Simon Crean (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Trade and Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

I rise essentially to indicate on behalf of the opposition that we support the Farm Household Support Amendment Bill 2007 because we take the view that anything to address the plight of drought affected farmers and the communities they serve, in this the period of the worst drought in a thousand years, is worth while. Our concern is whether the initiatives that are proposed in this bill will work given that they seek to replace an earlier government initiative that has been a dismal failure. Secondly, I wish to take the opportunity in this debate to point out that the government really has done very little to address the causes of this severe drought in this country.

If one goes back over the period of time since the first drought bill was brought in back in 1992, this government has done very little to advance drought policy or initiatives to obviate drought in this country or to lessen those things that have an impact on it. The truth is this is the worst drought in a thousand years and it is continuing. Forty-four per cent of the nation is declared to be in exceptional circumstances. That is a desperate situation for all affected communities. We know because on this side of the House we visit them and in many cases we represent them given that the coverage of this drought affected area now is so huge. We have had to put forward our own policy initiatives in the past—and I will come to those in a minute.

What we are really critical of this government for is its failure to take any leadership to address the real causes of the problem. This government inherited the national drought policy that it operates under. It was a policy that I introduced as minister for primary industries in 1992. It is a drought policy that has stood the test of time when drought occurs. Up until this, the worst drought in a thousand years, the drought in 1992 was the worst on record. We have always recognised that much more has to be done to address the causes of drought, not just the consequences of it and the impact it has on families and their communities. The policy that we introduced back then recognised fundamentally the need, once drought had happened, to put food on the table, to ensure that people can survive and to try and restore some of the dignity, much of which is lost, of many farming families during these debilitating circumstances.

But we also recognised the need to ensure that farmers were not just provided with income support. We put in place policies to better equip them to prepare for drought in the future and adopt appropriate drought management solutions. The approach that we put forward, which was adopted, included structural adjustment, interest subsidies and the introduction of the farm deposit scheme, as it is now known, so that people could put aside money in the good times without it being taxed and draw down in the bad times. We also proposed many initiatives to better train our farm community for better drought management techniques—better farming techniques generally but in particular better land usage and better preparation for drought into the future.

That was a comprehensive policy put in place back in 1992, and this government has really failed to build on any of those initiatives in the time that it has been in office. Even worse, this government has failed to address the climate change issues identified as the key cause of the drought. I do not know how many times I have had to come into this chamber when this government has been in charge through this drought and listen to them constantly blaming the states. We know that their constant refrain is to never accept any responsibility for anything that goes wrong and to simply shift the blame. They claim credit for everything that goes right but they shift the blame for anything that goes wrong, and the constant refrain when it came to drought policy was to always criticise the states either for failure to move quickly on the exceptional circumstances considerations or failure to declare certain areas et cetera. People are sick to death of the blame game being used as an excuse for failure on policy grounds.

The drought continues and is having a devastating effect on rural communities. It is a devastation that we try to empathise with, but unless you are in the middle of it you do not really fully understand it. You do understand when you visit people. You see the hardships and the hurt. It is not just loss of incomes to families. In many cases it is loss of the family history, the loss of the family farm. It is the isolation that comes from it, the sense of failure and despair and the inability to feed the family and find income that enables the basics in life to be met. It tears not only at the individuals but also at the social fabric of the communities and the rich cultural history that the farming community has given to this country.

I said before that, during the last worst drought on record, I did see the need to respond to these circumstances—to address the pain and suffering as best we could and prepare for the future. The drought policy of 1992 was not an easy exercise because it did require the cooperation of all state governments. In those days, unlike today, all but one of those state governments was a coalition government. As a Labor primary industries minister I had to negotiate with coalition ministers to develop the national drought policy. There was only one Labor primary industries minister, the late Ed Casey from Queensland.

