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

The high farce we have just seen in this House of Representatives over the course of the last, I'm not sure, maybe two hours is exactly what you can expect when the government of the day shows no respect for the parliament and its processes or, indeed, its conventions. I do want to thank the House staff who have to play catch-up and cover for government ministers when governments decide to break all the rules of the conventions for their own political gain. Surely, this government will take a lesson from what took place here this evening. Surely, it's a government now embarrassed by what some people, at least, in their homes will see, if not tonight, in their newspapers tomorrow.

Just let me make clear, for some of the newer members, what took place this afternoon. By convention, a bill is introduced and then it is adjourned. It is adjourned for a very important reason. It's so that members of the opposition and crossbenches can have the opportunity to study the bill, to better and properly understand what is in the bill. But while there was a draft bill up on the internet and available to those who asked, I don't know what the minister has tabled tonight. I can't be absolutely sure that what the minister tabled tonight and introduced into this House of Representatives, the national parliament, is what's on the website. I can't be sure that they are a replica. I'm now being asked to respond, on behalf of Her Majesty's opposition, to a proposition I can't be sure is the proposition which has been put to us in draft form. The point is, there are reasons we have these rules and conventions. Tonight they have been torn up, and the parliament is the poorer for it.

I say, very genuinely, I felt sorry for the minister for drought this evening. I don't think he believed in what he was doing. I suspect he's as outraged as I am. When you saw him get a bit emotional, and there was a bit of moisture on the top lip, he wasn't reflecting on what's happening to our farmers in this drought-stricken land. I think he was embarrassed to have to stand there and lead the charge in this farce. He was no doubt even more embarrassed when the procedural sloppiness came to the fore. It was not necessarily his fault. He's a relatively new member who should not have been expected to drive this thing through as has been done tonight. But he will wear the embarrassment, and I've no doubt that will stay with him for some time to come.

People watching the debate over the substantive matters in this bill will be awash with information—claim and counterclaim: claim from the government that this is the most important thing the parliament will do this three years; claims that the opposition is just playing politics or posing for opposition's sake. They'll never be sure which is true. I can assure them that the opposition, as always, is attempting to act most responsibly. But when they see a little bit of what took place here tonight, I think they will come to a conclusion: all the evidence in their mind will be that the government hasn't come in here tonight in an attempt to give additional assistance to our drought-affected farmers but rather it came in to play a political game. It came in here to use as a wedge on the opposition one of the most pressing issues facing this country and an issue impacting very dramatically and adversely on our people in the food and fibre sector. Members of the government—no, not all of them; I'll check myself there. Those who are responsible for this tactic—and I suspect very strongly it goes to the top, the Prime Minister—should hang their heads in shame.

There is no reason this bill couldn't have been voted upon tomorrow or dealt with tomorrow. That would have given non-government members an opportunity to check this bill and further study it. It would have given the opposition the usual opportunity to go through its party processes tomorrow—the shadow cabinet, the caucus committee, the caucus—as is the usual course of things. Why are we being denied that process? I fell for the minister when he was trying to argue that it would make some difference if this was dealt with tomorrow rather than tonight. He doesn't believe that, and I have no doubt that no-one listening to the debate tonight believes that. It is just farcical.

This is a policy initiative—not a very good one—announced in October last year, when the Prime Minister, devoid of anything else to say, decided to have a drought summit. We all knew that that drought summit would be nothing but a talkfest. In the absence of anything else to say, the Prime Minister turned up on the morning of the summit and, before a word was spoken, announced this so-called $5 billion Drought Future Fund. So much for the drought summit! It seems the Prime Minister wasn't the least bit interested in what people were going to say at the summit. He'd already made up his mind. His little scheme was to steal $3.9 billion out of the Building Australia Fund, a fund so critical to rural and regional Australia. The Leader of the Opposition gave some very good examples tonight of the good work it has done, including happily in my electorate of Hunter. His plan is to raid that fund and put it into this new Drought Future Fund.

Why? No-one has been able to tell the opposition why. In Dubbo last week, the Leader of the Opposition effectively appealed to the Prime Minister to rethink his approach. He did something I've not seen an opposition leader do before. He said, 'We will back the expenditure, the appropriation, of any amount necessary to do what we need to do for our drought-affected farmers.'

