Judi Moylan (Pearce, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I grew up in the quintessential Australian country town of Narrogin, which lies south-east of Perth in the heart of the wheat belt. The lessons I learnt from living with my family in a farming district are lessons I have carried with me throughout my life.

Farming and rural communities have evolved around perennial uncertainty, never quite sure about what the next season will bring or what effect the elements out of their control may have on their livelihood. Nonetheless, they continue to stand steadfast, ready to make the best of what comes their way. It is this stoicism, adaptability and sometimes just raw courage that has helped Australia to become the nation that it is today.

The government could learn a lot from our farmers and those living in rural Australia. It would be nice if they could visit a lot more often. They have talked incessantly about the unchartered waters from which they must govern and, as a consequence, people across Australia are feeling the tide of uncertainty rise through the doors of their houses and businesses.

Having to plan a budget within the context of the global financial crisis is clearly challenging the government, and, arguably, it is a job well beyond their capability.

They have talked up the unprecedented external pressures bearing down on them and placed too much reliance on a massive debt and deficit policy that will burden every man, woman and child in Australia for at least the next 13 years, by the Prime Minister’s own admission in the House yesterday, and that is considered an overly optimistic projection by most responsible commentators. This big spend may be justifiable if it was going to be a properly targeted and managed infrastructure plan that provides long-term improvement in standards of living and jobs.

One of the key issues in the first tranche of the government’s so-called cash splash was that it was going to create a vast number of jobs. That did not happen. Now the government is spending a lot of time and energy trying to convince the Australian public of the merit of their infrastructure spending, but from my observations much of it has been implemented in undue haste, without proper public consultation and without independent scrutiny. We only have to look at the $43 billion to be spent on the new broadband system, which was an amount taken out of virtually thin air, guessed at and with no figures around it to substantiate the merit of what was being planned. I fear that is the case with many of these infrastructure projects that are being constructed today.

There are a few landmark projects, such as the Oakajee project in Western Australia, which will create substantial jobs and generate billions of dollars of income, and the money that the federal government is putting into that is money well spent. We have to thank the Premier of Western Australia, Colin Barnett, for bringing that project to fruition. We are pleased that the federal government is putting in some of the money, because it is a real generator of wealth and of jobs. On balance though, I suspect that we may well look back in a couple of years and ask the question, ‘What have we to show for the high level of debt and deficit that must now be repaid?’ This government talks of the revenue drought and of fiscal discipline needed to get us through. But the people of Australia have not seen any so-called fiscal discipline. They have seen their hard-earned money being spent with profligacy.

In the face of all this uncertainty, perhaps it is timely that we share with the government the lessons that have been learnt by farming communities over many lifetimes on how to deal with the climate of uncertainty. After all, the agricultural sector is the only one to record growth in recent times. In the September quarter national GDP went up one per cent, yet farm GDP went up 14.9 per cent. Similarly in the December quarter, which was the country’s first quarter of negative growth in national GDP, national GDP went down by 0.5 per cent, and by contrast farm GDP increased by 10.8 per cent.

Primary producers have held their own under economic conditions that would literally floor most people. Drought, fire, flood, currency fluctuations, steeply rising costs of fuel, fertiliser and chemicals, and the global financial crisis have failed to dampen the enthusiasm and the determination of this sector. They just work harder, smarter and longer to achieve results.

As I move around the rural and regional areas of the electorate of Pearce, I am reminded of the most important lesson that we can learn from the farming community: they know to call a spade a spade; and they know to call the drought a drought and not a temporary reduction in localised precipitation.

The first lesson this government needs to learn is to call the deficit a deficit and call the debt a debt and, in the interests of transparency, quantify it rather than try to obfuscate. The obfuscation started with the budget when the government failed to portray the extent of the deficit and continued as the Treasurer refused to utter the word ‘billion’. Instead he referred to the deficit as ‘57’ instead of ‘$57 billion’, and the Prime Minister followed by referring to the projected debt level as ‘300’ instead of ‘$300 billion’. In fact, we saw him in the House just the other day admit that it is more likely to be $315 billion.

