Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Hansard source

I was speaking to the bill. I'm now speaking to the amendment. I thank both sides of the House for giving me the five minutes. I'm just asking for the support to be extended. It was two years originally under the ALP. The coalition extended that to four years, and God bless them for that. It needs to be extended to seven years, because the crippling drought is going on unabated in very large sections of central and southern Queensland. I think realistically it should be for seven years, and that's why I have chosen seven years here in moving this amendment.

The only other thing that I must add is that—while I said there's 41 per cent support levels in other countries and we only have a six per cent support level in Australia, and we have the situation with two huge combines controlling the marketplace—the third problem we have is an inflated dollar. Where the rest of the world was under one per cent in their interest rates for nearly a decade, Australia was over three per cent, and that propped our dollar up to artificially high levels. When Paul Keating free-floated the dollar, it went down to 49c, and then he propped it up. He did the right thing and then he did the wrong thing. When Peter Costello came in, he did the right thing and allowed it to free-float, and it went to 51c. Again, he lost his nerve and propped it up. He did the right thing and then did the wrong thing. There is in doubt that the dollar has been held to twice the level that it should be at, and that has been enormously detrimental to farmers.

So, to ride the situation with drought, is it fair that a person on a farm has his whole life destroyed because he can't get a welfare payment? If everyone else is entitled to a welfare payment, why should a farmer be deprived of a welfare payment? So I don't think that welfare payment should be limited to two years or to four years. It is not going to allow him to stay on the farm. Eventually it will be sold out from under him; there's no doubt about that. All we're saying is that humanity should prevail. The farmer should be allowed to feed himself and his kids.

If anyone wants to read a heartbreaking story, 1932, a book by a famous journalist in Australia, describes a family that was sold up in Western Australia. Well, that's happening every day of the week in the dairy area. In probably the biggest dairy area in Australia, the Atherton Tablelands, we had the highest suicide rate in Australia, which was three years after dairy deregulation.

These horrors can be avoided, to a very small degree, with this decision to give farmers welfare payments—and I won't hesitate to use that word; why should everyone else be entitled to welfare but farmers be deprived of it? These are living payments—allowing-to-live payments—and we're asking here that they be extended from the current four years to seven years.

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