Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I begin my contribution this afternoon by acknowledging the severity of the drought our country currently faces, which is experienced by not only our farmers and their families but also the rural communities that rely so heavily on the health of the farming sector. When our farming income is down then the local economy is also down. If ever there were an issue in the parliament on which we should be taking a bipartisan approach, this is it. I'm not suggesting that this speech will be particularly bipartisan, because we seem to be somewhat beyond that, but with the departure of the member for New England I believe there is still an opportunity for us to regroup and approach drought on a bipartisan basis.

Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That's very good to hear, Member for Hunter.

Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is all right to extend sympathy to our farming families, which I do tonight on behalf of the opposition, but they need much more than sympathy; they need a parliament and a government working for them, making the real and meaningful responses to drought that can take us well and truly into the future in a way that offers them confidence. Whatever those policies look like, they need to be underpinned by the basic acceptance that drought in our country should no longer be treated as abnormal event, something which will come along occasionally and which, hopefully, won't last too long, and that, rather, our climate is changing—and neither this evening nor the course of this policy debate is the time to argue about what is causing the change; that is for another day—in a way which is making it far more difficult for our farming communities. We need to recognise that is unlikely to change; it's the new normal. We need to accept that protracted drought will be with us again and again, part of our climate on a permanent basis, and approach the policy with those fundamentals in mind.

I am still not sure why the Prime Minister recently had a drought tour. I would've thought that, after five years in government and at least seven years of drought, he might've understood the drought and what we as a parliament should be doing about it. More surprisingly, he didn't come back from the drought tour with a policy announcement. I accept that prime ministers look for a photo opportunity when parts of our community are facing natural disasters, but they usually do that ahead of a policy announcement, and on the Prime Minister's return, disappointingly, he offered no such thing.

The fact that we are debating this Farm Household Support Amendment Bill 2018 this evening poses four key questions for me. First of all, what has happened in drought policy over the last 10 years? I think that's worth sharing with the House. Second, why are we debating this bill before the House now in June 2018? Third, what does the future hold for drought policy in this country? That's something I've already touched on. Fourth, what are the government's policy priorities, and how do the agriculture, forestry and fisheries sectors rate in the government's considerations?

Ten years ago now, back in 2008, Commonwealth and state governments started to reflect upon the history of drought policy in this country and its failings. In 2013 something quite historic took place: the Commonwealth and each of the states and territories agreed to a whole new approach to drought policy and entered into an intergovernmental agreement which will have lasted five years, coming to an end 1 July this year, only days away. A number of principles were embraced within that agreement. I should say that agreement had the support of key farm leadership groups like the National Farmers' Federation, and within this parliament it had bipartisan support. It was agreed, with the helping hand and guidance of a Productivity Commission report, that the way we were doing drought policy in this place was failing our farmers, our economy, our communities and indeed, of course, the budget. We were spending a billion dollars a year on a number of initiatives which usually fall under the umbrella of exceptional circumstances. They were costing us a billion dollars a year. A considerable proportion of farming families, as the Productivity Commission indicated, have been on the welfare payment for many, many years—too many years. Of course, the Productivity Commission identified the fact that many of our farm businesses hadn't made a profit for many years, and it was clear that the drought policies that were in place were not working and were failing our farmers, our communities and our economies.

So the states and the Commonwealth said, 'Let's try a new approach,' and the agreement was underpinned by a number of principles. I want to share them with the House. There are five of them. The first was to assist farm families and primary producers to adapt to and prepare for the impacts of increased climate variability. The second was to encourage farm families and primary producers to adopt self-reliant approaches to manage business risks. The third was to ensure families in hardship have access to a support payment that recognises the special circumstances of a farmer, and that's the principle which is leading us to this debate tonight. The fifth was to provide a framework for jurisdictions' responses during periods of drought. I missed the fourth; I'm sorry, Mr Deputy Speaker. It was to ensure that social support services are accessible to farm families. So they are the principles that underpin the intergovernmental agreement which comes to an end on 1 July this year.

Of course, the governments—plural, because it commenced under the former Labor government—moved pretty quickly to establish farm household allowance as one of those key principles. Farm household allowance, for those who don't know this area well, is basically an unemployment benefit for farmers. It comes with a more generous or liberal assets test, because obviously farmers can be very cash poor in times of hardship—not necessarily just drought—but still be quite asset rich and unable, of course, to readily pass off those assets. So we need a welfare payment. I think the welfare payment is an important part of the equation, and farm household allowance represents that welfare payment.

Importantly, the COAG discussion included an embrace of the idea that the welfare payment should not be ongoing ad infinitum. The concept is really that farmers should get income support for a period of time—three years was chosen—and in that time they should be expected, with some government support and guidance, to make themselves more resilient and more adaptable, to embrace new business models, maybe to get other off-farm income or maybe to leave the land, if that's absolutely necessary and they conclude that that's the only option available to them.

What brings us to the debate tonight is the fact that a couple of thousand farming families have now reached the end of their three-year entitlement to farm household allowance, and the government is now seeking to extend it by one year for those who are already on it or have just left farm household allowance because their time has expired—and, indeed, for those who are coming onto it. I need to make clear to the House that, for new entrants on the farm household allowance, the period will now be four years, not three—thus the considerable impact on the budget bottom line. It's not just existing farmers; there will be future farmers as well.

The problem with all of that is that the work simply hasn't been done along the way. We've lost five years, basically. The first act of the member for New England when he became the minister was actually to abolish the COAG process. The whole concept of the IGA relied upon the idea of greater collaboration between the Commonwealth and the states. It's true that, as the mainland managers, under our Constitution the states have to be part of the equation; they have to be part of the solution. There was an entity called the Standing Council on Primary Industries, which dealt with these matters under the umbrella of COAG. SCoPI, the Standing Council on Primary Industries, was not only the ministers meeting but also the committee on which the secretaries were represented. It was the role of that COAG committee to continue to progress the next stages of that drought reform plan.

That was then pulled away. Under pressure, it was eventually replaced with a thing called AGMIN—that is, the ag ministers group—which didn't have anything like the construction, secretarial support or resourcing that the Standing Council on Primary Industries had. I'll never understand why SCoPI was abolished, but it was a great mistake by this government. It was a decision authorised by no less than the Prime Minister of the day. It is something the current Prime Minister hasn't sought to turn around; he should turn it around. If we're going to have any hope of producing real and meaningful drought policy in this place, we need a COAG process and we need it very quickly. We've seen other areas of government policy where we've been let down by the diminution of the COAG process.

What we have had over the last five years is an increasing reliance on concessional loans. It was a former Labor government that first went down the path of concessional loans for our farmers. At that time, it was not because of drought but because of high indebtedness. That was the major issue of the day. I still believe that, in the higher interest rate environment at that time, there was a role for concessional loans, but this government has fallen into the trap of offering concessional loans for just about any hill any business ever faces: Northern Australia infrastructure loans, concessional loans to farmers—and the list goes on and on. But, as a drought response, the reality is that more debt or switching debt is simply not a solution or an option for many farmers. It entails challenging your relationship with the bank. We've learnt time and time again in this place that it means going through a terrible number of hoops in terms of paperwork during the application process. It is very, very difficult.

We've had this over-reliance on concessional loans, and of course the concessional loans have allowed the government to spruik the capital value of the land. We read in the Agricultural competitiveness white paper the government's $4 billion investment. It is a failed document; I think there's a general consensus in the sector on that now. It's $4 billion because that would be the total capital value of all the loans if they were all lent out. Of course, that's not the cost to the budget bottom line. The cost of the budget bottom line is the cost of administering the loans and any bad debts. We need to look at the difference between the government's bond-borrowing rate and the interest rate of the loans. The cost to government is not great. The government has become very fond of these loans because it doesn't cost the budget bottom line and it allows them to spruik that larger amounts of money are going to our farmers. It's a sleight of hand, it's not an approach which is conducive to bipartisanship in this place and it's certainly not a way of helping our farmers.

By way of completeness, I acknowledge that the government has improved the farm management deposit scheme in recent years. That's a good thing. It's a very wise policy to allow people to put money away in good times for use in bad times and to use the taxation system to make that attractive. We should continue to make that a key centrepiece of drought policy. The government has also done a little bit of work around capital depreciation—that is, accelerated depreciation for certain infrastructure projects on-farm, whether it be water or otherwise. The problem is that accelerated depreciation is no good to someone who's not making a profit. You have to spend the money in the first place but if you're suffering a very bad drought then you're not likely to have the money to invest.

That takes me to the Regional Investment Corporation. The government is so fond of these loans that it's now going to establish the so-called Regional Investment Corporation in Orange. Why Orange? I think you know the answer to that: because that's where the Nationals lost a state seat for the first time in 69 years, and the best way to grab it back from the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party might be to run a little boondoggle or pork-barrelling exercise out to Orange. The problem with the Regional Investment Corporation—

Mr Broad interjecting—

I acknowledge that the member for Mallee would have liked to have had the Regional Investment Corporation, but I will put his mind at rest by saying, 'Don't worry; I don't think the Regional Investment Corporation will ever eventuate.' I don't think we're going to have a regional investment corporation. I've already mentioned 1 July, which is supposed to be day that the Regional Investment Corporation opens its doors and starts making farmers right around the country happy and gives a huge boost to our national economy. Everywhere Mr Littleproud goes, no matter what the problem in the agricultural sector, he says, 'Don't worry; you're going to have the Regional Investment Corporation.'

Well, that isn't happening. There won't be any doors opening in Orange on 1 July—at the end of this week or whenever that is—because the Regional Investment Corporation has no real objective, no CEO and no staff. It doesn't even have a location, let alone a building. In fact, the board turned up in Orange I think for the first time last week. There is a board. The minister has appointed a board, and they met in a park. We had the APVMA team, small as it is, meeting at Macca's in Armidale, in the electorate of New England.

Mr Broad interjecting—

I'll pick up the member for Mallee's interjections—no reflection on Macca's; it's a good choice. Their coffee's not too bad. But we have the APVMA CEO holding her business in Macca's in Armidale and now we have the RIC board meeting on a park bench in Orange. This is a disgrace. It should stop and it should stop now. The new minister should walk away from the antics of the former minister and just say: 'This is enough. This is not working. This is $28 million of money which could go to drought-affected farmers tomorrow.' That would be a better use of the money.