It is disingenuous of the Prime Minister to engage in such tactics and, frankly, it is an insult to the intelligence of the Australian people. The government appear to be incapable of answering a question directly or in a language that is intelligible. Further, they try to use a nice comfy phrase, to pull the wool over the eyes of people by referring to the great big hole in our national finances as ‘a temporary deficit’. Just like the current budgetary situation, farmers are frequently required to prioritise spending in the face of uncertainty. They know that, if their revenues are savaged, targeted spending is the only way they will recover. At the same time, farmers know that no matter how low their revenues get, there are some expenditures which simply cannot be sacrificed.

So what do we see in the budget? On a national scale, critical expenses are our quarantine and biosecurity measures, when the Beale review recommended that the budget allocate an additional $260 million per annum to biosecurity. This government publicly accepted all the recommendations of the review. How is it then possible that they have cut funding by $35.877 million? An investment in biosecurity is a small price to pay for the security of Australia’s clean food production and the health of all Australians. This may look like a saving in the short term, but the experience with equine influenza, avian influenza or melamine in Chinese milk shows us that it will cost much, much more in the future. Equine influenza cost the lives of Australian people, as well as decimating a whole industry.

This budget not only hits the primary production sector in the cut of $908,234,000 in spending but also it loads the rural sector up with increased fees and charges. In fact, the budget papers do not mention the $18 billion in tax cuts that will be borne by all Australians. Farmers and food producers will now face a bill of $618,000 for certification of agricultural exports. This represents a 767 per cent increase for meat health certification and—wait for it—a 1,352 per cent increase in manual document charges for exporting food and produce from this country. We get stuck into the banks for increasing fees but the banks, I do not believe, have ever managed an increase of that dimension in one year. Dean Logan, the chief executive officer of Small to Medium Enterprises Australia said:

This is one of the most ill-thought-out business-related policy decisions made by this government in what are unprecedented tough economic times for our exporters.

This kind of approach to budget is just daft. It is very difficult to understand. In addition, a massive $12 million was cut from the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation. One can only assume that this is an idea driven by short-term desire for retribution on a corporation that dared to speak out against the proposed ETS. There is no other logical reason for that massive cut in funding for rural industry research and development.

Most staggering of all, Land and Water Australia has been abolished altogether, while one of the most pressing problems facing this country is the supply of water, particularly for people in the horticulture and agriculture sectors. The main aim of that group has been to assist farmers with productive and sustainable farming. Their researchers help farmers across Australia to deal with the uncertainties inherent in modern farming. Farmers in the Avon region of my electorate benefited greatly from the work of Land and Water Australia in their Grain and Graze initiative.

The National Farmers Federation vice president, Charles Burke, has described the farming sector as ‘the backbone of the national economy’ noting that, ‘We have built the productivity of our farming levels off the back of research and development, but current investment is now at wafer-thin levels.’

Mr Burke noted that the National Farmers Federation were ‘deeply disappointed’ with the slashing of vital funding into research and development in agriculture. It is a very sad state of affairs when an Australian government would rather splash cash than continue to support the invaluable work of organisations like Land and Water Australia that are focused on addressing the long-term needs of the Australian community.

As those of us in Canberra look out at a sea of red ink in the national economy, many farmers are looking out at their fields of red dust. The member for the Riverina was telling me yesterday about the terrible dust storms in her electorate in New South Wales. Fruit and vegetable growers all over the country face a future where water is scarce and expensive. Seeing people’s lifework trashed is truly heartbreaking, but the real tragedy is that with better planning and attention to important water infrastructure, conservation and renewable energy programs we could minimise the failure and the heartache and improve our agricultural and horticultural output.

