Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Rural Adjustment Amendment Bill 2009. This bill provides for members of the National Rural Advisory Council—or NRAC as it is commonly called—to be reappointed twice after the expiry of their initial term. This will permit a member of NRAC to serve a maximum term of nine years. It will ensure that National Rural Advisory Council members  who have acquired expertise—for example, in undertaking exceptional circumstances assessments for drought ravaged areas—can continue to make a sound contribution to NRAC. The National Rural Advisory Council was established under the former coalition government in 1999, replacing the Rural Adjustment Scheme Advisory Council, and it was then given a wider brief. The members of NRAC are supposed to be chosen for their independence and knowledge of rural issues. They are supposed to use their skills to provide advice to the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry on rural issues, including the determination of areas to receive drought support or to have that support rolled over.

There has never been such a time of need for strong and independent advice for any government than now, because this Rudd Labor government has turned its back on agriculture and rural communities in Australia. It is hard to work out quite why—whether it is due to ignorance, because members of the Labor Party typically have no experience beyond metropolitan Australia, or because they are aware that most of the political allegiance in rural and regional communities is with the coalition and therefore Labor is disinterested in any behaviour, activities or resource allocation that is going to support those who vote elsewhere. We have seen the extraordinary business in recent times where, unless you are a gift-giver to the Prime Minister, for example, you cannot expect to capture his attention—and certainly not the attention of the Treasury or the Treasurer.

The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, the Hon. Tony Burke, has failed us absolutely. This day has been spent calling for the Prime Minister, the Treasurer, the Leader of the Opposition and assorted others to resign. I actually call on the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry to resign. He has failed absolutely to address the drought crisis in most of southern Australia and Tasmania. He has also failed to address the crises in other agribusiness sectors due to the costs of production and the failure of this government to properly address emissions trading schemes and incorporate agriculture other than as an additional cost-taker. This government has absolutely failed to understand the needs of research and development and has systematically abolished those organisations who have been doing that work—in some cases for many decades—to assist the agricultural community. How can this minister have stood by when I, amongst many others, went and begged him to address the crisis currently affecting the export exposed dairy industry? We have a world-best dairy industry. Along with the rest of the domestic milk suppliers, it employs some 40,000 people in this country. The industry is worth some $40 billion. It is on its knees because the prices being paid to the milk producers and manufacturers are below the costs of production. In our export markets we are now competing with highly subsidised product from the EU and the USA.

The minister listened politely and has done absolutely nothing. Meanwhile, we look on as the automotive sector received billions of dollars of support before Christmas last year and as the retail sector received billions of dollars of support. Every man and his dog has $900 in their pocket to go and buy a new television. The dairy sector only needs perhaps 18 months of support to keep them going—it has been costed at about $73 million—until hopefully prices come back, but this industry has been totally and cynically ignored. Murray Goulburn, our biggest co-operative and the only Australian owned dairy company left, has begged to have a place in front of Penny Wong, the Minister for Climate Change and Water, to tell her about the problems that this government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme will force them to deal with if the government does not change its ETS arrangements. They cannot get an audience with Minister Wong. That is shameful. When I myself spoke to Minister Wong about the problems in the dairy sector I was told by her and her advisor, ‘Well, they’re irrigators, aren’t they? That is a problem.’ Let me assure this government that irrigated agriculture in Australia is amongst the most efficient in the world. No-one wastes water when you are paying for a 100 per cent entitlement and getting a 30 per cent allocation. No-one wastes water when it costs you hundreds of thousands of dollars to improve the on-farm water use efficiency assistance for your property because this government refuses to do a thing.

What did Penny Wong, the minister for water, the ETS and assorted other things, and Tim Fisher, her advisor, say to me when I put before her the extraordinary problems of the dairy industry and the fact that they needed to seriously consider on-farm water use efficiency and the ETS? She said, ‘Well, you know, we have got a good exit package.’ In other words, she was saying, ‘Get out of the industry; we are not interested in your future’—the future that would employ some 40,000 people and would be worth $40 billion in export earnings. It was a matter of saying, ‘Get out, we think we have got a decent exit package.’ Let me just say as well that the exit package is not what it is cracked up to be either.

Why should an enterprise like dairying be driven out of business because of government policy? This is extraordinary. It is not the drought killing the dairy industry. It is not yet the ETS, because it is yet to be introduced in this country. It is government policy which is killing off an export industry which over generations has brought wealth to southern Australia, to parts of Western Australia and to Tasmania. It is wealth that has multiplied into the manufacturing sector, the transport sector and into workers in metropolitan Australia. I think it is disgusting the way Minister Tony Burke comes into this chamber day after day and tells us how he has triumphed over some other sector and made them a showpiece, when all the while he knows a sector like the dairy industry is going to the wall.

