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

I begin my contribution by formally moving the second reading amendment which has been distributed in my name. 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 criticises the Government on its failed record in assisting drought affected farmers'

I rise to speak to the Farm Household Support Amendment (Relief Measures) Bill (No. 1) 2020. I can indicate, as does the second reading amendment, that Labor will be supporting the bill. I think this is the 14th bill since the introduction of the farm household allowance in 2014. That doesn't just mean the government has amended the legislation 14 times. There have been many more amendments than that, because of course each bill contains more than one amendment.

This time around the government is seeking to improve the bill from the perspective of farmers by removing the provisions enabling the reconciliation of income over the period for farmers. Basically it is so that if their income was higher than anticipated in that fiscal year, so it created an overpayment, they wouldn't have to repay that money. Labor supports that proposition, although I do note there are many on this side of the House who often become a little bit bewildered by the flexibility of the farm household allowance in so many areas that isn't available to other welfare recipients. I would like to make that point on behalf of a number of my colleagues here who might not be in a position to speak to this bill today. With each of the 14 bills and the original bill, we've consistently supported both the establishment of and changes to the farm household allowance. It is not just for farmers in drought but rather for farmers in any sort of hardship. Since its introduction, it has grown to be seen—as you would expect—as a measure to help farmers in drought.

I've been highly critical of the allowance since 2014. It has been the subject of much controversy in this place, including right back in about 2015, when the then minister, the member for New England, gave an incorrect answer in this place—one he still has not corrected, by the way—and then proceeded to cover his mislead by doctoring the Hansard. It was an event which triggered some horrible events in this town, including the sacking of the then secretary of the Department of Agriculture, a highly qualified, effective and respected public servant. So the farm household allowance has a chequered history.

It's now known as the payment that is very hard to get—the payment that is very hard to qualify for, despite all the changes made in this place. It is a payment well known for its very lengthy application form and the difficulty people face in negotiating that form. Most of all, it's now known as the payment farmers are cut from after receiving the payment for four years. And they continue to be cut from that payment. It must be up to 2,000 farming families by now, I suspect—I don't have any updated figures—that have been cut from the payment, despite the fact that they are still facing hardship and despite the fact that many of them, despite welcome torrential rains, remain very much in drought.

I lament the fact that the government hasn't agreed to change that and allow people who are still in drought to continue to receive the payment for as long as that is the case. These changes will be welcomed by some farmers, but they pale into insignificance when compared to what really needs to be done, and that is for the government to step in and stop cutting off drought-affected farming families, desperate families, from this payment.

I want to share a couple of quotes with the House. The first is from Adam Marshall, who is the minister for agriculture in New South Wales. He's referring to Minister Littleproud and his performance on drought. He says:

I've had a gutful of him mouthing off all of the time. He flies in on his big aeroplane out to regions like Inverell in my electorate, offers nothing, blames everyone, hops back on his plane and flies somewhere else.

I share that quote with the House because I think it's so typical of the performance of this government on the drought front over the course of the last six years. I very vividly remember, in February 2014, the then Prime Minister Tony Abbott going on a two-day drought tour. Ironically, it rained cats and dogs while he was visiting outback Queensland. What's interesting about that is that, since then, we've had a number of drought tours by various prime ministers and various ministers. In addition to that, of course, we've had the National Drought Summit, the Joint Agency Drought Taskforce, the Special Envoy for Drought Assistance and Recovery, the Coordinator-General for Drought and the National Drought and Flood Agency, but what we haven't had and continue not to have is a national, coordinated, comprehensive drought plan, something we should've had now for at least the last few years. The government, by then, certainly had the time to put in place what the COAG committee SCoPI had envisaged when the Intergovernmental Agreement on National Drought Program Reform was signed in 2013.

That plan, agreed by all the states, the Commonwealth, the National Farmers Federation and, I think, pretty much every farm organisation in the country, was to conclude that the old exceptional-circumstances measures weren't working and that we needed to start from scratch. SCoPI, a body that Tony Abbott and the member for New England abolished after the 2013 election, was charged with progressing the development of the new model. And, after all of this time, there is no model. We still have a grab bag of measures, the value of which has been massively overestimated by this government. We were highly critical of the government when it claimed it was spending $7 billion on drought assistance. Nothing could be further from the truth. And now those opposite say they are spending $8 billion. I challenge the minister at the table, when he sums up on this bill, to demonstrate to me—I won't even challenge him to demonstrate how they got to the $7 billion; I'm going to make it easy for him this evening and simply challenge him to show the House and farmers listening to this debate how he got from $7 billion to $8 billion.

