Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

Well, it was your policy too, so do not get too excited. We are obliged to have a system where you have lines on a map. The National Rural Advisory Council, NRAC, makes a decision based on an entire area. For the entire area that they were making the assessment for—a good part of which falls into the seat of the member for Gippsland—they made an assessment that the period of recovery had begun. There is no doubt that when you draw those generalisations across entire regions you will find some areas where people are not in recovery at all. This happened with respect to the Bourke-Brewarrina area and the local member got involved there. We made sure that the New South Wales government put in a fresh request for revised boundaries and NRAC conducted an immediate assessment. Under those revised boundaries, a fresh EC declaration was made within the space of about 48 hours. We had a similar situation in two different areas in Queensland. I would encourage the member for Gippsland to follow the same process that—

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