Damian Drum (Nicholls, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I look forward to these amendments to the Farm Household Support Amendment (Relief Measures) Bill (No. 2) 2019 that have been put forward by the government in relation to the farm household allowance making its way through the parliament. These amendments are further refinements of farm household allowance and effectively come in four sets of amendments. The first of those sets is to provide a rate of farm household allowance that is not varied by a person's income, effectively making it so that if you are eligible for one dollar then you are eligible for the full amount. The second is to simplify the asset test and effectively take onboard the value that many farmers have—the value of their water—and make sure that it doesn't preclude farmers from having access to farm household allowance.

A series of ministerial rules have been prescribed against somebody who is set to receive farm household allowance. Again, that financial assessment will not be pushing people away from the farm household support that they are currently eligible for. And the fourth set of amendments is simply to strengthen the management approach to better support farm household allowance recipients through periods of financial difficulty, with an amount to $10,000 to extend the amount of activity supplement to include travel and accommodation costs for eligible activities, provided that the costs are reasonable as determined by the secretary.

The member for Hunter has effectively taken every opportunity to complain and whinge and bellyache about the changes that we continually bring to this place in relation to the worsening of the drought. Quite simply, that is exactly the way I think a responsible government should treat this worsening drought. If the drought starts to bite, the government starts to act. If the drought persists, the government pushes harder. If the drought continues to bite, even harder, the government goes away and comes back with a new set of support mechanisms that are going to enable their farmers to work their way through the drought. The drought bites differently in different regions, so the government reacts with different proposals in each of those different regions. Many of these drought assistances are simply rolled out through regulations, through a grant program. Other support mechanisms need to be put through the House as changes to legislation.

I also want to pull up the member for Hunter, because he spent an awfully large amount of his 30 minutes talking about those farming families who are going to be coming off farm household allowance, as they have reached the four-year maximum. He was effectively telling the House, telling Australia, that those farmers are going to have to wait until the middle of next year. I will take this opportunity to say that the member for Hunter is wrong.

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