How can members of this government lie in bed at night knowing that their so-called award modernisation activity is going to drive horticulture out of business? Horticulturalists need flexibility in the management of their workforces. Their products, their crops, their tomatoes, their strawberries and their soft fruits need to be picked when it is optimal for that product to be picked. They cannot wait for the following weekday or, indeed, sometimes during the day. The new award modernisation proposal for horticulture demands double time for any hours worked over the weekend, whether it is shed work or picking work. The proposal says that workers cannot work between 6 am and 6 pm without accruing penalties, even if they are within their overall work week time frame. The proposal says that they must be paid for a minimum of four hours and they must be paid a minimum salary, not on piecework. So that is the end of the slow worker being able to start and develop a career in horticulture as a picker, pruner and packer. They will simply not be taken on because horticulturalists will not be able to afford it.

What other developed government, parliamentary democracy would inflict this sort of award on a sector that cannot pass on prices because it is exposed to the duopoly of Coles and Woolworths, who will not pay a cent more than they can possibly get away with because there is the import option always in front of them. ‘You don’t want to supply your strawberries at next to nothing? Then we’ll bring them in from somewhere else. There’s a queue behind you,’ is the way they tackle it. I say to this government, ‘How can you stand by and inflict the horticulture award modernisation strategy on the Australian horticultural industry and imagine that you are behaving in a responsible fashion?’ This is a most disgraceful piece of business and I cannot imagine how Julia Gillard, the minister responsible for this work, can lie straight in bed at night knowing that the horticultural industry’s demise will be on her head.

Then we move onto something like faster broadband. Everyone understands and appreciates that telecommunications and broadband in particular are moving and developing at a rapid rate, and Australia must be world best. We must be able to have our industries, whether they are located in Brunswick or Broadmeadows or Mooroopna, able to access systems of telecommunications or broadband that are equal in speed and efficiency of use and cost. After all, Mooroopna is only two hours from Melbourne. But let me tell you, the problem is that this government has declared that if you are in a town with fewer than 1,000 people, the policy does not apply. You do not get access to the $43 billion broadband rollout. You will pay for it through your taxes, of course, but if you are in a town with fewer than 1,000 people do not expect to see anything happen in your part of the world. You are out of sight, out of mind.

Lest someone listening thinks those towns with fewer than 1,000 people are all out the back of Uluru or Bourke or Katherine, let me tell you that in my electorate of Murray, which is between two and four hours from Melbourne, we have more than 30 towns with fewer than 1,000 people in them. The entire shire of Loddon has not a single town with more than 1,000 people. Campaspe shire only has a couple of towns with more than 1,000 people. So how can a democratically elected government, which should be governing for all people—a statement Mr Rudd made, obviously with his fingers crossed behind his back. He made that statement at one stage; he was going to govern for all Australians. If so, then how come this broadband policy is only for people in towns of more than 1,000 people? Doesn’t he understand the settlement patterns of this great country? He clearly does not.

And then we get to the cynical abuse of the opportunities of young rural and regional Australians to go to university. Can you imagine the shock of that announcement on all of those young Australians who had earned a place and an offer to go to university and who are in their gap year now, as we speak? Can you imagine their shock when they realised that this government has now made it impossible for them to take up those places? That is because Minister Gillard—the Minister for Education among many other things—has said that they will now have to work for 30 hours per week for 18 months out of two years, or 24 months, in order to qualify for the independent youth allowance, which is essential for most rural and regional students whose parents do not have the $20,000 or so extra needed to pay for their living away from home expenses?

You would have thought that Minister Gillard would have taken into account those in their gap year right now and would have had some sort of grandfathering strategy or clause, like most responsible ministers in government. But no, she had forgotten about these people—about 30,000 of them. When we phoned her office on the night of the announcement of the changed conditions for Youth Allowance, we said: ‘What about those rural and regional students in their gap year right now who can’t go to university while living at home with mum in Toorak or the North Shore of Sydney? They live hours away from university.’ Her office said: ‘Oh, we’ll have to get back to you. We’re not sure about those. We haven’t quite got to them yet.’