What is the RIC going to do if ever it opens, unlikely as that is? It's going to do the same thing the states are already doing through their rural adjustment authorities: it's going to administer concessional loans to farmers, but only new loans. We'll have a situation where the states will continue to administer old loans for up to 10 years and the Regional Investment Corporation will administer new loans. This is just silly. It's a duplication and an unnecessary one. The minister will say, 'The states weren't doing a very good job of it.' Well, I challenge that, but a good minister would work with the states, bring them in and say: 'I'm not completely happy with the way these loans are being administered. Let's do it better.' That's what a minister showing leadership would do, but it's certainly not what this minister is doing. I should say that the RIC is allegedly also going to administer some water infrastructure loans. We shall see.

While I think of it, 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 notes the Turnbull Government's failure to provide timely and effective legislative amendments to support Australia's farmers and agricultural industries".

I'm sure the member for Griffith will be happy to second that for me.

Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Preventing Family Violence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Quite right!

Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The APVMA is a shocking pork-barrelling exercise that threatens our farming community. It's already destroying productivity in the farming community. The Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority is a critical part of our farm economy and makes sure not only that farmers get their crop sprays and other chemicals and veterinary medicines that they need but also that they get them in a timely way—when new products are offered to the market, they get to the market very quickly. This forced relocation to Armidale is destroying the joint. Staff have left in a mass exodus, and it's impacting on the entity's capacity to do its job. I'll make a bet now: in the not-too-distant future the new minister, finally, will be making big changes. He will be revisiting the general policy order and saying, 'We are going to extend the time available to the APVMA to make this work,' but, more importantly, they will be changing it in a way that will allow more people to stay here in Canberra to work. In the not-too-distant future this government will be admitting that the APVMA relocation has been a failure. They will be left with no choice but to pretend they're having a relocation to Armidale, but in fact a large number of staff will be working here in Canberra, because they cannot find the personnel—the expert lawyers and the regulatory scientists—they need to do that work.

I challenge Minister Littleproud: he should just run up the white flag now and differentiate himself from the former minister and say: 'We're not going to waste $50 million or more on this relocation to Armidale. We're not going to undermine the productivity of our farmers. We're not going to threaten consumer health, because we eat the stuff that those sprays are used on and we want to make sure the regulator is up to the job. And we're not going to undermine our exports, because the APVMA plays a role in that regulatory regime, as well. We're not going to do that. We're going to gut this idea, forget the pork barrel and bring the APVMA back to Canberra, where it absolutely belongs.'

In posing my question—why are we debating this bill now?—I've touched on the history. People have already gone off the farm household allowance. They have exhausted their entitlement and here we are, in the last sitting fortnight, rushing a bill through the parliament to create this extension. We are still very unclear about what hoops people will have to go through who have already come off the farm household allowance. I invite the minister to explain that further to us when he makes his closing remarks. Is it going to be as hard as it was for people when they first went on the farm household allowance? Remember the member for New England saying: 'Oh, they don't have to apply or wait; they just get it.' That is the statement that led to the doctoring of his Hansard and subsequently the dismissal of his departmental secretary—one of the darkest periods of our history in this place. Why are we debating a bill that needs to be given effect basically from 1 July—this week? The government couldn't work out a month, two months or six months ago that in the absence of any other policy work in the last five years they're going to have to extend the farm household allowance? They had to wait until now? This is just incredible. Was it the drought tour that convinced the Prime Minister that he needed to extend the farm household allowance by a year? Surely not. I hope not, because that was just obvious to all and sundry.

What does the future hold for drought policy in this country? This is an interesting question. Something very curious happened in the Federation Chamber last night. I welcome the fact that during the week of the Prime Minister's infamous drought tour the relatively new Minister for Agriculture and Water started talking about climate, recognising the things I was saying earlier about accepting drought as not an abnormal event. He talked about resilience, he talked about adaptation and he talked about the challenge for some people in some parts of the country that were capable of being farmed 100 years ago and are not so capable of being farmed today. He was using all the right language. But the member for Calare had a motion on drought last night in which he mentioned none of those things. Interestingly, the member for New England contributed to that debate and, again, mentioned none of those things. I'm glad the member for Mallee is here, because he did. He understands this subject pretty well, in my view, and I'll give credit where credit is due. But who's in charge? Is the former member for New England still in charge of drought policy? He's still in denial, still wanting to roll out the boondoggles and defend his legacy. Or is the new minister in charge, backed by people like the member for Mallee? I hope it's the new minister, and I wish the member for Mallee the best in that regard, because we do need to get this job done. We need to embrace the intergovernmental agreement review. We need to rebuild the SCoPI process and construction, because that's the first step.

The other question I posed was on government priorities. Remember when agriculture was one of this government's five pillars of the economy? They hardly talk about the agriculture sector anymore. The member for New England was very fond of claiming credit when commodity prices were high and everything was good, but, now we have a crisis in all sorts of places, including the dairy industry, no-one wants to talk about agriculture anymore.

Let's have a look at the legislative agenda. The Agricultural and Veterinary Chemicals Legislation Amendment (Operational Efficiency) Bill 2017 was introduced into this House on 25 October last year. This bill enjoys bipartisan support. It has disappeared. The Export Control Bill 2017, a very important bill, was introduced into the Senate on 7 December last year. It hasn't been prioritised and has disappeared. It's an important bill which enjoys bipartisan support. The Biosecurity Legislation Amendment (Miscellaneous Measures) Bill 2018, another very important bill, was introduced into the House on 28 March last year. It is still in the House. It was introduced and has disappeared. The penalties for breaches of animal welfare standards in the live export trade were introduced on 24 May, never to be seen again. We know the reason for the last one: I foreshadowed an amendment, and the government won't bring the bill back, because it's fearful of people crossing the floor and of losing the vote.

How does this reflect on the government's priorities for agriculture? They won't even bring bipartisan bills into the House for debate and to be voted upon. They won't even put these bills on the legislative agenda. I don't have time to go through them tonight, but these are important bills. The department of agriculture is spending a very large slice of its time and resources trying to work out how to make the APVMA work in Armidale and the Regional Investment Corporation work in Orange, when it should be focusing on these very important and meaningful matters that affect our agricultural sector.

When the former minister was here, we heard about dams which were unproven, uneconomic and will never come to reality, and silly stunts around carp eradication. I said so many times that he was the worst agriculture minister in the history of Federation. That's in the past. I want the new minister to step forward and demonstrate that he's prepared to take the agriculture portfolio seriously. It's not just agriculture; they wiped fisheries and forestry out of the portfolio title—another silly mistake. We don't hear the new minister talk about fisheries or forestry. I know Senator Ruston does work in that area, but people want to hear their lead minister talk about these issues.

For five years a crisis has been looming in forestry because of our failure to grow the plantation estate, and what have we had in response? We've had an issues paper, which was eventually turned into a discussion paper and, last year, by no less than the Prime Minister himself, turned into a plan to have a plan—and we're still waiting for the plan. For five years we've known about the problem and have had nothing but discussion papers, the formation of committees et cetera. It's not good enough.

The opposition will be supporting this bill because, in the absence of any real progress on national drought reform for five years, we've no choice now but to further help farmers who haven't made that transition and haven't been given appropriate guidance or support by the government. Farmers will need another year, but what happens after that? Surely we'll be back here next year asking ourselves the same question if this government is not prepared to get serious about rebuilding the COAG process and about real collaboration with the states. Mr Littleproud has said it, but we want to see him walk the talk. They need to be serious about embracing the concept that the climate is changing and the change is here to stay. It has to be about resilience and adaptation. We have to help people find new business models, retrain and, sadly for some, acknowledge that they might not have an ongoing concern, because of a severely changing climate.

Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the amendment seconded?

Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Preventing Family Violence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the amendment and reserve my right to speak.

Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this, the honourable member for Hunter has moved as an amendment that all words after 'that' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. If it suits the House, I will state the question in the form 'that the amendment be agreed to'. The question is now that the amendment be agreed to.

Andrew Broad (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In rising to speak on the Farm Household Support Amendment Bill 2018, can I respectfully ask that the member for Hunter hang around for a few minutes—hopefully, he does. I sat here and listened for half an hour and, like a good opposition spokesman for agriculture, he did his best to dismantle the federal government's position on what it's going to do. But, also like a good opposition spokesman for agriculture, he forgot to talk about what he was going to do.

The extension of farm household support is less than 12 months; I was hoping for a little more. Member for Hunter, it wasn't until 24 minutes into your contribution on the bill that you actually started to mention what you might do, and I thought: 'I'm excited. There's going to be an alternate position—finally.' I actually believe that the member for Hunter can do it. He's probably the first Labor member that I've seen who genuinely has a real passion for the portfolio, and that's really welcome. He's got a genuine interest. I hope he hangs around, because I'm going to talk a little less about the politics and a little more about drought policy.

In my maiden speech, I gave a recognition that successive parliaments over many, many years hadn't developed a good drought policy—and we probably still haven't, if we're honest with ourselves. The fact is that we live in a country that is going to experience significant rainfall at times; it is also going to experience significant dry times. It is right for the member for Hunter to talk about climate, because there is no doubt that we're having more challenging climatic conditions around our agricultural sector. If you're a believer in climate change—some of my farmers are and some of my farmers aren't—you will at least adhere to the concept that rainfall seems to be more sporadic and that, when rain does come, the downpours are heavier, which means that we need greater intervention, particularly around water catchments. There is a good argument for dams as a result of climate change.

I want to talk about a number of things that have been good and then touch on some things that would be significant improvements. I think farm household support is a basic. It's not rocket science. If we have a family that is not working and is living in a poor suburb in one of our towns, we make sure that they've got groceries on the table. If you've got a farming business that might have a large amount of assets but then, even though they're having a go, because of the seasonal conditions they are in difficulty, it's only fair that they also have groceries on the table. It is nice that drought support is being extended for a fourth year. I wonder whether it should even be indefinite. What we simply want to say is that, if you're having a dip, we're going to ensure that you're able to feed your children and that you're able to put shoes on their feet and uniforms on their backs so that they can go to school. So it does surprise me that this support even had a three-year cut-off.

Of course, what we want is farm businesses to be profitable, sound and not to have to rely on farm household support—and many of them are. The farm management deposit has been a good system. I point out that we have legislated so that a farm management deposit can be used against an existing loan. That has been taken up by Rural Bank. It's the only bank in Australia that has taken it up. That would be a very simple way of at least making those farm managements more attractive and more competitive in the interest rate component.