But I will just quickly say this: going back to the period when the government was claiming $7 billion, we know with great certainty that $5 billion of that is the Future Drought Fund. The Future Drought Fund does not have $5 billion in it. It has $3.9 billion in it, but that doesn't mean there is $3.9 billion available for drought affected farmers. What will be available, sometime in the future, is a $100 million annual dividend from that fund and, because the dividend is lower than the earnings on the fund, it will grow to $5 billion. But it is totally and comprehensively misleading to count $5 billion as a contribution to the assistance being provided to drought affected farmers. It's just deceitful to count that $5 billion. And even the $100 million each year won't begin to be drawn down until after 30 June this year—not one cent of that will go to farmers. That's not what it's designed to do. It's designed to be invested in new and innovative programs to build drought resilience. The government has made that quite clear. I have no problem with that as a principle. We do need to be investing in drought resilience, but the government should not be claiming that $5 billion is going to farmers when clearly it is not, when clearly not one cent of that—when it grows to $5 billion, which it will not do for a number of years—will go to farmers. Sure, sometime in the future, if the $100 million each year is spent effectively, farmers might benefit from the innovation which flows from the fund in the out years, but it is misleading to suggest that farmers are now benefitting from that $5 billion fund.

RIC loans, Regional Investment Corporation loans: $1 billion. We are already at $6 billion. Everyone in this place knows that it is also deceitful to take the capital value of the loans, if let, if provided to farmers, remembering that they won't always be taken up by farmers. In fact, we know historically that the take-up rate has been very poor. But, even if they were all taken up by farmers, the cost to the government is not a billion dollars; the cost to the government is the administrative cost and whatever it is between the bond rate—that is, the government's borrowing rate—and what they lend the loans at. You could argue that, if the government is lending at one per cent or two per cent, which is higher than the bond rate, then the government is technically making money. So there is $6 billion straightaway that the government should not be claiming as drought assistance. This money is not going to farmers.

There are a whole range of expenditure measures, like the Joint Agency Drought Taskforce: $5.6 million. Do members really think that any farmer, adversely affected by drought, is benefitting from that $5.6 million? The Country Women's Association of Australia: $5 million. We all love our Country Women's Association; they do wonderful work and have done so for many decades—maybe more than a century. But we saw just this week the CWA heavily criticising the government for its latest little rort, expecting them to be handing out $500 vouchers at country shows to farmers. What sort of process is that? It's a wrong process and one which was called out by the Country Women's Association.

Bureau of Meteorology radars: $77.2 million. They're likely to be something that is going to help our farmers, but this is an investment by government which is necessary anyway. Surely the government's not trying to claim in this place that the only reason it's spending $77 million on BOM radars is the drought. That just doesn't make any sense. This would have been something in the capital program for a long, long time, I would expect.

The National Water Infrastructure Development Fund—we know all the problems with that. The DCP, Drought Communities Program extension: $116 million. We know how farcical that has been. While councils which have been able to qualify for the million dollars have welcomed it, we all know it's hardly making a big difference in those communities. We all know that a million dollars into a council's coffers will bring one capital program forward, maybe, but is not likely to create much economic activity in those communities.

This is massively inflated, and the minister continues to come to this dispatch box every day and claim that $8 billion figure. I don't know who he thinks he's talking to, or, more particularly, who he thinks he's misleading, because the farmers who rely most on the assistance know it's not true. They say to me all the time, 'Well, if he's spending $8 billion, where is it? Because I'm not seeing any of it.'

I want to return to the Future Drought Fund, because the Future Drought Fund was announced by the Prime Minister in October of 2018 at the now infamous drought summit. Why do I call it 'infamous'? Because everything that came from the drought summit, or the substantial things that came from the drought summit, were announced before the drought summit began that morning. That was 'Scotty from marketing' in full flight—a drought summit just for the six o'clock news that night. He turned up that morning, did a doorstop on the way in and announced the outcome of the summit before it even began. That was in October 2018. Here we are still contemplating, hopefully, $100 million coming from what he calls a $5 billion fund sometime after July this year. But one can't have a great deal of confidence that we're going to see much action soon after that.

