Senate debates

Monday, 13 February 2017

Questions without Notice

Dairy Industry

2:39 pm

Photo of Matthew CanavanMatthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party, Minister for Resources and Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the senator from Victoria for her question and recognise her longstanding support for our dairy industry and also the work she has done over the past couple of months to get out and about and listen to the dairy industry. Senator McKenzie has been hosting roundtables on behalf of the Deputy Prime Minister in rural Victoria over the past few months to listen to the industry and hear from them how they are responding to what has been very tough and a struggle for many farmers, given the low prices we have seen.

It is important to listen, and Senator McKenzie has done that. But it is even more important that a government acts after listening to those concerns. Having spoken to Senator McKenzie after her roundtable, I know that she did hear from dairy farmers about how waiting times were too long to receive assistance through Centrelink and that sometimes the assets tests and how they were applied were not well suited to the farm sector—that they were more designed for non-farm individuals trying to access assistance. Because of that, the government has acted on those concerns.

On 9 February last week an amendment bill was introduced into this parliament proposing that farm household allowance recipients not be required to serve waiting period before they commenced receiving payments. Furthermore, the bill proposes clarifying the treatments of certain assets, such as water assets, to ensure that these are recognised as an essential operation of a farm enterprise. This will mean that more dairy farmers will be able to receive assistance more quickly. It is a sign of a government that is acting on the real issues and concerns that face average Australians in the real world. We do rightly offer generous assistance to those farmers that find themselves in difficulty, but we also must recognise that sometimes that assistance does not flow on the ground. I congratulate and again recognise Senator McKenzie for her work in making sure that the decisions made here do flow through and help people out there in the real world.

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