It took a lot of time because there was this argument as to who was responsible and the proportions and shares that should be paid up in the case of exceptional circumstances. I was prepared to go the extra steps and commit the additional resources to secure an outcome because I believed that it was in the interests of the country and our farming community. We did reach agreement between the state and federal governments. We did, in those years, end the blame game. That is why nothing annoys me more than to hear this government revert to it when all it had to do was effectively implement that which it inherited. I hear the Treasurer in this parliament talk about the people who were the authors of the policy and why not let them have the opportunity to implement it. I turn those words back on him. I do not understand why in this coalition government the National Party predominantly always gets the agricultural portfolio. It does not have the wit or the wisdom to develop a sensible drought policy for this country or to build on that which we put in place. If the National Party in this country does not stand for effective drought policy and looking after farmers, what the hell does it stand for? Yet I look in frustration at the wasted opportunities, especially in these very hard circumstances, where we could have built on the initiatives and done much more to help struggling farmers in the circumstances.

The Rural Adjustment Scheme, which is a scheme that I implemented, was the vehicle for providing assistance to farmers in times of exceptional circumstances, including, but not limited to, drought. That was an important part of the broader drought policy. The objectives of the policy were to encourage the agricultural sector to adopt a self-reliant approach to management for drought. They were also to maintain and protect Australia’s agricultural and environmental resource base during the severe drought, to preserve as best we could the land—the productive capacity of our great farming community. It was also a policy that, in having preserved and retained that productive capacity, enabled us to adopt long-term sustainability practices and put in place the mechanisms by which long-term sustainability became the way forward.

One of the key features of major changes to the Rural Adjustment Scheme announced in September 1992 was to introduce the exceptional circumstances provisions, which included the differentiation between financial assistance to farm business and to the farm household, keeping the business, the viable farmers, on the land, but providing the much-needed household support for those who had no income whatsoever. It was a drought policy that demonstrated that Labor can work in cooperation with the states to deliver a cooperative approach. More importantly, it was the Labor government that gave the lead on this. We do not see that leadership from the self-styled supporters of the rural community over there. I hope the farming community, as much as they might have history, prejudices or whatever you want to call it against the Labor Party, do understand which party in office not only has stood behind them but has been prepared to develop the innovative, creative solutions to deal with their problems.

The bill being debated today extends the exceptional circumstance relief payments and ancillary benefits to agriculturally dependent businesses that have endured a sustained negative impact on their businesses and incomes due to the drought. But again we see in this legislation a government acting only when it becomes a crisis situation. It is also worth while noting that this is legislation to fix an initiative announced, I think, in 2005 which has been a failure in its implementation. The government got it wrong last time when it tried to extend payments to agriculturally dependent businesses in rural communities. We support the notion that communities, not just the farms themselves, may need support. We do not argue against the principle inherent in that. The government made an earlier attempt to assist small businesses affected by the drought, and I go to the explanatory memorandum to remind the House as to what we are dealing with here. It says:

Agriculturally dependent small business operators are currently able to access EC Relief Payments through ex-gratia arrangements. The amendments to the FHS Act—

that we are dealing with—

will formalise these arrangements as well as provide agriculturally dependent small business operators with access to a Health Care Card.

The extension of entitlement is worthy, but I am still looking for a demonstration that this legislation fixes the problem that the earlier announcement was supposed to address. Let me remind the House of what we were told. The government did make an earlier attempt to assist small businesses and to extend to them a similar definition where, I think, 70 per cent of the income of the business is derived from agricultural activity—that is the test. But when the National Audit Office did a performance audit into drought assistance in 2004-05, it noted that when the government introduced the initiative that was supposed to cover agriculturally dependent businesses in rural communities, the government claimed that they expected to get up to 17½ thousand applications, 14,000 of which, they assessed, would be successful.

