their farms viable.

I heard the member for Corio talk about droughts. This drought has been going on for five years. It is now in its sixth year. Responsible farm managers are making plans to ensure that in the next season they will have sufficient feed—fodder and grain—available to feed their animals should a dry occur and to keep their properties viable. They are being confronted year in and year out with this ongoing drought. People are seeing their dams dry up; they have no water on their properties. Springs and streams that have never dried up are now drying and people are spending significant amounts of money to put in bores to try and get some water supplements onto their properties to keep their livestock alive. It really does make you wonder where these people who are making these absolutely disgraceful comments—that people in the farming industry are rorting the relief packages that the government gives them through either EC assistance or interest rate subsidies—are coming from. A rort? I think not. I condemn them for the comments that they have made in that regard.

In taking the action that I needed to take as a member of parliament I spoke to a number of people on farms that have been badly affected and have been in drought for some time. I also talked to rural lands protection boards. I would like to cite a few figures for the information of those irresponsible elements in the media and people like Peter Corish and Professor Peter Cullen. I have spoken to the Yass Rural Lands Protection Board. They have a division that covers the areas around Yass, Gunning, Burrinjuck, Binalong, Crookwell, Sutton, Hall and Brindabella. For the current year the rainfalls in all of those areas are as follows: Yass, 51 per cent; Gunning, 20 per cent; Burrinjuck, 41 per cent; Binalong, 36 per cent; Crookwell, 34 per cent; Sutton, 64 per cent; Hall, 70 per cent; and Brindabella, 53 per cent. That is a percentage of the average yearly rainfall that has been occurring over a five-year period.

I have spoken to a number of farmers about just how hard the prolonged drought has been hitting them. Across the board in all of those districts under that division of the Rural Lands Protection Board, small livestock—for example, sheep and lambs—are down to about 25 per cent of what they were two or three years ago. You can understand why they are in this position. They planned to put in crops, oats, to continue feeding. They spent money on buying in additional fodder, only to see all of their money wasted because the drought continued. That is one of the reasons why—and I think the member for Kennedy mentioned it—the suicide rate on rural properties is increasing. This is something we have to keep an eye on. I know that the Prime Minister, to his credit, is picking up on the information he is getting from people such as me and my parliamentary colleagues; he is being informed. The drought has been so bad for the last five years that many farmers have been unable to put away money in superannuation for their retirement. They do not have the luxury of doing that. It also affects any succession plans they had to hand over their properties to their children—their sons, daughters or whatever. Those plans have been shelved because, as I said, for the last five years they have not been able to put money away.

Despite people being critical of what the government has done, there has been a $1.2 billion drought relief package available since this government recognised the need to keep these programs going. The recently announced $350 million assistance package to enhance the EC program is good news. There is more to come. I cannot talk about that at the moment, but I can assure the member for New England and my parliamentary colleagues that there is more to come. In terms of tightening up some of these areas, I have been a very vocal critic of the EC application process and what it has done.

I have been a very vocal critic of the NRAC and the stupidity of having somebody from Western Australia coming over to the eastern states, blowing in for about two or three hours, and then going out and writing a report to the minister to say that those areas—in this case I am talking about Braidwood, which many of my parliamentary colleagues know quite well—did not meet exceptional circumstances criteria, despite the fact that they were in drought. I went out there and talked to the people on the ground. I inspected the properties myself and wrote a submission to the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister had that decision reversed in a matter of days. But you should not have to do that. When you put people in to undertake these very important processes on behalf of the country, and more importantly on behalf of the government of the day, they should be competent enough to understand what they are doing and make the right decisions.

I close by quoting a comment by one of the people I spoke to:

Many of the decisions we have made would not have been possible without the government assistance we have been given. While we would rather that this would not have been necessary we are extremely grateful and can for the first time in five years see that if exceptional circumstances were to continue for a further 12 months we would be able to move into a recovery year. Finances are depleted but with a decent autumn, which would be the first for five years, and EC we could divert money from fodder to regenerating pasture, the application of fertiliser, spraying of weeds which have become rampant and re-pasturing where necessary. One more year of support would really see the benefits of the previous years of subsidies.

That is what it is all about: people who are already planning to deliver what they have been delivering in this country for decade after decade—and making a significant contribution to the prosperity of this country. We should be looking after them and doing all we can to ensure that they continue to do so. I thank the member for New England for giving me the opportunity to speak on a very important issue that he has raised in this chamber—and I emphasise: that he has raised in this chamber.

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