I don't want to be critical of the advisory consultative committee doing the work for the government. It's headed by a friend of mine, Brent Finlay, the former chair of the NFF. I'm certainly sure he's consulting everywhere and doing a great job. But I just wonder whether he thinks, in his quieter times when he's alone, any of this money will ever be seen flowing to any worthwhile programs. What we've got now is we're inching towards a draft plan. Then, after a draft plan, we'll move to some funding programs, and then we will move to the budget processes, where the government, despite all the alleged rigour of the plan and the funding programs, will move to make some decisions about where the money is spent.

Given the recent performance of the government, whether it be sports programs or infrastructure programs, it's hard to have any confidence that those programs will be robust, well targeted and designed to produce the greatest return for that $100 million investment. I hope I am proven wrong, but I have very little confidence, given the government's record in the past—its ad hoc approach to drought funding more generally and the likelihood that that will be repeated the next time around.

On that same note, talking about funds to build resilience, the minister regularly likes to crow about the stewardship program. Some way back he made an announcement that it would spend $34 million on a stewardship program. This is, in effect, designed to do the same things that the drought fund is designed to do with its $100 million. But, alas, we haven't seen much action from that either. Now we have the National Farmers Federation being given $4 million to trial the scheme. Since the government announced that $4 million to the National Farmers Federation to help it along with its cashflow, I've not heard a thing. Maybe I've missed it. Maybe the trial is well in advance. I invite the minister, when he sums up the bill, to tell me that I'm wrong if I am wrong and, if I am wrong, to give me some detail about how that $4 million—it's a lot of money to a farming organisation—is being spent, because I suspect that not much is happening with that at all.

This is getting interesting now because this, of course, takes us to the debate of the week, and that is the opposition's pledge to aspire to zero net emissions by 2050. That is something that's been pilloried by members in this House. Zero net emissions for the agriculture sector is absolutely about resilience. The NFF, in its 2030 Roadmap, talks about the $40 billion that might be available to the land sector if we can put in place an architecture which allows them to participate in the carbon economy.

The government says that Labor's plans will hurt the farm sector. No—they will be of assistance, properly designed, to the ag sector, and of course to the forestry sector. We desperately need trees in the ground in this country, and the best way to get trees into the ground is to incentivise the private sector to plant those trees. And, since the devastating bushfires of this summer, that's something that is needed more now than ever before.

Some of the things that need to be done are so simple, like the changes to the water rule, which was put in place in a way which effectively knocked out those seeking to plant softwood timber, because the carbon credit is only available to them effectively if they're planting in places where it doesn't rain sufficiently to grow the trees. That could be fixed tomorrow with one stroke of the legislative pen, but this government is unprepared to do it. In fact, Minister Littleproud, during the election campaign, when I committed the Labor Party to doing it, described it as 'reckless'. So, again, I invite the minister to respond to that when he gets to his feet.

But the NFF is saying it. Meat and Livestock Australia is saying it. The grains industry is saying it. They're all saying, right across the ag sector, that there are amazing opportunities for the sector. In fact, the NFF says that participation in the carbon economy will lift productivity and profitability. That's what they're saying. They are saying they have an ambition to be well advanced to zero net emissions by 2030. Yet the government says that the Labor Party, by embracing an ambition of zero net emissions by 2050, is going to 'kill' the agriculture sector. Well, they should hang their heads in shame because it's not true. The sector knows it. We know it. And I suspect the majority of producers and growers know it too. But they will continue to weaponise climate change as an issue because they see economic advantage in doing so.

That takes me to my second quote, which is from Niall Blair. I quoted earlier from Adam Marshall, the previous minister in New South Wales. Now I am quoting from Niall Blair, the person he replaced. He is now Professor Niall Blair at Charles Sturt University. This is his area of expertise. And he's very honest, because he told Fairfax papers, today, this:

Farming is hard enough and becoming harder with more droughts, severe storms and unreliable weather patterns. Ultimately, this will have an impact—

on the food security of our nation. He goes on:

A net zero emissions future—

in Australia—

provides nothing but opportunities—

nothing but opportunities, he says, for our farmers. And, with 30 years to get there, they are ready, willing and able. Those opposite might say: 'Niall Blair doesn't speak for farmers.' But I know he has got a deep background in the sector. I know he has been their minister. I know he knows a lot of them. So it's a pretty courageous contribution to come to this dispatch box or to stand in this place and to say that Niall Blair doesn't know what farmers are thinking.

