Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Corangamite finds that offensive. We are in a robust parliament here, as the Prime Minister shows us daily in question time when he seeks to politicise Queensland floods, for example, and she finds it offensive that I would suggest that the National Party would have a slush fund! I think that, if she goes and does a bit of research, she might find my statement to be very true. I suspect she won't go and do the research, because I don't think she needs to. I think she knows this already. Exhibit A is sitting right over there: the member for New England. He never saw a bit of pork he didn't want to barrel. That's the member for New England. And, of course, he's the guy who showed no care for the agricultural sector by moving the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority to Armidale, where he knew it couldn't work, but he didn't care. He didn't care. It got him through an election campaign. He was able to promise something. What are they doing now? They're employing people in Canberra against their own government policy order. The policy order says, 'You shall not have APVMA staff working within 150 kilometres'—I think it is—'of Canberra.' Well, now they are. There are 40 or 50 of them, as I understand it, because, as we predicted, they can't make it work. These are highly respected regulatory scientists and lawyers. They have families in Canberra and kids in school. They're not going, so now they're staying. We asked the CEO of the APVMA: 'How is this so? This is in breach of your own government policy order.' He said, 'I've got legal advice.' He's got legal advice that he can breach the terms of his government's own government policy order. But would he show us the legal advice? Nah.

We're to believe that, if this bill passes the parliament, the advice for how the money will be spent—I shouldn't say we are to believe; we believe it—will be done by the minister, with no parliamentary accountability and no transparency. By the way, these aren't my words; these are the words of the Senate Scrutiny of Bills Committee. And off the advice of who? The member for New England's Regional Investment Corporation and his hand-picked group. An organisation which has zero expertise in these matters—zero expertise!—is going to tell the government how to spend $100 million a year. This is bad public policy, and every member of this House should reject it.

There is a better way. Labor will oppose this bill, but we'll spend as much money and we'll fund it on the budget as it should be funded. We'll fund it on the budget. It won't be a pork-barrelling exercise. It won't be a slush fund. We'll establish a farm productivity and sustainability fund and we will have a panel of guardians appointed in the early days of our government, if elected. We'll have economists, environmentalists and agronomists. We'll have the Soil Advocate. We'll have a farm leadership group. We'll have a representative of the Rural Research and Development Corporations. We'll have the secretary of the COAG committee. And we'll have them, in the shortest possible time, recommend to the new government how this money can be spent in a way that maximises our main effort—that is, to better prepare farmers for drought, to get innovation out there and inside the farm gate and to develop sustainable profitability even in the most difficult of times. We will consider those recommendations and we'll start rolling that money out to farmers as quickly as possible. It will be a considered plan from the experts and the people at the coalface, the people who know what needs to be done. That's Labor's plan. It's a better plan. We will spend the money on the budget. We won't steal it from regional road projects, and we'll let the experts provide the guidance and tell us, as a government, where they believe that money can be best spent.

When asked whether they can have confidence in this fund being established by the government—a fund which has no detail—in 2013 something really historic occurred. Following an earlier agreement in about '08 or '09, the commonwealth and all the states come together and agreed, supported by the National Farmers' Federation and other farm leadership groups, that we've got to rethink drought policy. More than that: we need to tear it up and start again. A number of principles were adopted, many of which go to the things I've been talking about, including resilience. It was the role of the Standing Council on Primary Industries to progress those principles over the next five years, to put the meat on the bone, to say how we make the principles become reality. Do you know what happened then, Mr Deputy Speaker? There was a federal election and the coalition secured the government benches. What happened next? The member for New England came along and abolished SCoPI. The abolished the COAG committee charged with progressing drought reform. In five years, we've had no progress whatsoever.

When the member for New England first abolished SCoPI, he said: 'It's all right; we'll just have a meeting from time to time, ad hoc. It'll be all right.' Over time, it became a bit more formal and this AGMIN meeting emerged. We seemed to be creeping back to a more formal process where ministers have an agenda which is pursued on an ongoing basis. But it seems a little bit too late for that AGMIN group to do anything meaningful. Indeed, some questions were asked in Senate estimates about these issues. We got a little bit of an insight into how AGMIN works. The officials could not provide detailed information as to the role the Commonwealth government will play in progressing the many items listed in the latest AGMIN communique. AGMIN was held on 8 February 2019 and critical items appeared to be left to state governments to address. Indeed, we're told that it was the Victorian government that ensured that these important climate change related issues were on the agenda. That doesn't instil me with any confidence that this government still is taking the COAG process seriously. The states are the main managers of our land sector and we can't achieve what we want to achieve in drought resilience if we don't have them on board and working with us. Their participation will be absolutely critical to the success of any project going forward.

I appeal to those who will be voting on this bill to join with the opposition in embracing a far more sensible approach to addressing these serious drought issues. Our approach, of course, must fall into three categories. Farmers in drought need immediate assistance—cash. That's why we have a farm household allowance, another matter of bipartisanship. But since 2014 farmers have been unable to access farm household allowance, certainly not in a timely way. I see the member for New England smiling. It's still happening.

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