I ask the question: does the parliamentary secretary at the table know what the actual result was? There were 17½ thousand applications expected. Do you know how many were actually received? It was 452. If you were that far off the mark, you would be drummed out of a business for incompetence. The shareholders would be demanding that the board be sacked. There was all the hoo-ha about looking after businesses in rural communities affected by the drought, not just the farmers. The government said that this was going to impact on 17½ thousand people and there were only 452 applications. How many do you think were successful? It was only 182—a third. So not only were they way off the mark in terms of the reach of this policy; the application process was so hard to get through, presumably, that people either gave up or did not know that the scheme was there. I do not know. I would be interested when the minister comes to explain this in response.

How is it that of so few applications even fewer get up? How could the government get it so wrong? How could the National Party in particular stand by and let this happen to its constituents? It is all very well to argue that this bill extends the notion of the health card, but the question I ask is: where is the evidence that they have fixed the problem in applications? Where is the evidence that this legislation is actually going to hit the mark? It is little wonder that businesses did not access the government’s initial provisions, because the government made it too hard. Criticisms that were made of the previous program included that small business operators were too busy to complete the forms, the forms were too complex and the effort to complete the forms was greater than the benefits. Previously, businesses have found it difficult to prove that 70 per cent of income derives from ‘farm business’. What is farm business? These are all the definitional issues that this bill does not address.

I suspect that here we have another piece of legislation where the government are trying to give the impression they are doing something when in fact the policy will fail again. I want the minister, when he responds, to tell us how they have fixed the failure that was endemic in the scheme previously. I would also like to understand why, in this exercise, the definition of small business in a rural community is the one that they use for the workplace relations test—100 employees or less. I ask the House to reflect on this: what we are being asked to do here is to extend farm household support to a business which is 70 per cent reliant on agricultural income. If you have to give farm household support to the business owner, does anyone seriously suggest that they would still be employing 100, 90, 80, 76, 60 or five people? If you need farm household support, how the hell can you employ anyone? This is the point I am making. This bill does not seem to have been thought through.

I wonder what we are debating here. No-one argues against the need for this sort of extension, but are we really addressing the problem? Are we hitting the mark? The government did not hit the mark on the earlier occasion and I suspect they will not hit the mark on the next occasion. Labor have an amendment. The amendment will not fix the problem—it is simply to try to draw attention to the problem—but I think it is incumbent on the minister to explain how this problem is going to be fixed into the future. Unless they do it, I think farmers are entitled to think that they are being let down seriously yet again.

I make the point: no-one can question Labor’s bona fides or our commitment to both providing farm household support and trying to address and alleviate the pressures consequent upon drought. Our record stands. The policy that we put in place still stands. The policy that we put in place has not been built upon despite the fact that we are experiencing a worse drought than when I introduced the policy some 15 years ago.

That brings me to another point that I want to make in this debate. While it is one thing to provide drought assistance, it is just as important, in terms of a balanced approach to policy, to ensure that we deal with the cause of the drought and implement policies that address the cause. Back then I argued that we had to recognise that water management issues could not be looked at separately, that they must be considered in terms of industry development and environmental protection and that all of these were linked. I have also said on previous occasions that water is not just an environmental issue, an economic issue or a social issue; it is all three of them. That is why this issue of addressing both climate change and water policy is so vital. This is where the Commonwealth does have to play a leadership role. Back then we did not develop just the drought policy; we also developed a national water quality strategy. We amalgamated the agriculture, soil conservation and water resource councils to deal with natural resource management in an integrated way. I used the funding in those programs to leverage a commitment from the states, local government and individual stakeholders to invest in the infrastructure that was going to help retain water through technological solutions as well as channel covering and lining for the prevention of evaporation and seepage, through which so much of our great natural resource of water goes. We were arguing that 15 years ago; again, the basis for that was laid by us.

What did we see from this government until this year? Nothing. We saw the hastily cobbled together $10 billion Water Initiative of the Prime Minister that did not even go to cabinet. We had the Minister for Finance and Administration, who is in another chamber, say, when asked about this in Senate estimates, ‘What’s a billion dollars a year?’ And they have the gall to lecture the Labor Party about fiscal responsibility! So you don’t have to take to cabinet initiatives for $10 billion expenditure into the never-never! So you don’t have to consider the consequences; you just dump this out because you know you’re in strife and you’ve got to be seen to be doing something!

