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

I will be very happy to. So one might have thought that the events I just referred to might have caused the government to pay more attention to the failings of the farm household allowance. I would have thought that the best way to scramble and rebuild some political capital following those events might be to accept that the farm household allowance was broken and to do something about it. Remember: we're talking about 2015—or 2014, if you're talking about the beginning of those events. And here we are today, still fiddling with the farm household allowance.

The opposition will support these changes as they will do no harm and will help a few. But they don't fundamentally change the complexity of the farm household allowance. They basically ignore the bulk of the recommendations of the independent review of the farm household allowance.

Back then, I would have thought that the government might have also paid some attention to what our rural financial counsellors were saying, because what they were telling me was that the system was broken—and, indeed, they've told me that it remains broken until today, because I've met with them in recent months. Surely they were telling government ministers the same thing. So I can only conclude that they were ignored. I can't imagine how happy they were when Minister Littleproud kept telling farmers: 'Go and talk to your rural financial counsellor; they'll fill out the paperwork for you'! Well, that's not their job, and they'll be inundated with farmers who are trying desperately to secure this payment but are unable to do so because of the complexity of the paperwork.

Let's fast forward now to May 2018. Labor was again asking questions in the Senate—still. In May 2018 we were being told up until this point: 'There's nothing wrong with the farm household allowance; nothing to see here'—that it was just fine and that thousands of people were benefiting from it. But by now the minister in the hot seat was conceding—this is in Senate estimates—that there were both new and emerging issues with the farm household allowance. So there we were, in May 2018, with acknowledgements that things were still going bad—and, indeed, that new problems were emerging, as cattlemen, for example, turned off stock. But here we are in July 2019 still fiddling with farm household allowance.

At that point, the Senate committee was inquiring into the then recent review of the intergovernmental agreement on drought reform, the agreement that states and territories entered into with the Commonwealth to progress drought reform right back in 2013. So finally we're having a review into the intergovernmental agreement! It wasn't much talked about—what happened to the vehicle charge with implementing the agreement and further progressing reform; but that is another story.

In estimates in May 2018 Senator Chris Ketter—who was doing a fantastic job, I should say—asked:

Were concerns raised in the review about farming families that have exhausted the Farm Household Allowance and are still facing drought conditions?

Extraordinarily, when Senator Ketter asked that simple question, of whether they were hearing from people who were now being forced off farm household allowance because they'd exhausted the maximum period available to them, the official responded:

I would have to take that on notice. I do not recall them.

Well, that certainly energised the then chair of the Senate committee, the colourful Senator Barry O'Sullivan, who intervened:

I can help you. The answer to that is 'yes'. It is very widespread.

Have a think about that: we had government officials—obviously, with the minister looking over their shoulder—saying, 'No, we've had this big review, but no-one's raised this issue with us,' but we had a member of the LNP, the chair of the committee, completely contradicting that statement and sharing with the committee what we've been saying for a long time, and that is: people continue to have extensive problems with this allowance and the way it has been implemented.

Let's fast forward again, this time to October 2018. By now, the relatively new Prime Minister is like a rabbit in a spotlight. He realises that not only is the drought getting worse but it's becoming clear to most farmers, if not all Australians, that in the period from 2013 to October 2018 this government had not put in place anything adequate to address the pain that drought-affected farmers are going through. What does he do? In the absence of any other ideas, he has a drought summit. Great! Very exciting; a big do down at Old Parliament House, with the usual people invited. We knew in advance what was going to be said, because we fully anticipated people would be trying to tell the government the same thing they had been trying to tell it since 2013—that is, we need a more meaningful approach, and more strategic guidance and an overarching approach, to drought policy. But it didn't really matter, because the Prime Minister didn't wait for the drought summit to convene. That morning, rather than wait for any contribution from any of the participants, he decided to announce the Future Drought Fund, which the minister was just talking about in question time. He also, of course, announced another review of the farm household allowance, which I refer back to.

Now, of course, we've had the debate about the so-called $5 billion drought fund. But we know it's not a plan to spend $5 billion; it's a plan to steal $3.9 billion out of another important fund, the Building Australia Fund, which is there to fund and invest in important road and rail projects, particularly in regional Australia. I won't dwell on it too long—we've had the debate—but we're stealing money from Peter to pay Paul. But that's not where the problem is. The real problem is that the drawdown each year is $100 million. When you think about that, that's a lot of money in any person's language. But in the face of the significant challenge we face, it's a very modest amount of money. Already we see a debate emerging amongst the states and territories, who, of course, all have a full expectation now that they will get their fair share of the money. If you distribute it evenly—not that it would be distributed evenly—you're talking something more like $12 million a year. That raises very significant concerns. We don't know where the $100 million is going to be spent. We don't know how much will be spent in each of the states and territories. We don't know what the money will be spent on. The minister—again, during question time—was crying about transparency and accountability, but they were measures forced upon the government by the House of Representatives and the Senate. In any case, they don't give me any real confidence that, as a result of the passage of the Future Drought Fund, we won't end up seeing yet another pork barrelling exercise.

