Justine Keay (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Farm Household Support Amendment Bill with a little bit of apprehension. Of course, Labor will be supporting these measures, but, as the member for Barton mentioned, this is just tinkering around the edge. As someone who comes from a regional electorate with many dairy farms—in fact, the largest dairy farm in the Southern Hemisphere, a Van Diemen's Land Company farm, is in my electorate—I have spoken to a number of dairy farmers who have attempted to access this payment but have met barriers to doing so in a way that meets their financial commitments, particularly when their milk cheques are not coming through.

The farm household allowance is like many things coming from this government. It has all the best intentions but fails in its delivery. Despite not admitting that there was anything wrong with the allowance, the Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources, the member for New England, has finally woken up and has made some welcome changes to the eligibility criteria for this scheme. However, the minister knows that farmers have struggled to get any assistance under this program for a very long time.

Labor supports amendments to the Farm Household Support Act that will make it easier for farmers to access the support they need when they need it. The removal of waiting periods before payments can be received is a welcome change. However, the debacle of this scheme, the long delays for farmers in obtaining support, the onerous process that farmers need to go through in order to just make an application and the delays in processing these claims have plagued this minister for years. Now he finally decides to act—many months after the dairy crisis hit my electorate as well as many other areas in the country. The minister mentioned the trial; the trial is welcome but a little bit too late, particularly when farmers in my electorate have been struggling, in the current economic climate, with the dairy crisis for many, many months and have been asking for support from this government to fix these delays for just as long.

I go to a story outside my electorate, in South Australia, as this is something that occurs nationwide. This is from October, when dairy farmers who were hoping to get urgent financial relief from the federal government were waiting up to six months for anything to come through—six months. The minister said, 'We will put some new resources into Centrelink,' and obviously that was welcome, but it did not make a dent. Six months on, and this is from a farmer in South Australia, 'They sent us a letter saying that we had been rejected simply because we had not given them, Centrelink, the information they had asked for, which we had.' This is what the member for Barton was talking about. This amendment does not go to the crux of the actual issue here, and it has been completely ignored by the government. These changes will assist, but they are not the final solution to the problems with this allowance.

As I have previously highlighted, what the member for New England seems to have forgotten are the many farmers who have been facing numerous hurdles and incredible amounts of delays in accessing what was supposed to be urgent assistance. While farmers were struggling to make ends meet and put food on the table, the government, in its wisdom, asked them to spend numerous and onerous hours filling in paperwork to apply for help. After facing this hurdle, their application was then thrown into the abyss of Centrelink's off-the-shelf IT system, which was never designed to process their application.

An example from my electorate is that someone's application was held up for more than three months because of this glitch. It was not until my office intervened that this matter was resolved, and it should not have been that hard. While the payment was finally resolved, about $4,000 of back pay was then held up because the flawed system had assigned incorrect banking details to the client.

Despite numerous calls from around the country for improvements to both the application process and Centrelink's flawed IT system, the member for New England was nowhere to be found. However, after many months of silence, he finally resurfaced by responding to a letter from me about the delays in the farm household allowance. Not surprisingly, he admitted in his response that he knew there had been problems all along. I quote from his letter:

I acknowledge the FHA—

the farm household allowance—

assessments are detailed and can take some time before they are approved, resulting in a delay in the period from first applying to when funds are made available …

He went on to briefly touch on the pain, stress and anguish caused by these delays, and again I quote:

I appreciate that waiting for applications to be assessed can be stressful …

'Stressful' is one word for it. Unwarranted anguish, fear, anxiety are others, and I could go on. You just need to go and speak to a dairy farmer who has been experiencing the challenges of their industry to know exactly what their emotions are.

What the member for New England did admit was that there was a problem, and he knew it was hurting. But he just was not prepared to look further to do anything about it for many, many months—in fact, years. Despite a promise to bring additional dairy liaison officers into the field and new Centrelink workers to process claims, this has made little difference, as I highlighted earlier about farmers in South Australia. No surprises there. The member for New England, the minister for agriculture, the minister responsible for this scheme and a member who allegedly stands up for farmers knew the system was flawed, but that is where it ended—not only that but he has completely ignored my invitation to come to Tasmania to hear firsthand how this policy and other policies were affecting farmers. It is really not that hard to jump on a plane and come to Tasmania. But perhaps the member for New England is not welcome.

At the recent Senate inquiry hearing into the dairy industry held in Burnie, in my electorate, it was revealed to those present, when they asked if the member for New England had come to speak to the farmers, that he was not allowed to come to Tasmania by the Tasmanian state branch of the Liberal Party. It is absolutely extraordinary that a minister of the Commonwealth is not allowed to come to a state.

Ms Henderson interjecting —

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