I think we also need to be very mindful of time of entry. That's something we haven't got our head around. I bought my first farm when I was 22 years old. In the drought of 2002, when I harvested my crop—and, for those who are interested in grain growing, when you sow wheat, you sow it at about two bushels an acre, so about 60 kilograms an acre—my harvest was 30 kilograms an acre. I got less than half back. I remember that, when I was a young farmer, my wife was working, and, even though she was only earning $33,000 at the time, because she earned over $25,000 we weren't eligible for drought assistance—none at all. I remember getting the letter saying that I wasn't eligible. I got it and I nailed it to the shearing shed wall and said, 'I'll show you who's viable!' Anyway, we made a go of it. But I think that time of entry is incredibly important because, if you're going to support farmers through a difficult time, what you want at the other end of it, when the rains start falling again, is young farmers to be able to kick off and go, because they're the ones who are going to drive our productivity gains, they're the ones who are going to take up the new technology and they're the ones who are going to drive the exports for the nation. So, whatever we do, we have to think about time of entry for drought assistance.

The other thing that I think is working is the seasonal insurance model. This requires better forecasting. It requires a good network of Doppler weather radar. Essentially, what we're seeing across my farming sector now is that people will work out: what is the input cost of growing a crop? I'll just go on a per-acre basis, to put it in layman's terms—even though we talk in hectares, a lot of the country in my area is laid out in mile-square blocks, which are 640 acres. It essentially costs you about $30 or $40, up to $50, an acre to put in a crop by the time you write out your cheques for your fertiliser, write out your cheques for your chemicals and write out cheques for your fuel, your scarifier points and all those sorts of things. We are able now to access insurance products that will cover the costs of your inputs if you have a year that's a complete wipe-out. Say for example that, to put in 2,000 acres of crop, you would have needed $200,000 worth of inputs. You're able to insure those products at less than $10 an acre—so it's reasonably competitive—so that, if you get a lack of growing-season rainfall between June and September, you'll get a payout for that.

I just want to point out why this is important. If you as a farmer start to develop a drought package in your own business, you'll say, 'I'm going to take this insurance product so that, if it doesn't rain, at least I've got enough money to put the crop in next year.' That's tick one. You'll also try to get your farm management deposit to equal what the interest component is on your loan. If you talk to any bank, most banks will roll you over another year as long as you've got the capacity to cover your interest. If you set up your business so you've got your interest component covered through your farm management deposit and you take out the insurance product so that you've got the input costs, it means that, okay, in a drought year you've made nothing, but you haven't gone backwards. You couple that with farm household support, so you've still got food on the kitchen table, and I think you start to look at a package that fundamentally works.

Those are the things that I think we need to perhaps create greater incentives. Also, we need to be mindful that farmers will look, in their own farming system, at ways of developing a drought assistance package. That might be that they'll be putting in additional storage, so they'll put two years of grain aside so they've always got seed to plant. They might put a feedlot on to value-add. I think we need to be very cognisant of and open to accelerated depreciation packages when a farmer is saying, 'I'm doing this part of my business so that I can drive some productivity.'

Ultimately, I would like to see the government having a good discussion with some of the big insurers. I'll just run through this because this is something that I looked at as a farm business at one stage. At one stage I looked at leasing 6,000 acres in Saskatchewan, in Canada, and farming over there. People ask, 'Why would you do that?' The logical answer was: because you get the northern hemispherical risk with the southern hemispherical risk in your grain growing. Not many farmers can look at how they can do that productively in their own business. However, what we're seeing now with companies such as QBE and big insurance companies is that, if you look at like-for-like countries—and the clear ones would be Canada and Australia—you could develop an insurance product that is local but also has a reinsurance component by a company such as QBE, and you could actually get a global insurance company. Their input in that would bring the premium prices down quite substantially. There is some really quite practical stuff that we can be doing in insurance products, in assistance to farmers and in assistance through drought.

Can I touch on one of the other things that were substantially beneficial for me as a farmer throughout the drought of 2002 and the drought of 2006, 2007 and 2008—the hat-trick drought, as I call it. I remember my father, who had farmed all his life, said: 'You only ever get in our area one drought in a row; you never get two. Always the second year is a good year.' That theory was blown in 2006, 2007 and 2008. It's very humbling to have worked as hard as you can physically work and at the end of three years realise that if you'd done nothing for three years you would have actually had a better life and made more money.

The one thing that has helped us has been the opening up of markets. I think this is something we need to be very careful about, and it is something this place actually can benefit from. I'll give an example of that. In 2002, even though we had fairly skinny sheep, we were still able to sell those sheep for up to $100 a head. In 1992 we were shooting sheep. You couldn't give them away. People say, 'What is the difference?' The difference is this: in 1992 Australia was exporting sheepmeat to 12 countries, and in 2002 we were exporting sheepmeat to 96 countries. So opening up market opportunities is perhaps one of the most important things this place can do to build resilience in our farming sector. Ultimately, the greater utilisation of that carcass—with hearts and livers and bits and pieces out of the carcasses being airlifted across to the Middle East—put an underlying floor in the prices that farmers could get. If you looked to the mixed farming area that I was in, the one thing that sustained them through the drought years was that at least one part of their commodity was getting very good prices. We talk about farm household assistance; we talk about insurance products; we talk about accelerated depreciation for infrastructure on farm; and we talk about things that can be done in the way of loans and those sorts of things, but that factor of opening up markets must always be well stated.

The other thing that we've substantially done—and it has been the role of government to assist this—has been building major water pipeline infrastructure projects. In my patch is the largest pipeline system in the world. People may not be aware of that. The Wimmera Mallee Pipeline was from a combination of the Victorian Labor government and the federal government. You can actually go to nearly every paddock across a third of the state of Victoria, and every paddock's got a tap on it and you can turn the water on. We've got two more projects we want to get funded: the East Grampians pipeline and the Mitiamo pipeline. We're funding the Loddon pipeline at the moment, with $20 million from the federal government and a contribution of $40 million from the Victorian Labor government. Those things have been very interesting because, call it climate change or call it what you will, we are seeing that areas that used to run a lot of livestock and that rely on catchment dams—where, essentially, it would rain and the water would wash into the dams—have had dam evaporation rates higher than they have had and less ability to hold water than they have had. So the ability to run poly pipe for hundreds and hundreds of kilometres has revolutionised the farming systems. It's opened up opportunities for BASF, formally Bayer, with a research facility in Horsham, which is the only canola genetics research facility in the Southern Hemisphere. It's opened up intensive animal husbandry such as Luv-a-Duck, which is processing 90,000 ducks a day. It's opened up opportunities for feedlotting lambs. It has been a substantial thing.

If you want to look at policies that can address drought communities, they are a combination of water infrastructure, trade policies and getting the settings right around loans, farm management deposits and insurance products. I just want to touch on one other issue that's also very relevant to this policy, and it's something that worked reasonably well in 2002 and in 2006, 2007 and 2008, and that has been assistance with rates. One of the things we've always found when it is dry is that the capacity for a farmer to pay their rates has been substantially diminished. Farmers pay a large burden of the rates in our country shires. Some of those rates can be $10,000, $20,000 or $30,000. There have been rate subsidies of 50 per cent which have also been a significant help. Those rates subsidies not only helped the farmers but also helped the rural community, because they meant that the shire had money coming in. If there's one thing we have learnt when it comes to dealing with drought, it is that you also have to remember that there's a rural community that has to have money stimulating it.

There's much to be done in the drought space. There's more leadership to be had. There are many good ideas out there that we can learn from other parts of the world. But this is something that we must tackle, because if there's one thing we know about Australia it is that it is raining sometimes and it is dry sometimes and it will always be that way.

Meryl Swanson (Paterson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Have you heard the news today—news of the continued fighting in the Turnbull government's cabinet over the National Energy Guarantee; news that the former Prime Minister, the member for Warringah, will cross the floor on this issue if he doesn't get his way; news about the Turnbull government's incessant campaign to lock in massive corporate tax cuts for business? We could wind back the calendar a day, a week or a month and revisit the headlines and see this pattern ad nauseam, a pattern where an out-of-touch government puts its political priorities ahead of the interests of ordinary Australians, a pattern where the government is increasingly paralysed by party room dysfunction, a pattern where the Prime Minister's grasp on the leadership becomes more tenuous with each and every Newspoll.

Meanwhile, the people of Australia couldn't really give a toss about most of it. To be frank, they're fed up. They are fed up with the government's obsession with itself, at the expense of all Australians, and fed up with a government that seems to want to serve the top end of town while the rest of us hang out and hang on, desperate to try to pay for clothes and shoes for our children and desperate to try to pay the ever-increasing energy bills. They really just want some leadership and policies.

Nothing could be closer to this than this bill on farm household support. I'm glad that the government has decided to support our farming families and extend the farm household allowance by one year, from three to a maximum of four cumulative years. But I ask why this has taken so long. I spoke in the chamber yesterday about my anger that it has taken Prime Ministers Turnbull and Abbott and agriculture ministers Joyce and Littleproud an unacceptable and indeed unforgiveable amount of time to act on this. I spoke about the great hardships that have been experienced by farming families in my electorate of Paterson for many months. Vegetable farmers were unable to grow crops due to hot and arid conditions, tanks were bone dry and salinity levels in the depleted rivers made irrigation impossible. Beef farmers were forced to handfeed and spend exorbitant amounts of time and money on water cartage to prevent stock deaths due to dehydration. The livelihood of our milk producers in my electorate was further threatened by the unavailability of water, which made sanitation of their dairies almost impossible and really incredibly difficult. Carefully crafted bloodlines of really prized animals were unceremoniously sent to market or to the slaughterhouse because it was financially impossible for farmers to keep them alive.

I remind the honourable members opposite that this situation did not suddenly spring up at the beginning of the month when the Prime Minister decided to conduct the whistlestop selfie tour of the big dry. We have properties and communities in New South Wales and Queensland that have been paralysed by drought for the last seven years. So, while my colleagues and I on this side of the House do not decline to give the Farm Household Support Amendment Bill 2018 a second reading, there are some points that really do need to be made and called out on.

I support the member for Hunter's call for an amendment to the motion that notes the Turnbull government's failure to provide timely and effective legislative amendments to support Australia's farming families and, more broadly, the agricultural sector, because this faffing around is nothing new from this Prime Minister and the cohort he has around him. The Turnbull government has a penchant for selectively pursuing legislation that promotes its political agenda at the expense of everything else. Time and time again, the people of Australia are left waiting for this government to govern.