That's a pretty generous offer. But was it embraced by the Prime Minister? No. And why not? Well, there are three reasons. One is that it would deny the Prime Minister the $5 billion headline, as farcical as that is. That works in the media, and he knows it. He's only spending $100 million a year—that's the truth of it—and not until 2020-21, but he wants them to see the $5 billion headline. The other reason is that this government doesn't like the guidance of Infrastructure Australia—the discipline that brings to government. It doesn't like the fact that under a Labor government we got rid of the pork-barrelling and said that in future these major projects would be funded out of the BAF, but only on the guidance of Infrastructure Australia.

This Prime Minister doesn't like that discipline. He wants to make his own decisions about where money is spent, and we will see evidence of that in the coming three years—no doubt about that. The last reason, of course, is that it would have denied him the wedge that we've been dealing with here this evening. This is the centrepiece of this Prime Minister's week. He went to an election promising to do nothing, that nothing would change, and that looks like exactly what he's going to do. At least he's going to keep that promise. It's the true definition of conservatism—opposition to change.

So, in the absence of anything meaningful to say, he's going to just play the wedge and look for an opportunity every day to, I suppose, politically embarrass, pressure or challenge the opposition. The opposition leader made this point tonight. When those sitting opposite say, 'This bill will test the opposition', we know what that means. It means that this bill and this process is designed to wedge the opposition. There's not much thought about our farmers going on there. The Prime Minister's only thoughts are on those who sit on this side.

I said on Radio National this morning that this parliament is not divided into two groups—those who support doing everything we can for our drought-affected farmers and those who do not support doing everything we can for our drought-affected farmers. No, we are not divided on that front. I don't believe there is a member in this parliament, MP or senator, who doesn't support doing everything we possibly can for the producers of our food and flavour in these most difficult times. And I find it offensive, quite frankly, that this Prime Minister and those who sit with him attempt to suggest otherwise.

For the past six years I've been offering bipartisanship in the agriculture sector. It has not always been easy, I have to say, to keep your head down when a government is performing so hopelessly in the portfolio you speak for on the opposition benches. There was a two-year wait for an agriculture white paper that has completely ignored climate change and pretty much ignored drought. I do wonder whether those who are close to that process now are asking themselves whether they made a mistake in not making drought and a change in climate a centrepiece of that agriculture white paper, but they did not.

We weathered the decision to abolish the COAG committee charged with further progressing drought reform. Think about that; the government abolished the COAG committee—the ministerial meeting of the Commonwealth and state agriculture ministers—and they boasted about the saving they made at the time. We waited patiently for the review of the intergovernmental agreement on drought reform—and patient indeed we had to be. We suffered the folly of what is, in part, the centrepiece of the policy position tonight, the bill: the establishment of the Regional Investment Corporation—a boondoggle, a pork-barrelling exercise designed only to shore up votes in Orange, where the National Party lost a state seat for the first time in something like 69 years. The RIC is designed to do only two things: administer some concessional loans for farmers—something that was already being done by state rural adjustment authorities—and administer water infrastructure loans. If you check, it hasn't done too much of that. Now the government wants to us to believe that this bill has integrity because the minister can't do anything unless it's effectively ticked off by the Regional Investment Corporation. At least they've found them something to do, because we know that, on the basis of the loans they've lent, they're not doing much. They're not doing much at all.

Is this really accountability? Think about it. Who appoints the chair and the members of the Regional Investment Corporation? The minister, of course, makes those appointments. So the minister wants us to believe that the way in which the $100 million a year will be spent will have integrity and accountability because it's run by the RIC, the very people the minister appoints. Of course it won't. It's a farce. We had the drought envoy, the drought coordinator, the drought taskforce and the Drought Summit. Now we have a joint select committee looking at drought. I thought we had a joint select committee last parliament on regional Australia which, given the state of the environment now, might have spent some time talking about drought. Does the Prime Minister really need a select committee to tell him, six years into office, what's happening out there and how the government might respond? It bodes the question: why are we doing the policy before the select committee does its work? It's an interesting question in itself.

On a more positive note, I welcomed the change in language from the minister for drought and occasionally from other senior ministers—even the Prime Minister. I stand corrected possibly, but I even thought I heard the Prime Minister, in Dubbo last week, talk about the additional moisture you can hold in soil as a result of an increase in the carbon content of that soil. Wow! If he said that, that is a development. That is something very, very new from this very conservative Prime Minister, who I suspect, in his quiet moments, doesn't really believe that there's any point in a government acting on climate change. Minister Littleproud has been quite expansive in his comments about resilience, adaption, soil health et cetera. Sometimes I listen to him and I think I'm listening to myself from the last parliament. It's not something I would have heard from any minister on that side even a year ago. That's a good development because we do want to work with the government, because our farmers will be best served if we are all working together.