What farmers know and what the government clearly has not yet learnt is that in times of uncertainty spending must be productive and it must be sustainable. What this budget delivers is far from productive or sustainable. The massive $908 million cut in spending on Australian agriculture starkly demonstrates that long-term productivity and sustainability was low on the government’s list of priorities. It is clear that the agricultural sector is not well-served by the current minister for agriculture, who has failed to impress upon his leaders the importance of agriculture as a generator of jobs and wealth as well as producing the nation’s food for both domestic consumption and for export. Food production and security should be one of our top priorities. Instead it is clear that, for the Labor government, our primary production sector is always at the bottom of the barrel.

The government’s budget predictions include that there will soon be one million Australians unemployed. The solution lies in hard work and entrepreneurship of private sector enterprises which create the jobs. Any recovery will depend also on the workers who carry out the work that is generated by industry. Historically it is small and medium enterprises that drive job growth. They rarely ask for a handout but they do need a hand up. One of the critical issues facing many new and established enterprises is the impact government policies have on available liquidity. Many businesspeople tell me that liquidity is very tight. And what do we see this government do? Scrap the employee share ownership scheme. Not only is it an important equity issue for employees but it is an important revenue raising source for employers. What a crazy decision that is!

What we have seen so far is generous bailouts for big industries such as the four big banks and the motor vehicle manufacturers, and of course we have seen Ruddbank, which has been set up to bail out big property developers primarily. But there is nothing much to assist small and medium enterprises, the engines that drive this country’s economy. Just additional imposts on that sector—more taxes, more charges, more fees—is what they will get.

All Australians recognise that these are tough times and we can accept that tough decisions are needed. But what is unacceptable is the reckless approach to economic management displayed by this government. In an electorate survey I did recently the majority of the electors of Pearce nominated wise spending of taxpayers’ money as the second-highest priority issue along with access to hospitals and health care—another broken promise by the Rudd Labor government. They came to office promising to fix the hospitals and to take them over if the states did not fix them, and people are still concerned about that. But the important thing is that the electors of Pearce nominated wise spending of taxpayers’ money as a very high priority issue. It is not as though the government were not warned.

Labor beat up inflation soon after coming to government, overplaying that hand to the detriment of the Australian economy. They were warned that the real threat to the economy was the financial problems caused by the subprime market in the United States. The former Treasurer, in fact the member for Higgins, was branded a scaremonger for warning of the impending fallout from an overheated financial sector, particularly in the United States. So, having whipped up the inflation bogey, causing hikes in interest rates, the government then added fuel to the fire with an overreaction to the global financial meltdown, initially implementing an unlimited guarantee on the deposits of the four major banks. When investment bank liquidity dried up and car dealers could not get their plans funded, amongst other disasters, the government rectified their mistake only with a lot of prompting from the opposition leader, Malcolm Turnbull, who had all along called for an up-limit to the government guarantee.

The government has squandered the profits of Australia’s boom and impeccable fiscal management, recklessly spending into debt at the rate of $3 billion a week. That is what we are spending: $3 billion a week. To make matters worse, the legacy of debt that they will leave us with in this place will be a ball and chain around generations to come. I want to highlight that with a quote. There was an excellent article in today’s West Australian by Paul Murray, whom I must say has been writing some very fine pieces for the opinion page. He made this very telling point. He was actually contrasting the Western Australian budget, which has recently been released, with the national budget and drawing some comparisons between the rigour of the Western Australian figures and the lack of rigour in the figures produced by the federal Treasurer. He finished the article by saying:

The acute point here is that if the Rudd Government’s growth projections are wrong—

and he certainly gives information to suggest that they are highly optimistic and not really something we could count on—

and revenues remain depressed, then there will have to be a series of slash-and-burn Federal Budgets in those underperforming years.

That’s a future Mr Rudd doesn’t want Australians to see.

This is the reason that the Rudd government, the Prime Minister and the Treasurer do not want to let the Australian public know just how much debt and deficit they have got this country into. It is about time this government took lessons from those who built this country before they go dismantling and undermining all those institutions and the good work of a previous generation.

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