In my electorate of Paterson, where the community of Williamtown is ground zero in Australia's PFAS contamination nightmare, my constituents have been pleading for nigh on three years for this Prime Minister and the members of his cabinet to do something—to publish their anticipated report, to honour their avowed commitments to release their promised policy and to offer a pathway out of the living nightmare my constituents have been trapped inside since 4 September 2015. Yes, there are critical matters that this government could turn its attention towards. But no; far too much energy is spent pandering to the bloke who's going to throw his toys out of the pram if he doesn't get his way or pandering to the pork-barrelling former minister feathering his own electorate nest. This government has had years to put in place a structure that would have helped these farmers, right now, to make a living. It could have provided advice and support for those who aim to droughtproof their operations over the long term. It could have helped farming families make that difficult call about whether they can or cannot make a quid out of farming, given the changed market conditions and ever more volatile climatic extremes, and it could have offered pathways and retraining for people who choose to leave the land. The government could have used the SCoPI process to put these supports in place. It could have done this some time ago and it did not, and that is a disgrace. And now our farming families are meant to rejoice that the government has seen fit to extend household assistance for a further 12 months. Yes, it is something but, as I said yesterday, it's nowhere near enough. It's a small sticking plaster on a gaping wound.

Our farming families are an important part of Australia's agricultural landscape and the fabric of our nation. Elsewhere in our agricultural sector we have primary producers and those who rely on them stuck in limbo waiting for the government to act. My electorate of Paterson is home to beef farmers, dairy farmers, fishers, prawners and oyster growers. They work incredibly hard, and times have been tough. I've spoken before in the House to share the plight of my constituents, who suffered through the driest season in 80 years—stock farmers who were forced to sell or face exorbitant hand-feeding costs. Even water came at a premium in terms of both time and cartage, and, if the tanks weren't dry, as I mentioned earlier, the salinity levels in the river were as high as some farmers had ever seen them. Vegetable farmers just watched entire crops fail.

In the face of the uncontrollable challenges of climate and weather, we owe it to our farming families to appropriately support their industry and, in turn, their livelihoods. We should be turning our brightest agricultural minds to this and saying, 'How can we make this better for those people who work so hard every day and who really have been the best in the world?' It is completely unacceptable that the Turnbull government continues to fail Australian farmers and agricultural industries through legislative delays. Right now, Prime Minister Turnbull and the members opposite have amassed quite a stockpile of outstanding bills while they attempt to ram home their own agenda. This is patently not good enough. The people of Australia are looking to Prime Minister Turnbull and his government to do precisely that: govern in the interests of those who saw fit to elect them. Instead they wait and they wait and they wait some more. I might just add that I find it particularly disappointing that members of the National Party always talk about being agrarian socialists, say that they just want to do the best by the bush, and say that they want to support the agricultural sectors—well, I think that they've put their hands up and stood on the wrong side of the House in many votes and particularly—

Meryl Swanson (Paterson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will take that interjection: perhaps you are, but we could do with some more of those. The Turnbull government has made a considered choice to prioritise parliamentary business ahead of our farmers and agricultural industries. It seems to find all the time and press releases and media opportunities in the world to promote the corporate tax cuts for big business, yet this parliament is headed for a six-week-long break at the end of this sitting, and critical legislation will need to wait until August to be even considered—such as the Agricultural and Veterinary Chemicals Legislation Amendment (Operational Efficiency) Bill, also known as agvet chemicals legislation.

This innocuous-sounding piece of legislation is actually tied up with the infamous APVMA, the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority, where we saw the member for New England relocate a government authority to his own electorate in a case of blatant pork-barrelling. The agvet bill involves minor amendments, mostly technical, that should assist with streamlining APVMA operations. But it should be no surprise that, after the debacle of its forced relocation, APVMA is now on life support—its current financial position is reportedly untenable, as is its technological infrastructure. So not only are industry stakeholders waiting to have the agvet bill passed; the Prime Minister has decided that APVMA is in need of a governance board, which, of course, will require an amendment to the bill in the Senate. What does that mean for our constituents? It actually means more waiting, because a former minister of the Turnbull government put his own interests ahead of the country's.

There are a number of other examples of this government prioritising its political game-playing ahead of our farmers and the agricultural industry. There was the decision to pull the Export Legislation Amendment (Live-stock) Bill, and the Export Control Bill has been lost in transit since it was briefly debated in the Senate earlier this year. And, in a matter very much in the interests of my constituents in Paterson, there is the Biosecurity Legislation Amendment (Miscellaneous Measures) Bill 2018.

I first met Sue and Rob Hamilton when their family prawning operation was shut down in 2015 when the RAAF Base Williamtown PFAS scandal broke out. That's right: we had professional prawners whose businesses were closed. The Hamiltons and other commercial fishers working Tilligerry Creek and Fullerton Cove were stripped of their livelihoods when it was discovered that firefighting chemicals PFOS and PFOA had leeched from the base into the waterways of our community. This is an absolute reality. Fishing bans lasted 12 months. This took a toll on many families like the Hamiltons and other fishers in Paterson. The Hamiltons battled through, however, and returned to the water and their industry.

Sue contacted me again in October last year to raise her concerns about the prevalence of white spot syndrome, a virus that is imported in green prawns. Importation of the prawns had been suspended following an outbreak of the virus in commercial prawn farms in Queensland and then around the wild prawns in Logan River and Moreton Bay. It had spread. Sue reached out to me after the then Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources, the member for New England, Barnaby Joyce, lifted the suspension on the importation of green prawns into Australia. Sue was concerned because white spot is a massive deal. It leads to a highly lethal and contagious viral infection. Outbreaks have been known to wipe out the entire populations of prawn farms in days. The virus is not dangerous to humans and it is killed when the prawn is cooked, but the Aussie tradition of putting a green prawn on a hook and throwing a line in puts our waterways and our seafood industry at risk. Sue and her husband, Rob, still reeling from the year-long PFAS shutdown of their family business, were incensed by the biosecurity issues that remained in play even after the importation ban was lifted. And it's no wonder: the situation was and is nonsensical.

As a matter of fact, the failings highlighted by Sue and Rob were exposed in 2016, two years ago, and legislation to shore up those biosecurity failings and breaches is still yet to pass this parliament. We have a precedent where imported prawns infected Australian wild prawns and prawn farms. The Australian wild prawning areas and prawn farms were slapped with a ban. Meanwhile, the ban on the very source of white spot, the imported green prawns, was lifted. In what universe does that make sense?

We must have a system that is able to respond quickly to biosecurity failings and breaches. This is why the government must prioritise legislation that will strengthen our biosecurity system. This bill was introduced into the House in March this year and received Labor's support. That was three months ago, and that's a lot of water under the bridge—metaphorically and literally.

Three months, however, pales in comparison to the length of time our farming families have waited for the government to take any meaningful action towards long-term drought reform. More than four years ago, Labor supported the government's Farm Household Support Bill. This was the product of a 2013 Standing Committee on Primary Industries—otherwise known as SCoPI—meeting which continued to commit to the previous Labor government's commitment to provide a new, nationally agreed approach to drought. It's now 2018. The intergovernmental agreement on drought reform, of which farm household support is part, will expire on 1 July this year. That is literally days away, yet our farming families wait for a plan that is fit for the future. The Prime Minister and his colleagues must park their self-interests and put the ordinary folk of Australia ahead of the select few at the top end of town. We must insist that this government that seems increasingly out of touch put the interests of ordinary Australians front and centre.

Damian Drum (Murray, National Party, Assistant Minister to the Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's always fun to follow on from Labor when they're talking about agriculture and water issues. We're talking about drought through New South Wales and Queensland. It's a very serious issue. If Labor had their way, they'd have a man-made drought. They'd follow the Greens down the path of handing all the water in the Murray-Darling Basin back to the environment. They'd have a water crisis in the Goulburn Valley. They'd have a water crisis throughout the Murrumbidgee. They'd have a water crisis down throughout the lower reaches of the Murray River. They'd have a water crisis made by politicians. They'd have a water crisis that's fake. They would inflict that pain gladly on the people down the Murray-Darling Basin just by carrying out their policies—their policies that they are very proud of when they come into this House. In relation to looking after our farmers throughout the Goulburn Valley, we spend most of our time fighting Labor and their ridiculous stance on water policy. So it's a bit tough when we have the Labor Party come in and want to lecture us about how we should be doing more for our farmers when their own policies would see many of our farmers unable to carry on the farming practices that they have done for two, three or four generations—ever since we've had irrigation throughout the Goulburn Valley and the Goulburn region.

This support package, the Farm Household Support Amendment Bill 2018, is critically important. I was able to see firsthand how important this sort of assistance package is during the milk crisis that took place in the early months of 2016, when Murray Goulburn announced that it was going to drastically cut the price of milk. It was quickly followed by Fonterra and many of the other processors. Not only did they cut their prices for milk into the future but they then requested this ridiculous clawback where they wanted the money that farmers had, in their opinion, been overpaid. They wanted tens of thousands and, in many cases, hundreds of thousands of dollars repaid to the processors. This put so many of the dairy farmers throughout the Goulburn Valley and Victoria in an incredibly tough position. With the little that they were being paid for milk in those months, it was virtually impossible for them to process milk for the cost that they were able to sell the milk. This put them in a ridiculously tough position. Many of them were forced to park their cattle in different locations where they didn't have to rely on irrigation water. They had to take the charity of hay that was brought down from other parts of the nation to assist them with their feed. More than anything, they simply had to plough on. They had to get out of bed at 4.30 or five o'clock in the morning, milk the cows in the morning and milk them again in the evening, knowing that they were financially going backwards all the time to the tune of many thousands of dollars per week.

I must acknowledge the previous Leader of the Nationals Barnaby Joyce on his role during that milk crisis. He went immediately down to the Goulburn Valley to talk to and meet with the dairy farmers, the milk producers and the processors. He was there to immediately offer this support with the farm household allowance and to immediately offer low-interest loans, which were picked up. Yes, there were problems with the extent of the forms that needed to be filled out. But, when you think about the many hundreds of thousands of dollars of commercial loans that the government was effectively taking over, offering security for those properties was a very complex issue. We were able to act and to try to put in some assistance for many of these farmers during these very stressful times.