Language is easy; words are cheap. What really matters is action. The six years that have just passed give me no confidence whatsoever that those words will be turned into meaningful action. I have no confidence that they'll seriously start talking about carbon mitigation and I have no confidence they'll continue to talk seriously about climate adaption. I fear that, once this process is put in place, for the next three years they'll say, 'That job is done.' We should never say $100 million is not a lot of money. One hundred million dollars is a lot of money in anybody's language. However, given the scale of the challenge we face with the ongoing drought—the longest, hottest, driest drought we've had in many regions—it will take a lot more money than that. I say to Australians listening: 'Because the Prime Minister has created a fund which is going to give a magic amount of money to farmers—something sufficient to address this problem—don't believe it. It's not true.'

I've been meaning to check the fact today, but I am very confident that if you go back to the 1992 Productivity Commission report you will find some numbers there that show we were spending more money on drought in 2007-08 than the government is spending now. Watch the clever accounting, because this is a government which loves counting the capital value of loans when it talks about what it's spending on drought. When the government borrows at the bond rate and lends money at something greater than the bond rate that is not spending money on drought; that is creating a headline, and that's what this government does consistently—headlines on concessional loans, headlines on the Future Drought Fund and headlines on the Water Infrastructure Development Fund.

In my view, these loans are designed to fail. This government doesn't want those loans taken up, but the headline figure looks really, really good. The minister boasted about the additional transparency and accountability measures that were put in place by the former member for Indi with the support of the opposition benches. What an extraordinary thing to boast about. It is an admission that the original bill was lacking in accountability and transparency, and the minister wants us to pat him on the back for being forced into putting in those additional integrity measures.

There is a long history here. I mentioned that in 2008 there was a historic Productivity Commission review into drought. Then something else more historic happened, all of the states in the Commonwealth, the National Farmer's Federation and the key leadership groups agreed that all the drought measures, which were in place at the time, needed to go. They were inefficient. It was a moral hazard. They were costing lots and lots of money with what it seemed was very little effect. That is a historic agreement. The job of government from that point was to progress and develop a new drought plan. The agreement established six objectives on which that plan should be developed. But, again, soon after their election in 2013, this government abolished the COAG process. It has been restored in a sense now but all those years have been lost. We have to remember that whatever the parliament does this week on this drought bill it is not going to make a jot of difference. Not one bit of help will go to a farmer, not next week, not next month and not even next year. The $100 million drawdown begins in the 2021 period. Goodness knows how long after that the money will be spent.

The plan the minister was talking about tonight should have commenced six years ago. That is a matter of great regret for all of us who sit on this side. And I have no doubt that it is a matter of regret for all who are working the land in this country, who are so adversely affected by the extreme and current drought, which, by the way, sadly, shows no sign of abatement. Sadly, I've not seen any report from any scientist, the BOM or anyone else, which suggests that that's going to change any time soon.

We stand ready to do all that we can to work with the government to catch up and catch up we must because six years is a long time to wait. I do think that we are finally starting to agree that income support for farmers—which has been a farce too under this government, that's incontestable—is important. The accelerated depreciation is important for water efficiency, fodder, storage et cetera—and I do note that the government has done some effective things there, and I welcome that. But the whole basis of our approach has to be on long-term productivity and sustainable profitability, and the basis of that is an acknowledgement that the climate is changing. And instead of wasting time on what is changing it, we've got to mitigate against it and we've got to help our farmers adapt to what is a changed climate.

There will be a lot of work to do helping many farmers change their practices, improve the health of their soil and improve their water efficiency in terms of both soil moisture and storage on farm. We need to do more on research and development. The minister, I'm reliably advised, spent $2.3 million just prior to the election to tell us everything we know about what's wrong with our research, development and innovation system, but here we are, and I've not heard anyone from the government mention it this parliament. It was just $2.3 million to tell us what we already knew about what is wrong with the innovation system, but the silence from that side is deafening. There is a reference in the bill to innovation. Then again, words are cheap. We need action from this government. We've got, as I said, a lot of time to make up now. The action needs to start now. My final message tonight is a reminder that, sadly, there is nothing in this bill that's going to help farmers for the next 12 months and probably a period beyond that.

I move:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

“whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House:

(1) criticises the Government for its failure over six years to develop and implement a comprehensive and effective policy to assist rural and regional communities facing severe drought conditions; and

(2) notes that the inferior response contained in the bill requires the abolition of the Building Australia Fund, which could be used to build road, rail, and other vital infrastructure—including water infrastructure—in these very same rural and regional communities”.

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