It is months later now. There have been protest rallies right across Australia, particularly in places like Bendigo and Ballarat, with students saying: ‘What about us? Can’t we now train as professionals—as doctors, dentists, teachers, nurses, engineers—because we have earned a place in university, but your new rules cut us out.’ Minister Gillard has come back and said: ‘Look’—and she says this regularly with a smile on her face at question time—’you’re lying. You’re not looking at the means test and how we’ve changed it. More people will be eligible due to our means test changes.’ However, if you get out the taper rates from Centrelink and have a look at them, you will see in fact that while the means test rates have indeed changed, you are only looking at a few dollars a week difference—a few dollars a week into your pocket when you are still so-called ‘eligible’ for Youth Allowance at the higher cut-off rates. We are told, ‘Don’t worry; you can be independent at the age of 22 now.’ Most students leave school at 17 or 18, and if they have to wait until they are 22 to access their university of education, because that is when they will be eligible for independent youth allowance, then it is probably too late. They will have to apply as a mature age student and there are fewer places.

This is one of the most cynical and short-sighted and devastating decisions this government has made in denying rural and regional youth an opportunity for university education into the future. We know that people born and bred in a country area who then train as a doctor, dentist, nurse or teacher that they are likely to return to practise in these professions as qualified adults. So this government is removing generations of rural and regional professionals who would have served our needs in a skill-short Australia.

This is a disgraceful piece of policymaking. It was presumably done on the run on the back of an envelope. The minister quite clearly has too many portfolio areas to get across. She has made a mess of the industrial relations scene. I have mentioned horticulture—that is just one area on its knees; you could add to that the retail sector. The tourism and hospitality sectors have equally been dismayed and distressed to find their viability affected by Minister Gillard’s extraordinary lack of grasp of what really needs to happen in this country. Then there are the changes to youth allowance, which is a devastating situation.

Let me get to perhaps the worst situation of all: water policy. Minister Wong clearly does not understand that, in a drought stressed country—in my part of the world, we have had drought for seven years now—saying that the government will provide $1 million, $2 billion or $3 billion to buy back water from willing sellers is quite simply the most cynical and cruel joke to play. You have people who certainly must sell their water. The banks and other lenders are leaning on them very hard. But that water should be sold back into the irrigation communities, which can continue to produce food for this nation and for export. Penny Wong—with the full understanding and permission of Prime Minister Rudd, I suppose—has created a situation whereby irrigated agriculture in this country right throughout the Murray-Darling Basin is now at risk, and she has not delivered a single extra megalitre to the environment through this extraordinarily short-sighted policy.

The pipeline to Melbourne is a classic and typical example of what the Labor governments, both state and federal, are doing to an irrigated, food-producing sector which was once called the ‘food bowl of Australia’. I am talking about northern Victoria, of course: the area which straddles the electorates of McEwen, Indi, Murray and Mallee. The pipeline to Melbourne has now been thoroughly exposed as not being based on any business case. The general manager of the government’s Office of Water, David Downie, now says that factors such as expected flows, water quality and rainfall predictions for the pipeline and irrigation projects have undergone ‘substantial changes’ since April last year. That is wrong. No, the factors have not changed; they have simply always been based on wrong calculations by the Bracks and Brumby governments.

The Victorian government, however, is refusing to release the documents which describe exactly how much water it is going to take out of the Murray-Darling Basin and the Goulburn system to push down the north-south pipeline. The Victorian government is refusing to release those documents because it says they are only a snapshot, they were prepared by junior staff and they ‘do not contain sufficient information for an uninformed audience to interpret them correctly and reasonably’. What an insult. In other words, northern Victorians whose water is to be taken out of the Eildon dam, which is now at less than 12 per cent of its capacity, are ignorant and stupid and cannot comprehend the facts about what the Victorian government, in collusion with the federal government, intends to do with irrigated agriculture.

The Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts, Mr Garrett, has an EPBC controlled action over the north-south pipeline. He is refusing to step up to the plate and tell Premier Brumby that what he is doing with the pipeline is wrong. Seventy five gigalitres of water, which includes environmental reserve water out of Eildon and water already paid for and accounted for through the Living Murray and Water for Rivers funding is to be taken and there has been no independent audit of the water savings from the Food Bowl Modernisation Project. Premier Brumby is ignoring all of those facts and factors. Minister Garrett refuses to rap Premier Brumby over the knuckles and say, ‘Stop.’ The pipeline is an absolute travesty. There is no water to put down it. It is going to cost taxpayers nearly $1 billion and provide no more water for Melbourne. This is an example of what this government is doing to irrigated and ordinary agriculture. It is a disgrace. (Time expired)

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