It's an issue that gets lost often when we're talking about these times of drought and the milk crisis, where production costs rise above the farm gate milk prices. The traditional farmer in that situation is under an enormous amount of stress and financial pressure, and mental health becomes a very important issue that needs to be dealt with very carefully. This is where, again, the counsellors from rural finance come in—mediation counsellors and people who are able to help with the financial restructuring and to help the farmers fill out many of these applications.

The big message that we were telling our farmers was: 'Do not self-assess. Make sure you get the help that you need so that you can have independent people come in and look at your books and your business and, in relation to other pieces of off-farm income that may have been coming into the household, see whether or not you are able to access part or all of the just under $2,000 per couple per month at the maximum.' Effectively, just in the area of the farm household support, that is putting about $23,000 to $24,000 per year on the table for those families. When you read that in conjunction with access to a low-interest loan—again, the former minister was able to make these low-interest loans available for up to half of your loan—we found that many people were taking advantage of that as well, and the combined saving was somewhere in the vicinity of $50,000. This is a fantastic opportunity for government to help those farming businesses that have the capacity to see their way through this to a fruitful future in the following years, and that's the way it has been.

The dairy industry now has improved markedly. There are still many farmers out there that are really doing it tough, and there is no set model of a dairy farmer at the moment. If someone were to ask you, 'How's dairy going at the moment?' you can't really answer that question, because the models within the dairy farming structures are so diverse and so different. If a farmer in the Goulburn Valley owns their own water, that's an enormous benefit, an enormous plus. Obviously the debt profile of the various farmers makes a huge difference. Their ability to produce their own hay and feed also makes a very big difference to the economic viability of our farmers. All of these factors swirling around together will somehow or other give you a profile as to how our dairy farmers are going. As I said, they are just so diverse and so different. It is very difficult.

But this bill is now going to show the benefits of this farmer support package. The benefits to these households are going to be extended for another 12 months, and it's a fantastic thing that the Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources, David Littleproud, has been able to push through. As I said just recently, the right thing to do for the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Assistant Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment, Mark Coulton, along with the Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources, David Littleproud, was to tour those outback regions of New South Wales and Queensland to make sure that they see firsthand what seven years of below-average rainfall has meant for those areas from northern Victoria up into Queensland.

I have been speaking to quite a few farmers about farm household support and farm household allowance recently, and I just want to quote one farmer who spoke to me just recently and said:

As a farmer directly impacted by the Murray Goulburn Milk price drop in April 2016, the effects have been long lasting. The impacts on cash flow have been long and unrelenting.

Being able to access the Farm Household Allowance during this time has provided some breathing space and peace of mind knowing that assistance with reduced cash flows; you can put food on the table each week and provide the essentials for your family, while you attempt to rebuild your business.

Our assigned case manager has been very supportive through the process over the past 2 years in assessing our situation, providing guidance and developing a plan for the future.

This is the part that often gets left behind. Yes, we are helping initially with farm household support by putting some cash on the table to help pay for groceries, for school fees and the essential bills. We are helping out in the medium to longer term also with the low-interest loans that can be worked into a business to take up to 50 per cent of outstanding loans. The case managers from Rural Finance are put in the business as well to give them the support they need with counselling. They have that financial acumen introduced into the farming business as well to see where their future lies. In the message I received that was hugely appreciated.

It is great when you come into this place and see these genuine benefits. We're helping these people and making a real difference. This is a practical situation. We are making a difference to these people who are in a very tough position at the moment. They needed this support. Some of these three-year periods of drought are coming to an end. Now it's going to be extended for a further 12 months. This, along with farm management deposits, gives us an opportunity to help people get themselves through really tough times.

This is something we in the National Party are really supportive of. It's fantastic that many people have seen the worst of the dairy crisis and are now working through it and can see a bright future. There are still many others who, with their water costs and debt profile, are in a very precarious situation. It would be a good thing if they could produce milk at a price below what they are paid for it. Certainly the 830-odd farmers who were assisted through the dairy crisis have been very appreciative. Hopefully, this is something that they will look back on and say: 'Thank goodness the government of the day understood what was needed and were able to move quickly and give us the assistance they gave us so that we got through the very toughest of times. They put counselling around us so that we could in a calm and measured way assess our future and either exit the industry with assets intact or push ahead and create a more promising future.'

I commend this bill to the House. I certainly hope that these measures are there for the next crisis, because we know that when you live in Australia you are always going to have crises when it comes to farming practices.

Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

At the beginning of my remarks on the Farm Household Support Amendment Bill 2018 I want to correct the record on something that the member for Murray said in relation to Labor's approach to the Murray-Darling Basin and our history on reaching a bipartisan approach to the management of the Murray-Darling. It was a former Labor government that ended the water wars, the dispute between the states, and that brought the states together and actually implemented the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. You can tell that the member for Murray didn't actually live in the electorate of Murray during the water wars and the crisis, because he would have remembered that the Murray was actually dry. Farmers didn't actually have access to the water he stood up and said that Labor stole from his farmers. We all accept that he was involved in football and was off playing or coaching AFL, but he shouldn't stand up here and mislead the House and say that it was Labor who stole the water off the farmers during that millennium drought when there was no water. The Murray was dry. It was that crisis that triggered Labor to work with the states to reach a bipartisan position to end the water wars and restore the health of the Murray.

The health of the Murray is critical to farmers. We know that. We understand that. Labor continue to work with agricultural industries and communities on ensuring that: the next generation of farmers, and the generation after, have access to water for agriculture over the long term; our environment has the water it needs to regenerate; all states have their fair share; and, most importantly, the Murray-Darling system is healthy.

That's not the only area where the government is failing agriculture and our farmers. They've become known as the government that likes to talk, to meet and to tinker around the edges. They're also a government that likes to smash things and blow things up in some ways, and we've seen that countless times from this government in agriculture. In the area of labour this government is failing to ensure farmers have not just a seasonal workforce but a skilled workforce, ready to plant and harvest crops in the regions, so that the agricultural industry continues to be viable.

Labour is one of the big issues raised with me by farm organisations throughout this country. Only this afternoon I met with Voice of Horticulture, who are furious and frustrated with this government for its failure to crack down on migrant worker exploitation and, more importantly, close existing tax loopholes that allow these dodgy firms to thrive. We talked about the need to restrict access to ABNs. This is part of Labor Party policy. If we stopped international students and backpackers from accessing ABNs then they would be less likely to be exploited or to start a labour-hire business and exploit other people here on temporary arrangements. It's becoming less rare that Voice of Horticulture stand side by side with Labor on a policy announcement, yet nobody in the government says that is possible to do or believes there is a need to do it.

When it comes to labour, the government is also failing to ensure our TAFEs in the regions have courses that meet the needs of farmers and the agricultural industry. TAFEs throughout the regions have been gutted. That has been driven by the massive funding cuts state and federal Liberal governments have imposed on the vocational education and training sector. That has left a skills gap in the regions, and more and more farmers in our agricultural industry are looking to 457 visa holders and backpackers to fill those gaps. They say to me on a regular basis that, if a local were available, they would hire a local. They want people to live and work in the regions, but local workers simply don't have the skills to do so. That is such a shame when we look at the youth unemployment rate, which is at 19 or 20 per cent in some of these regional areas. We have the young people; we just need to give them the skills and the opportunities and to match them to existing farming and agricultural jobs.

This government is also failing to support farmers and the agricultural sector when it comes to innovation. A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to meet with strawberry farmers in South-East Queensland who, off their own bat, have decided to introduce tabletop strawberry farming, where it's off the ground. They're among the first to do this in Australia. That means they're using fewer chemicals to keep pests off their crops. It also means that, because they are now off the ground, they are more water efficient and have higher yields.

If you're in Coles and see Taste 'N See strawberries, pick them up, because they are an example of innovation within the strawberry industry. This government did nothing to support them in doing that. These growers, knowing that there would be a change in the chemicals that they could use, got in front. They wanted to increase their yield, but they knew that the quality of their soil was such that it would really start to diminish the returns on their crops. They had to go to the banks and argue for finance to introduce this new capital, this new farming technology—and they're glad they did so. They're hoping to get a return on that capital. They're also employers. As farmers, they directly employ all of their staff. That's another reason why you should buy their strawberries. They are not alone when it comes to saying that too often this government is looking backwards, sticking on bandaids, only moving a few steps forward, being reactionary and not out there driving the innovation, the productivity and the investment in our agricultural industries.

When it comes to exports, this government is failing. For all of its championing of the free trade agreement—oops, it forgot about the non-tariff barriers, which are killing our agricultural industries when it comes to exports. It doesn't matter whether it's wine, which is a big part of my world, or it's our horticultural produce or it's our red-meat exports, non-tariff barriers are blocking our ability to expand export markets and therefore expand farm gate prices.

This government is also failing farmers and agricultural industries when it comes to climate change. Our farmers recognise that our climate is changing. You hear every day and you learn every day about the amazing innovative projects that our farmers are embracing in a whole range of areas to improve their productivity and water efficiency to adapt to climate change. Whether it be greater use of the NBN and mobile technology or it be improving their cropping and crop rotations, our farmers get that the climate is changing. They want to continue to be productive and profitable on the land, and so they want to see innovation, partnership, coordination and leadership from the government in this space.

The reason why I mention climate change is that it is linked to drought. This is where we get to talk about how this government has spectacularly failed on drought mitigation and drought reform. Under Labor, there was an approach through COAG where we brought the states together to say that we need to start investing and delivering long-term drought policy. We said: 'Let's actually do the research. Let's actually look at what we are farming. How can we farm better? How can we droughtproof our industries going forward? How can we mitigate the effects of drought?' When this government came into office, it did a classic thing and abolished that entire approach. It has not been picked up since Labor was last in government. It is not being dealt with. In fact, the government has just shelved it. People in the government don't even believe in climate change, let alone believe in tackling the effects that climate change is having on drought.

When it comes to the farm household assistance legislation before us, the government is, as with so many approaches that it takes, literally just tinkering at the edges. I remember when this legislation was first introduced. We used to have a rural financial counselling service in my electorate of Bendigo—before this government abolished it and sacked all of those people—and, shortly after this legislation was introduced, they came to me and said: 'We're meeting with farmers, and they're really frustrated because they're not meeting the criteria. The criteria are too rigid, and they're struggling to get the paperwork forms approved by Centrelink in the period of time before they would have to start the paperwork all over again.' It took many of them almost 12 months to get access to the loans. All of us might remember how the minister at the time had to come in here and correct his answer, and then he corrected the Hansard, because of comments that he had made in relation to this. It is an issue where the government has really dropped the ball. Yes, I'm sure farmers will welcome an extra year when it comes to the farm household support; however, it's not enough. It's not a long-term solution. It's not an ongoing solution. It doesn't really work with people to resolve the broader problems and challenges that we're facing in horticulture, in agriculture and in our farming industries.

