18 February 2009
DAFF09/83T

Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries & Forestry Tony Burke: doorstop interview at Country Fire Authority Station, Yarragon, Victoria

E&OE

SUBJECTS: Victorian fires, $51 million support package, damage to local farming industries

Journalist: [Inaudible]

Tony Burke: First of all, understandably last week everybody’s been dealing with the human cost of what Victorians have had to deal with.

There comes a point where we need to also make sure that as a Government we are doing what needs to be done to help people get their businesses back on track.

That’s why I’ve spent the morning with two farmers – one on a beef property, one on  a horticulture property. Each of them have had significantly damage to the property – a packing shed which was melted, apple trees where the branches were charcoal and the fruit looked more like a passionfruit than an apple.

So there’s a long process of making sure people can get their businesses back on track.

Today’s package is the first stage of that process. For some people it will take some months and for some people it will take a number of years.

Some of this goes to a grants program to help allow people to rebuild some of that capital infrastructure. The sorts of capital infrastructure that you could be talking about includes where people had good on-farm irrigation systems.

The first property I went to it was the polypipe that had melted, and similarly with the horticulture the packing shed - a metal building - had completely collapsed. It had completely melted.

So the intensity of the fire means that as we continue the nation’s dealing with the human cost, it’s essential that we look at businesses in terms of rebuilding the towns and communities - whether it’s small businesses or local farm operators.

Journalist: What are the losses?

Tony Burke: No one knows yet exactly what they are. It’s a lot to expect of somebody to be providing accurate counts of the stock that they’ve lost or trees that they’ve lost while they and their family haven’t finished counting friends that they’ve lost.

The human depth of the tragedy has understandably meant that we haven’t counted the business cost as quickly as we might have and I think everybody understands why.

Journalist: $51million, what’s the breakdown of that per farmer?

Tony Burke: Some of it depends and there’s a difference between very large operations and some very small farming operations which are more at the hobby farm end, where it’s not necessarily a business sort of a package that’s needed so much.

Journalist: Before you came down to Gippsland were you expecting to see what you’ve seen?

Tony Burke: No, not in Australia, no. You start your journey in familiar territory and you’re meeting familiar faces but the landscape around is like nothing you expect to find in Australia.

That’s where it’s at and it doesn’t matter how many times you see the pictures on the TV. Until you do what I’ve done today, and what many others have been doing every day, and what the locals live with. And that’s breathe in the changed air, actually feel in charcoal terms what used to be a home and look into the eyes of someone who’s suffered so much.

Journalist: [Inaudible] There’s immediate relief, what’s there for the long term?

Tony Burke: Well, things like permanent plantings, while there’s a need for immediate relief, there’s very much long-term infrastructure attached to that, for example water infrastructure.

And the commitment from the Prime Minister was that we would help with the rebuilding on an uncapped basis for what’s required. That’s what we’ll do.

But there’s going to be a long haul of work that needs to be done and the answer to how long that is – is as long as it takes.

Journalist: How did you pick the farmers that you visited today?

Tony Burke: We did it in consultation with both the VFF [Victorian Farmers Federation] and with [Victorian Minister] Joe Helper’s office. I’ll be visiting some other parts of Victoria tomorrow.

Usually you want to see as many places as possible but this is not a time when you can duck in and out of someone’s home in half a hour and think that you’ve had anything like the sort of conversation you need to have.

So the number of properties over the next couple of days will be on the light side simply because once I’m at someone’s place the essential rule is I’m there for as long as they’ve got something to say and I think that’s the way it should be.

Journalist: What have they said to you today?

Tony Burke: It’s extraordinary to see the sort of optimism I’ve seen today. I raised that with one of the farmers and he came back with, “Well, optimism might be all we’ve got at the moment.”

And to see that a stronger sense of community will come out of this - all those things have been put to me today.

The other thing I should add is that as well as the physical farm infrastructure there are very deep concerns about erosion following a bushfire. We allocated, both [Federal Environment Minister] Peter Garrett and myself the money that was not yet allocated for this financial year through Caring for our Country for revegetation around riverbeds and things like that.

Because whenever the rain does come you don’t want it to take half the topsoil away with it.

Journalist: Just on a slightly different matter, the Nationals Member, Darren Chester says he’s going to be pushing for Exceptional Circumstances to be extended in La Trobe Valley, in light of the fires is that something you’ll be looking to do now?

Tony Burke: That’s something I explained to Parliament last week – that parts of Gippsland that have come out of EC should be looked at again.

One of the principles coming out of EC is that the drought has ended. The second principle is that recovery has begun, and what’s happened over the last week or so has put a pretty serious question mark over whether the recovery has begun.

So as Darren Chester knows -  I spoke to him on the phone about this – the recommendations are made by the National Rural Advisory Council and those processes happen independently of me.

But certainly in terms of re-gearing those processes I spoke with Joe Helper today and we will hopefully be fairly close to being able to say something further about that.

ENDS