I lament this country’s wasted opportunities because this government failed. It was derelict in its duty because it did not build on the initiatives that Labor put in place in terms of drought, water policy and natural resource management. The base was laid, but this government, as with so many other things, went to sleep at the wheel. It wants to talk about the good things that happened, but they happened not by any policy direction of its own. Imagine what could have been done had the initiatives been carried on.

True, they have continued the national Landcare program—again an initiative that Labor introduced. They have scrapped the Murray-Darling Basin Commission and want to set up a Commonwealth takeover. I think it is a moot point as to whether it is better guided by a national body or an independent body. I happen to believe an independent body is the right way to go. Some three years ago in this place, as the Leader of the Australian Labor Party, I proposed, in a budget speech in reply, an initiative to save the Murray River and to put in place a scheme to put river flows back into the Murray-Darling Basin system. I proposed an initiative called Riverbank, whereby a Commonwealth investment would put into this fund money that would enable the necessary infrastructure to be undertaken to preserve our precious water. The water that we saved would be banked; it would be deposited. Once you had deposited it, you had to have a strategy by which you allowed the deposits to be taken out and go back into water flows. I proposed the establishment of an environmental flows trust, a body independent of government that, based on the science and the priorities, would make the decision as to where the savings from the initiatives went. That is smart policy. It was proposed and offered in a bipartisan way over three years ago, yet this government wants to make out it is doing something on water by appointing a minister. And what is the minister’s solution? Reversion to the blame game, to go around bagging the states for not doing certain sorts of things.

I am the first to accept that the states are not always the easiest to deal with and that just because you have come up with an idea it does not necessarily automatically get adopted by them. But I do know this, because I have done it and practically implemented it: if what you have got are the resources of the Commonwealth and effective leverage over initiatives that drive partnerships with the states, with local government and with the stakeholders, therein lies the solution. But you have got to have the preparedness to put the hard work in, to look at the initiatives, to get the right people around you, to commit the resources of the Commonwealth and to forge a partnership with the rest of the proponents.

As I will have opportunities on other occasions to talk more about water initiatives, I will go to the question of climate change in the brief time that I have left. This government argues that we should not sign the Kyoto protocol. I will tell you why we should sign up to Kyoto: it gives us a seat at the international negotiating table. If we are to address emissions in this country, an emissions-trading regime has to be developed. It has to be international. I would have thought that it would be in the interests of a country like ours, one of the most efficient producers of energy in the world, to be participating in a framework that gave us recognition for that efficiency. It would give us credits, bankable commodities or bankable instruments, that we could present as part of the equation when we went to negotiate in international marketplaces to try to win contracts. Think about it: it is what we did as a Labor government with the Rio summit at the last attempt at greenhouse gas reductions where we insisted that greenhouse sinks—plantations, if you like—should be included in the calculation for abatement. We won that argument. We won it because we had a strategy, we had a plan to implement it in this country and we were prepared to turn up at the international forum and argue for it.

This government’s solution is to stay away from the forum because George Bush stayed away from the forum. Everyone knows that this issue cannot be solved unless there is an international solution, and that is why we need to sign Kyoto. But it is not just about Kyoto. It is about investing in clean coal technologies and renewables. It is about embracing MRET in advance of an effective emissions trading regime. We have seen none of this policy development from this government, and that is why we have real reservations about this bill. We do not think the details will work and, unless there is an explanation, we think this will be another costly failure and another disappointment. But, most of all, it is about the failure of the government to address the causes of drought through climate change measures, better water management and building on the initiatives of the drought policy that only Labor had the wit and wisdom to introduce. Get behind the authors of what is good for this country in terms of land management. Re-elect the Labor government and you will see these issues properly addressed for the first time in 12 long years.

See this speech in context