The previous speaker and other members have spoken about concessional loans. I've never met a farmer yet who wants to take on more debt if they're drowning in debt. Most of them are saying, 'We've got to do better than this.' Farmers who are doing well, who innovate, might be willing to risk extra debt because they can see light at the end of the tunnel. But, if you're already drowning under a mountain of debt and if you've already got the banks coming after you, more debt is not what you're interested in. While we're talking about debt, we also need to remind the House about the disaster which is the government's newest creation: the Regional Investment Corporation, which we think will be in Bathurst; they don't quite have an office yet. Media reports are that they were meeting on a park bench to talk about their organisation starting. I'm not quite sure we want financial decisions from an investment corporation meeting in a park or on a park bench, particularly given that we have Rural Finance based in Victoria now managed by the Bendigo Bank, a sound financial institution that has been doing this kind of work for many years here in Australia. This is who the government wants to take work away from—the Bendigo Bank and Rural Finance—and give it to the Regional Investment Corporation, which at the moment doesn't have an office and which is meeting on a park bench. This is another example of just how hopeless this government is when it comes to the agricultural industry. Whether it be farm household assistance loans, whether it be in relation to financing, whether it be policy around labour hire, whether it be policy and implementation on the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, whether it be around innovation and embracing innovation in our farm industries or whether it be about abolishing or working to abolish non-tariff barriers or about climate change, this government is really failing to support Australian farmers in our agricultural industries.

The amendment that has been moved by the member for Hunter allows people on this side to call the government out for its rhetoric. The government has to do more than just extend a welfare payment from three years to four years. Our farmers want to be innovative. They want to exist into the future. They need a government that will work with them and provide leadership, not just more tinkering at the edges.

Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to speak on the Farm Household Support Amendment Bill 2018. In listening to speakers on both sides of the House, I cannot help but observe the political nature of this debate, even though there's broad acceptance that it's not a particularly political issue—it's not. Farmers who may be tuned into the proceedings—and I'm sure most of mine would not be—would probably be pretty scathing in their assessment of the way that many members of this place have approached this debate. If I consider a man in my electorate who was awarded at the recent Queen's Birthday honours, Brendan Farrell, he has physically and mentally exhausted himself, as have many of the people around him, in order to transport hay from our region to western Queensland. He's very critical of politicians. He acknowledged that the government has recently increased some drought relief measures, but called for further assistance, mainly relating to hefty freight costs. Brendan heard about a farmer in the New South Wales town of Bourke struggling with drought, and that galvanised him into action. He has now completed more than 11 hay runs to help the drought-affected farmers across New South Wales and Queensland. He has noted that it's an emotional rollercoaster: 'One minute you're laughing, the next minute you're bawling your eyes out. You can be standing there with people and their kids, just talking about how much it will take to get better.' Brendan Farrell has been doing this for 4½ years, assisting struggling farmers around the country. He was driven by a desire to simply lend a hand. I'm sure he treats his Queen's Birthday honour with the larrikin disrespect that we would expect from an Australian of his stature.

I want to bring something of his spirit and his attitude to this debate this evening because this is not a political issue and, unfortunately, so many people in this place treat drought and legislation as something that's—I won't say going wrong in our farming communities, because drought is part of a way of life and a farming way of life. They think there's something that must be done; it's all about what we do in here. Do we tinker around the edges, as the previous speaker said? Do we add more money, as we did during the millennium drought, in huge quantities that we no longer have? Do we put more personnel on the ground? Of course, we do many of these things, and so we should, particularly around mental health and support, but governments can't always make it better, and it's very important to recognise that.

Certainly climate change is biting in rural Australia. Certainly it is in rural New South Wales and in my electorate of Farrer. I can remember people who talked about water flows in the Darling River, the Murray and the Murrumbidgee—I represent substantial parts of those three great river systems—reflecting on how much less water there is. When we talk about the environment and irrigators, we also have to factor climate change in. The extremes of temperature are more noticeable. If you talk to the old timers, you certainly get a long and pretty consistent narrative. I remember the late Peter Cullen, who was a hero in environmental water circles. I clashed with him on many occasions, being very much on the side of the irrigators. I remember him saying Australia has more than 40 years of wetter-than-average temperatures followed by 40 years of drier-than-average temperatures. Clearly that pattern is persisting, but within those broad blocks of years the extremes are getting greater. We are going to be confronted with drought and we are going to be confronted with the necessity to support our farmers.

I'm very pleased that I believe this government has a strong and supportive drought assistance policy. We must work more closely with state governments, of course, because farmers don't notice the difference. The No. 1 thing they are calling for in my electorate is freight subsidies. I talked about Brendan Farrell and his hay runners, and that's what they do—they pick up hay and they transport it north from farmers who donate it. Members of the community donate the money to allow that to happen. Freight subsidies are vital because that's what you're doing—you're moving fodder to animals and keeping your breeding stock going because, if you lose your breeding stock, you lose a lot of heart.

I've been a farmer myself for 17 years, through some of the worst droughts and the worst times on the land. There were some highs in there as well, although sometimes, looking back, I find it harder and harder to find them. I remember reading a Time international article talking about the Australian drought, when it didn't often talk about Australia at all. There was a quote on the back page from somebody in rural Australia saying, 'You can't send a man out day after day to shoot his stock.' I cut that page out and pinned it on the wall of the office. I looked at it every day because the last thing I wanted was to go out and shoot stock. Eventually, with the price crash for sheep, that's exactly what happened, but it wasn't necessarily in the context of a drought.

I represented western New South Wales during 10 years of the hardest drought we have ever seen, with dust storms and heartache. I can remember visiting properties where people had destocked. You would think that once you had destocked, you could then put everything in a holding pattern because you didn't have to worry about your stock dying and you didn't have to worry about transporting them away or transporting feed in. But, interestingly enough, what actually happened to farmers when they destocked and lost their stock was that they suddenly felt completely irrelevant; they'd lost the reason to get up in the morning. It had an extraordinarily negative affect.

We had some amazing rural financial counsellors in my electorate during that time. I want to mention Brian Dodson, who was one of them. He's still well known. You're only supposed to deal with the finances, but he was there for every single member of a farming family. They didn't want to talk to someone they didn't know about personal problems—it gets very personal—so they talked to him. I'm sure he crossed the line a few times when it came to the engagement that he was supposed to have. But he was there when he was needed, because when you have to make the tough decisions—and we talk about the tough decisions—they are extraordinarily difficult to make.

We, as a government, probably spent a billion dollars in interest rate subsidies for exceptional circumstances interest rate relief and household support during that drought. That was an extraordinary transfer of funds from taxpayers to farmers. If you look back on what happened to that money and where it went, an awful lot went to the banks. I would regularly challenge them with, 'What are you going to do about it, because you're getting your payments made where, in different circumstances, you would be writing them off?' A lot went to the banks. A lot went to farmers who subsequently didn't make it.

The difficult thing with farming is that, when you're well set up and you've worked hard to give yourself a buffer, it's not just about hard work. A lot of it is luck. If you don't have a huge amount of debt and you're not a young farmer, then clearly you're going to be better prepared for a drought. A lot of it was: 'I've done all of the things that I'm supposed to do, and I don't qualify for any drought support because my partner works off-farm and I've got too many assets.' There was genuine annoyance from some of the farmers when they saw others who, in their view, might not have prepared so well or might not have run their properties so well, or whose farm programs were effectively getting quite a lot of government support. It did create divides in rural communities, and that was unfortunate.

If our objective, as a government, is to sustain the rural sector, then there isn't any point in large transfers of funds to people who ultimately don't stay in the rural sector, whose properties get bought out. But there certainly is a point in supporting those families from a human perspective, making sure that they have time to adjust, to properly exit their properties and to do so with dignity and move on to another stage of their lives. Certainly, the drought support did that. I would run into those individuals in the towns of Western New South Wales and North-Western Victoria quite regularly and realise that they'd left their farms behind. Sometimes they had been fourth- or fifth-generation farmers, and they were fine. It always surprised me a little. I'm not saying that all of them were fine. There were two things that made them fine. One was that they actually had sold their properties for good money. No matter how tough it got, the value of land didn't go down—we don't expect that, and it's very difficult to see that that could happen in the current situation. They sold and they got paid a good sum of money, and the next thing they did actually validated their purpose in life—they had something to get up in the morning and do. Often it was working at an engineering shop or working for a rural services industry that supported farms, so their extraordinary knowledge about farming and the rural sector was put to really good use. It is the sort of knowledge that they used every day but never realised had a value.

So there is always light at the end of the tunnel, but the task for government is to make sure that we put the supports in place. Whether that be rural financial counselling—we've expanded the service and we have good rural financial counsellors in my electorate. I just want to talk about the local situation. Griffith and Hay have had no rainfall this month and very little for the previous three months, so it is critical that the government assists farmers and rural communities during these times of hardship. The Farm Business Concessional Loans Scheme, the farm household allowance, the Managing Farm Risk Program, the Rural Financial Counselling Service and so on support the effects for farmers and managing—it might be pest animals; it might be weeds in drought-affected areas; and it might be financial preparedness.

The farm household allowance, which is the subject of this bill, was launched in July 2014, and it has helped more than 7,900 people, which is pretty good. It's essentially an adjustment payment that comes with free financial counselling, through the Rural Financial Counselling Service, to help farmers restructure their businesses. The amendments that we are moving today include an extension from three to four years of the time that these services are available, which is a more appropriate time frame to assist farmers when they might need to transition to get back on their feet. It has been pretty scary for some of them. Many, I have to say, who have been the recipients of government support year after year after year have recently been told by their financial counsellors: 'Actually, that's it. There isn't anything left.' So this extra year is very valuable. I want to give a shout out to those rural financial counsellors: Darren Macartney at Hay, Graham Christie at Coleambally, Murray Freshwater at Deniliquin, Haidee Laycock, who looks after Griffith and Leeton, Linda McLean at Hillston and Graeme Witte, who's the counsellor at Wentworth.