Six years have been lost. People often say to me, 'What would you do differently?' The problem is you can't claw back six years. You can't fix the damage caused after six years of inertia; that is just something we have to live with. But you can stop the spin, and you can at least start talking and thinking about things which are more meaningful. I've said before in this place that we have seen some change in language from government ministers, and, indeed, a change in language from the Prime Minister. In Dubbo, at the bush summit I referred to, the Prime Minister made mention of the importance of increasing our carbon levels in our soils and the impact that that has on our capacity to retain moisture in those soils. It's not something, I believe, that you would have heard from the now Prime Minister even months ago, let alone a year or two ago. I do welcome the change in language, and I encourage the Prime Minister to continue to challenge his own thinking and to pay more attention to a changing climate, adaptation and mitigation, the encouragement of changing farming practices, acknowledgment that we must increase the carbon levels in our soil and the other organic matter levels in those same soils.

The foundation of any drought policy has to be an acknowledgment that the climate has changed and will probably continue to change. It may be that we're living in what is the new normal, that the continent will continue to have more protracted, hotter and drier spells, which will continue to challenge our agriculture sector. So we must mitigate. We need to put the climate wars behind us and come to a settlement on mitigation.

There will still be some who don't believe that countries in aggregate attempting to mitigate can make a difference. I disagree with those people. But I say to them: embrace the precautionary principle, because if the science gets even more compelling in future years, if that's possible, and the climate continues to change in more adverse ways then it will be too late to turn back the clock. As is the case with the matters we're discussing today, it will be too late to act. We need to act together now. We need to adapt too, doing all those things I was talking about earlier: regenerative agriculture, taking care of our landscape, using our water more efficiently and making sure we address the misallocation of our natural soil and water resources—the list goes on and on.

Of course, water infrastructure will be an important part of that equation. We hear, 'Dams here, dams there, dams everywhere', from this government. We've heard it for six years, but we haven't built a dam. Water infrastructure will be important. In office Labor built them—the Tasmanian Midlands Project being the best example.

It probably also means that there are landholders in this country, who are holding properties that have been marginal for a long time which will move from the marginal column to the unviable column. That's the sad reality of the way in which our landscape is changing, which brings me back to the immediate topic of conversation, the Farm Household Allowance.

One of the things that was made clear in the independent review is that there has not been sufficient emphasis on the adjustment side of Farm Household Allowance. Farm Household Allowance, rightly, is not designed to be a support payment infinitum. Farm Household Allowance is designed to help farmers in trouble over a period of time until either they make the adjustment back to profitability—or survivability at least—or they make a decision to restructure their way out of agriculture. That was the agreement of all the states and territories, the Commonwealth and the key farm leadership in this country back in 2013. Yet all the emphasis on Farm Household Allowance has been: how long are you going to be able to get the payment, how much the payment will be, the bonus—remember the Prime Minister talked about the $2,00 to $6,000 bonuses? Again, it's all about the headline. The independent review makes it clear that the government has dropped the ball on the other side of this very important equation, and that is the way in which the Farm Household Allowance is meant to be a tool to help farmers make other decisions, or, indeed, to help farmers train to do something else, which will secure off-farm income for them.

I was very interested to go to the last rising cattle champions awards. Interestingly, the seven finalists from each of the states and the Northern Territory—young people—all had secondary sources of income. They were all heavily engaged in agriculture but all had secondary sources of income, and for many small- to medium-sized players that may be an increasing trend in the agriculture sector. The farm household allowance needed to be used to help people find their way to other forms of income yet there seems to be no emphasis on that despite the recommendations of the independent review.

In its rawest form the review made about six recommendations. The permanent rise to $5 million for the asset test was one of them, and I welcome that the government has picked up on that recommendation, but it made other important recommendations as well and I've seen no sign that the government is planning to pick those up other than the statements recently made by the Prime Minister at the Bush Summit in Dubbo. It's more than passing strange that the Prime Minister has to use the Bush Summit to say that they're still thinking about some of the others. Surely this independent review has been with us long enough—the consultations took place in October last year—for the government to either accept or reject the other recommendations of that independent review. Why it hasn't done so I don't know. I don't know whether they want to drag things out so they can keep making piecemeal announcements in the absence of a larger strategic plan.

I close by saying that I hope the Future Drought Fund is spent wisely. It will be an inadequate amount in the face of the challenge we face in this country—it could have been funded out of appropriations, as we offered to support—but there is an opportunity here to change the direction, to help entities change their farming practices, to lift productivity, which has been flatlining for a decade now, and to establish greater levels of sustainable profitability. On that basis we extend bipartisan support once again, as always. The opposition has supported every drought measure put forward by this government. They would argue that we voted against the drought fund in the House during the last parliament but that doesn't suggest at all that we ultimately wouldn't have been forced to support the fund. We were still seeking to make improvements to that fund.

The fact of history is that the government never ever put the drought fund to the Senate prior to the last election. All these claims that we somehow delayed the drought fund are just untrue. We did no such thing. The government was in control of the legislative timetable. They brought it to the House when they wanted to bring it to the House. They could have easily put it to the Senate prior to the election but for whatever reasons—not political gamesmanship, I hope—they chose not to. I think the drought fund is a sad part of our history now. I think we could have worked together to do this thing much better, but in opposition we continue to support every measure this government takes to assist our drought affected farmers. Farmers in some areas are now facing the worst drought in the history of the nation. The drought fund may give them some assistance beyond 12 months time. Everyone in this House knows that farmers can't wait 12 months or more for assistance; they need assistance now and they should be getting that assistance now. I thank the House.

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