So, rather than making farmers feel less secure by barking in this place, every day, that a policy construction is going to 'kill' them, the minister at the table and his colleagues, those on the benches on the other side, should be going to their farm communities and saying: 'We want to work with the Labor Party on this. We think there are opportunities in this. You shouldn't be worried about this because this is going to be good for you.' And why wouldn't they be prepared to say that? The New South Wales Premier, Gladys Berejiklian, is saying it. Every state and territory leader is saying it. The National Farmers Federation is saying it. Meat and Livestock Australia is saying it. The grains industry was saying it just today in the Western Australian papers. The BCA and Santos, BP, BHP—they're all saying it. Those last three companies I named aren't saying it specifically as to the agriculture sector, although I am sure they'd believe it, but they are saying it's good for the economy. It's good for our natural environment, but it's good for our economy and jobs. So it shouldn't be so hard for those opposite to recognise that the majority of the community wants us to act on our natural environment. They want us to address the challenges of a changing climate, but they want us to do it in a way that doesn't do harm to our economy or to local jobs. We can give them that guarantee, but, no, those opposite don't want to do that. They see political opportunity. They have been weaponising this issue for political gain for up to two decades.

The great tragedy is that if the legislative architecture put in place by the Gillard government was still in place, we wouldn't even know it, except for the fact that farmers would have been taking advantage of that carbon economy for the past 10 years. We wouldn't even know it was there. It was the case that for the six years we were in office greenhouse gas emissions were falling. In the six years since we lost government, greenhouse gas emissions have been rising until recently, when they flatlined—more from luck than from any work of this government. If we had kept Labor's legislative architecture, we would have been applauded when we went to global forums. We would have been seen as the leaders on this front. And to those who are not doing enough, those who are not meeting their Paris commitments—or worse, those who have withdrawn from Paris—we would have been able to say, with great credibility, 'You need to do more,' and acknowledging that only by acting as a collective globally can we make a real difference. We can't say that now. We can't go to those international forums and tell people they need to do more. How can we when we are not doing anything ourselves? In recent years, our carbon emissions have been growing not falling—although now they are, at best, flatlining. People at those international forums all know that our current Prime Minister is intent on using Kyoto credits to fudge his figures. They think that's an outrage, and so they should.

Just like the country's coalminers, who will not be adversely affected by whatever Labor produces in the fullness of time, our farmers do not need to fear the aspiration of zero net emissions. Indeed, there is opportunity for them here. We've had six years of dithering, six years of inaction, six years of committee after committee, review after review, summit after summit, a drought summit, a bush summit, a drought coordinator, a drought envoy—we've had it all—and now we've got a drought minister. But we haven't seen any results—it has all been fluff—and the symbol of it all is an $8 billion figure that is simply untrue. The minister, when he summarises, will want to get up and defend that $8 billion. He needs to explain to the Australian people how it is credible to claim it—the money would be very, very welcome—but he won't be able to do so.

I close my contribution by appealing to those who sit opposite to stop weaponising the issue of climate change, to come with the majority of the parliament in reaching a political settlement on these issues and, for the first time, make a genuine commitment to making a difference. For the first time, commit to meeting the commitments Malcolm Turnbull made on our behalf in Paris—not the Labor Party, but Malcolm Turnbull. Start being honest with the Australian people by first admitting you're not spending $8 billion on drought and then by admitting you have been completely incompetent in your response to the drought. Tell farmers that they will not be disadvantaged but in fact advantaged by zero net emissions by 2050.

Most important of all, tell your constituency that the climate wars are over, that you're tired of weaponising this issue; rather, for the first time, you've come to the conclusion that it's time to do something meaningful—to work in a bipartisan manner so that we can produce some architecture that will be overwhelmingly beneficial to our natural environment and, just as importantly, overwhelmingly beneficial to all of the Australian community, including those who work in the agriculture sector, those who work in the forestry sector and those who work in the fisheries sector. It doesn't always seem obvious, but the fisheries sector is dramatically impacted by drought and it is dramatically impacted by the terrible bushfires we have had over this summer.

It's time for those opposite to end the political games and to work in the interest of the Australian community.

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