You think of drought in Australia as being about the wide plains, with dust and no grass growing, and of course it is, but it's also about irrigation water, because, when a drought bites, the requirements for water for irrigated agriculture increase considerably, the reason being that you don't have any prewatering of your pasture. The other tension that enters the equation is that your water allocations—which next month, I suspect, will start off at zero—stay pretty low, so you really have to be concerned about your farm program. If you're an irrigated farmer, you've invested a lot more money, it's a much more intensive operation and you often need activity, which means you need to run a farm program.

With the drought in about 2003, I remember taking the then Prime Minister, John Howard, to Finley. No other Australian Prime Minister had visited Finley before or has done so since. He was incredibly impressed by the people who serviced the rural sector there and the fact that irrigation was different. What we then did was change the rules for the exceptional circumstances program to assist irrigators, recognising that the normal parameters of that program meant they didn't qualify—but they then did. We also added small businesses because John Howard met an incredible woman called Robyn Mott in an accounting service in Finley. She did so many things for the community for nothing, and she made an amazing sponge cake which I'm sure he's never forgotten. He came back and said to Sharman Stone, the then member for Murray, and me, 'We need to find a way to extend this to small businesses as well.'

I use those examples because I know that the government now stands ready to do exactly those things—or not exactly those things but to act in a similar way: to watch closely to see how bad this drought gets. It's creeping from northern New South Wales down into my electorate. You don't say things are bad or worse; it hasn't gone on as long as what we saw in 2003. But, if it does, I know that this government and this parliament will stand ready to assist and take the necessary next steps.

Coming back to Brendan Farrell and his hay runners, he does it without government—he doesn't particularly like politicians—and he does it with the community. The community is always ready to help. So wherever you are in Australia, if you can help and there's an opportunity for you to do that, I encourage you to. I know that so many will step up and support our rural sector.

Mike Kelly (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Defence Industry and Support) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to acknowledge the contributions from the member for Mallee and the member for Farrer in this debate on the Farm Household Support Amendment Bill 2018. There were a lot of important ideas and also observations from their experiences. I think all of us in this chamber who represent farming communities and communities that have lived through these intense drought experiences that we've been seeing multiply and amplify in recent years would really identify with and feel an emotional attachment with a lot of the issues that have been raised and discussed.

But I would say that I am disappointed. I am particularly disappointed in the leadership of the Nationals in these last five years. As soon as a drought passes, it's almost like, 'Rightio, that's over and done with—no need to worry about proper planning for the future anymore.' It takes me back to the old Army golden rule that you always hope for the best but you plan and prepare for the worst.

I don't think any sentient human being now can deny the threat that is being presented to our rural and regional communities by climate change. These circumstances of drought are definitely intensifying, deepening and becoming more variable, with fewer predictable situations. I've often said my region of Eden-Monaro is like the canary in the coalmine in many ways. If you look at, for example, our ski industry in the high country and you go and talk to the Snowy Hydro people, you will see their data is unequivocally showing that the ski seasons are crimping in at both ends, and the snow levels are going higher. We are at risk of losing a $2 billion industry that's half the economy of the Monaro. On top of that, our farmers—including the fruitgrowers over in the Batlow area, the famous Batlow apple growers—really depend on a very predictable weather pattern situation. That has been completely distorted and difficult to do in recent years, and of course the drought affected the high country. It's affecting it right now and putting our farmers in the high country under severe stress. On the coast we have this increasing risk of salination and the like and also changes in rain patterns.

So there's been a lot of intense distress. I'm pleased to say that at least, out of that last big millennial drought, the farmers in the high country formed Monaro Farming Systems and for the first time aggregated. That enabled them to look after each other a bit better and swap more ideas. But, most particularly, it allowed them to work more closely with the CSIRO, who helped develop a modelling tool, called GrassGro, to give them the ability to plan ahead for their properties over a 50-year cycle. It enabled them to do their paddock and beast management and it gave them something to latch onto, which was really important for their mental health.

But what disturbs me is that, when we were in government, we were right on the trailing edges of that millennium drought—2008 and 2009 were particularly bad final years—and we did look at the exceptional circumstances regime. I think everybody would accept that it wasn't satisfactory. In my region, I had some people who were on one side of the boundary of the exceptional circumstances regime experiencing the same weather situation as the people over the other side of the harsh line drawn on the map but not getting exceptional circumstances relief. Again, I had a lot of farmers complaining to me that exceptional circumstances didn't distinguish between successful farmers—good farmers—and farmers who were in trouble not because of drought but because they weren't particularly good farmers. The farmers were raising these issues with me.

As a consequence, we sent this issue to the Productivity Commission, which I think was a good way to look at it. We wanted to really get down to the nitty-gritty of how we were going to handle these droughts at the same time as we were addressing climate change policy. The review that was done by the Productivity Commission also led us to form the intergovernmental agreement using the COAG process, trying to address these issues on a national level, because we couldn't accept the patchiness of the state-by-state approach for a national issue. That led us to form the Standing Committee for Primary Industries and Resources and the Standing Council on Primary Industries—very important mechanisms that were working their way forward. They of course produced the review, which included the Intergovernmental Agreement on the National Drought Program Reform. It made some particularly important findings and comments, including an economic assessment of drought support measures and an assessment of social impacts of drought on farm families and rural communities, using an expert panel and a climatic assessment by the Bureau of Meteorology, and it conducted pilot studies. There was a focus on the relief that's needed and the mechanisms—and we're talking here about the farm household support arrangements as part of what they were reviewing—but more particularly they were looking at the key objectives:

… assist farm families and primary producers adapt to and prepare for the impacts of increased climate variability—

and—

… encourage farm families and primary producers to adopt self-reliant approaches to manage their business risks

This is really the key. Most farmers and farming families will tell you that they want to find ways to deal with the challenges they're facing that don't involve just a draw on the taxpayer to get them through these situations; they want to get ahead of the curve.

Added to the situation of trashing those arrangements that we put in place through COAG, which pointed the way of having to develop policy to address that longer-term issue and the management issue of these farms, we've seen more recently, in these last five years, the damage that's been done to the APVMA by the decentralisation policy. We've lost 30 per cent of the scientists in of that organisation. Evidence that we've heard says that the organisation has been set back seven years, and really it's the APVMA that helps design research and implement science into the management of these changed circumstances—how we can deal with managing the different types of pest situations that come from drought conditions. As an example of that, further down in the high country in my region we had a plague of wingless grasshoppers, and the science told us that was largely caused by the dieback situation. The parasitic nematodes that used to keep the numbers of the wingless grasshoppers down were not there because of the loss of forestation in our region, and it led to the plague of wingless grasshoppers that completely devastated farming land in that area.

All of these are things that the APVMA helps with, and what we've done is cripple it through this decentralisation process. Also, of course, we saw other issues like getting rid of the inspector-general in relation to live exports. We know that is a really serious issue; it's put us back to square one and we're facing revisiting these issues with live exports. Every time we have one of these incidents and those videos, meat consumption goes down. The butchers tell me they can't sell the meat anymore. So there are a whole range of flow-on effects from not getting to grips with these issues, and getting rid of the inspector-general mechanism was a really retrograde step.

On top of that, we saw the issues that emerged around the Murray-Darling Basin Authority. It seems that those growers and the allegations of mishandling and corruption et cetera in the northern edges of the Murray-Darling Basin were more of a priority than those farmers who were living downstream—the farmers all the way through southern New South Wales and South Australia. It didn't seem to matter what was happening to them, whereas, when we were in government, we put a lot of effort into water efficiency measures as a long-term solution to some of these issues. That included the need for farmers to pick up new techniques in irrigation—lining irrigation channels and covering them using pipes et cetera. We heard the member for Mallee talk about that as a step forward in his area. With the issue of drip irrigation, I was in the border portfolio with Senator Wong and we travelled all over the Murray-Darling Basin. I remember visiting an almond grower who had a perfect situation for drip irrigation with permanent plantings, and he said he didn't trust those lines, because he was worried about them getting clogged. Well, Israel—and the rest of the world that has faced these kinds of arid, water management situations—has been very productive and very efficient and has shown good results from adopting those types of techniques.

Along with what we invested in government in water efficiency measures, there were also a lot of other benefits. We have to make sure that farmers can diversify and insulate themselves against these conditions but also adopt better methods to get through drier times and keep their soils healthy. One of the measures that assisted them that we introduced was the Carbon Farming Initiative. That allowed farmers to get involved with methodologies that would help sequester carbon while at the same time introduce better health to their soils by getting carbon back into their soils. There was a lot of opportunity for them to diversify their income through adopting measures under the Carbon Farming Initiative. One of the things that I was looking at in particular was getting our farmers to aggregate in, perhaps, a forestry co-op where they could have portions of their properties dedicated to re-forestation and have a broker who could organise the whole arrangement of the methodology and approval and give them another stream of income on their property. There were so many possibilities in that Carbon Farming Initiative and in sequestration.

Now we are seeing good, smart farmers like Charles Massy, a farmer near Cooma in my electorate, who has a PhD and is a very progressive and innovative farmer. We had a great meeting in Yass just a few weeks ago. A lot of farmers from the region turned up to hear about his regenerative farming techniques. We've heard a bit before about natural sequence farming. There's been a bit of controversy about that, but some of it is quite sound in terms of how we rehydrate the soil or maintain or slow down water through the landscape. But, certainly, what Charles Massy has been doing through his regenerative farming techniques is very important.

It's about government really getting behind the science, the experience and the knowledge and arming farmers with the ability to survive, to prosper and to be able to conduct and plan models for their properties over a long period of time. One of the things that I mentioned last night was the no-till and stubble management approach. All of these things could be included and passed on. I'm fortunate that my family, who have all been dairy farmers for 170 years now down in the Bega Valley, are part of an aggregated farming group in the Bega Cheese co-op, which is now no longer a co-op but still operates like it is. Through that, they formed the Bega environmental management system. They were able to apply Commonwealth funding to develop and improve the management of their environment and to restore health to the soil as well. It also enabled those farmers to communicate with each other and pass on science and ideas. Bega Cheese also helps make sure that that happens through the benefits of its commercial operation and spreading that benefit to farmers.

We saw this so-called listening tour happen just recently, and it didn't go down too well. Obviously they were coming to talk to farmers about issues like farm household support. I welcome the fact that it's been extended by a year, but that still doesn't deliver certainty to these farmers. It seemed from the reports that came back that farmers were singularly unimpressed by what was going on. People like Harry and Jack, who greeted the travelling circus, and John and Joy Haycock at Trangie, for example, were very unimpressed by the visit. I talked about this idea of hoping for the best but planning for the worst. We've seen the reverse of that in some of the approaches taken by this travelling circus. Mr Haycock said he couldn't understand why that leadership group was there if they didn't have anything to announce. He said:

On Sunday night we had hope, now we know they're going to do nothing, when you take hope away people get desperate, they’d have been better off not coming.

