John Forrest (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The lifting of exceptional circumstances last Friday by the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Senator Ludwig, has caused enormous uncertainty across my entire electorate. The north-west of Victoria has been in EC for the last five or six years on the basis of severe drought. It has been a substantial drought, not all of it consistently for that long period. In fact, today there is only one small area in the south-west corner, in the West Wimmera Shire, that is not included in EC but the rest is and we are talking about a significant region of Victoria—a third of the state which is now in a state of complete uncertainty because of this announcement. EC due to drought has provided significant household support and interest rate subsidies which have been keeping primary producers—and all the associated businesses—out there in isolated rural Victoria going and has been instrumental in keeping the social and economic fabric of north-west Victoria together as we wait for more prosperous times to return.

Yes, we had thought these more prosperous times had returned with the good spring rains. Back in 2010 the future for grain crops looked very positive and constructive and that created some expectations of much better returns. However, as history has proved time and time again, when a drought breaks the skies open. Unprecedented rainfall since September 2010 has now demonstrated an outcome of exceptional circumstances of the opposite kind to drought, equally debilitating but not drought. I believe the timing of this announcement is completely inappropriate when cyclonic meteorological outcomes of a like never seen in living memory in the arid Mallee region of Victoria are leaving people staggering. We have seen TV scenes and images comparable with those we have seen of tropical Queensland. Who would have credited that an area with a notional average annual rainfall of 250 millimetres per annum would have three times that since September? In fact, on one occasion, on 4 February, the average annual rainfall fell on the Mildura region in less than 12 hours. The resulting financial and economic strain as a result of crop damage and infrastructure damage is enormous and, to be frank, I am struggling to give moral support to my communities to keep them together. So the announcement of this withdrawal of EC support has the most abominable timing. It sends a very bad message to my constituents that they are not important when they see Queenslanders getting so much attention—and, rightly so, they should because they have had to cope with significant climatic change’s dramatic outcomes but so have the people in north-west Victoria.

So I am pleading with the minister and the state government of Victoria to find an alternative way so that, in 28 days, at least 2,000 of my desperate families do not find themselves in a position where their household support is stopped. We have time—we have four weeks—to lodge a new application, whether it is called exceptional circumstances or national disaster relief assistance. No matter what is called, to be frank, it is time my constituents were sent a moral message that this House does care: it cares about their future wellbeing, it appreciates the contribution they make to the nation’s prosperity and GDP and it appreciates that they are very real families who are dealing with real uncertainty. They need an approach from us that shows we understand that their preciousness is important to us.

I make an appeal to the Victorian state government to work with the federal government to come up with a program through national disaster relief that leaves that ongoing support in place and does not leave my constituents in some sort of hiatus where they have incredible uncertainty about their future. I thank you and I hope my message gets heard by the relevant minister.