…   …   …

I've voted Nationals all my life at state level, never again.

I think that's one of the reasons why, when I was standing at the Gundagai booth at the Cootamundra by-election, there was a 43 per cent swing away. It was 43 per cent. You can see the erosion. If the Nationals are going to ignore what's going on out there, they will get more of what happened in Orange and more situations like Tumbarumba. Tumbarumba absolutely went red-hot in support of me in the last campaign because of this issue. The Nationals are ignoring what their farmers are saying. In the last big survey of farmers—1,300 farmers in a Farmer Climate Survey—nine in 10 farmers surveyed said they were concerned about damage to the climate and about climate change and 88 per cent of them said they wanted their politicians to do more about it. They really are upset about this. There'll be some argument about what causes climate change and all those sorts of issues, but this is the result of a farmer survey—88 per cent say their politicians should be doing more. They accept that there is climate change and that there should be something done about it.

Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Farm Household Support Amendment Bill 2018. As the member for Eden-Monaro leaves, I'll say his was quite a thoughtful response until the last three minutes. It's a shame he wrecked it. This bill is in response to the tour that the Prime Minister, the agriculture minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, the local government minister, the regional telecommunications minister, the regional health minister and I had through western New South Wales and Queensland a couple of weeks ago. The sad reality is that this drought is really biting. In some places, people have used the household support for the three years that was part of the original requirement for this. This extension will certainly help those people out.

This farm household support is more than just the financial support that helps pay those vital bills, that puts food on the table, that puts tyres on the family car, that pays for the phone and the like. With this support comes assistance from the Rural Financial Counselling Service to help those farms that are in that difficult circumstance come up with a management plan post-drought, whatever that may be, whether it's exiting the industry or restructuring their finances to enable them to continue on. The reports that I'm getting back from the people who have been on this household support—and I think it's now about 7,000 around Australia—have been quite positive. So this extension is a good thing; it is unfortunate that we've got a drought of this magnitude where we needed to do this.

It is interesting that the member for Hunter has some ridiculous amendment attached to this very important piece of legislation. It was his party in government that removed the word 'drought' from the language of government. They were so obsessed with their discussions around climate change and emissions-trading schemes that they changed the word 'drought' to 'dryness' and said, 'This is how Australia's going to be for now and evermore; we just need to get used to it.'

I want to comment on some of the policies that the government has that are really helping people to get through this drought. I understand that many people are in serious financial difficulties, but many aren't—because of the policies that were in the white paper. I'll go through them, and I'll start with the farm management deposits, now $800,000 per farm partner to be put away: they're very useful in helping with the vagaries of the climate. To use the Walgett region as an example: they've had one good year out of four. That good year was a very good year in a cropping region, with very high income for that year through the farm management deposits. They were able to even that income out to help them through the difficult times that they're having at the moment. Another one is the accelerated depreciation for grain storages—hay sheds and silos. That has been very, very popular throughout my electorate, and as I'm driving around I see many new silo complexes and hay sheds where farmers have taken that tax advantage and invested, managing to prepare themselves for the dry times.

The other one is the accelerated depreciation for water and fencing. Particularly in the grazing areas, more in the west of my electorate, those water schemes have enabled a better use of pasture, and farmers have managed to retain their pasture longer into this drought because they've had the water points in more strategic places, rather than central watering points through large dams and whatnot. Another policy that has been of benefit in some areas is the money that has gone into cluster fencing. Late last year, I was at the opening of a 220-kilometre long fence at Gilgunyah, north-west of Condobolin. There are, I think, 10 properties inside the fence that have now been able to manage a lot of the pest animals that were really impacting on their pasture management and also on their animal health, with wild dogs and pigs having an effect on lambing percentages and the like. These are good, practical measures that we have put into place.

The previous speaker, the member for Eden-Monaro, was talking about the innovation and the good work that farmers are doing, and that's true. When we get into a dry period like this, one of the disappointments is that it looks like farmers are not managing their situation, whereas the clear majority of them are. With the farming techniques that are being used, farmers are growing crops in a climate that their parents and grandparents would not have been able to grow in. The work that's being done with zero-till, and the advances in machinery with disc planters and GPS control—all of those things have enabled farmers to deal with the drier seasonal conditions. As I said, many of the farmers in my area are managing through this.

There were some comments in the previous speeches about the Prime Minister's visit to my electorate in particular. I really think those negative comments don't relate to what I saw on the ground. The farmers were very pleased to see their Prime Minister and a large number of cabinet ministers there. If the Prime Minister had come to my electorate and made an announcement without consulting with anyone, the justifiable criticism would have been: 'No-one came and asked what we wanted. We're getting governed from Canberra.' In the Prime Minister's defence, in my 10 years—and we've had a variety of prime ministers over that period of time—I've never seen a Prime Minister put three days in regional Australia, listening to farmers, not being distracted, taking notes and being completely focused on the serious issue at hand.

Milton Dick (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What did Tony Abbott do?

Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I say what I said—in 10 years I've never seen a Prime Minister do that. I've had other prime ministers from both sides of the House visit my electorate, but not one that was so focused on the issue at hand. That was very well received.

I think that we will look at other issues apart from the farm household support. I think the work around mental health is good. That sometimes is just creating activities as a distraction to get off the farm. I remember the 1990s, when we were going through a particularly dry time. I come to this place with some experience as a farmer dealing with drought. I was a farmer for 33 years before I came here, so I've got some idea what I'm talking about. I remember that in the 1990s in a particularly severe drought a group of my colleagues undertook a beef management course. That was as much about getting together once a week, having a chat and having a few beers afterwards. It was about meeting with each other and talking through our issues and how we were dealing with things. Quite often these mental health programs in the bush are just a way for people to get together as a group and have a yarn. In Warialda a group of men are now doing yoga, believe it or not. Some of my friends would be horrified that I'm letting their secret out. They probably undo at the pub afterwards all the good they do at yoga in becoming more flexible, but it is an outlet for them to get together and work through the issues, because it is a very stressful time.

I do support this important bill. I treat the addition from the member for Hunter with the contempt that it deserves. This is sensible legislation that's needed. I think there's probably more to come as we work our way through this drought. I think there's more work we can do in the fencing space. Those things will keep people busy and improve the management possibilities in those areas. I commend this bill to the House.

Andrew Gee (Calare, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the Farm Household Support Amendment Bill 2018. Our farmers make an extraordinary contribution to our national economy and prosperity. In fact, agriculture has been the stand-out sector for the Australian economy in recent times. Our farmers don't have the tariff protections or subsidies that farmers in other countries enjoy. They deal with comparatively high power prices and labour prices, sometimes a high Australian dollar and sometimes low commodity prices. They are extraordinarily resilient, but they are not indestructible. That's why we have to support them through this latest trial—drought.

The drought is certainly biting very hard in central western New South Wales. The paddocks in many areas have turned to dust. It's so bad that parts of the Calare electorate look like a moonscape. The ground is so parched and dry that sometimes it seems like it's literally crying out. Feed is scarce, increasingly expensive and also increasingly expensive to transport to the properties in need, if you can find it.

We can't take our farmers for granted. If we want them here, creating wealth for our nation, we need to be supporting them at the time when they need it most. There are heartbreaking stories in country Australia at the moment. I've heard them as I've met with farmers around the region, from Lithgow to Mudgee, Gulgong, Oberon, Bathurst, Orange, Cumnock, Yeoval and Wellington. The stories are real and they're stories of Australians, our fellow Australians, battling to get through. It's not just the drudgery of feeding every day and checking troughs and dams; there is an immense toll from the uncertainty with respect to what will happen. What's going to happen in the future? What will happen to breeding stock? How will they be fed? The financial uncertainty weighs heavily, as does the uncertainty as to how it will be possible to rebuild once the drought passes.

All over central western New South Wales, as in other parts of Australia, communities are coming together to support each other, but they need a hand. Good intentions are one thing, but our farmers need support on the ground. The outlook, I have to say, is very worrying. If good rain doesn't come, a very bad and grim situation is going to get a whole lot worse in the very near future. The worsening outlook is why we need to be ramping up drought support as the season worsens and the conditions deteriorate. That's why I was very pleased to see the farm household allowance extended. The announcement followed the Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources' visit to the central west, where we met with local farmers. It also followed the Prime Minister's tour with the minister to drought-affected areas. In fact, when the minister visited the central west, we stood in a paddock where a crop we were looking at had achieved only a 30 per cent germination rate, and that was one of the good paddocks in the region.

The farm household allowance is an important drought assistance measure which aims at putting food on the table and diesel in the ute when farmers simply don't have enough money for the necessities. It was launched in 2004, and since then almost 8,000 people have been assisted, at a cost of $230 million. In terms of the amount of the assistance itself, you're looking at around $530 to $580 per fortnight for singles and just under $1,000 per fortnight for couples. It helps get farmers through, and it comes with counselling as well, so it is an important assistance measure. It provides the recipients with the opportunity to take steps to improve their circumstances and self-reliance through a farm financial assessment, financial improvement agreement and additional activity supplements of up to $4,000. The program is uncapped and demand driven, so no-one who is eligible will miss out. The fact that it's been extended from three to four years is, I think, a really important move, and it will be widely welcomed in farming communities across the nation.

It is important to note that farmers should not self-assess when thinking about the farm household allowance and how they can apply for it. There are many stories of farmers self-assessing, only to discover later that they are in fact eligible. So I would encourage any farmers out there to reach out to the Department of Human Services via their hotline—I will give it now; it is 1800686175 or 132316—to find out how they can get more assistance.

The federal government is also supporting farmers through the Rural Financial Counselling Service. This is a very important service, and $70 million has been allocated to it from 2016 to 2020 and, indeed, a further $20 million funding boost has just been announced. It helps around 4,500 people every year and it has about 3,000 clients at any given time, with about 130 counsellors around Australia. As I've said, this drought is taking a financial toll, but it is also taking a huge emotional toll. To many farmers with such a grim outlook, it just seems like things are never going to get better. The Rural Financial Counselling Service is there to help, and it does a great job.

Debate interrupted.