14 May 2009

Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Tony Burke discussing the 2009-10 Federal Budget

TONY BURKE: G’day it’s Tony Burke. I just wanted to outline some of what’s in the Federal Budget for rural and regional Australia.

In a global recession, this was always going to be a tough Budget, we needed to make difficult decisions to cushion our economy as much as possible from the international downturn. It’s true that the agricultural sector is one of the only areas in the Australian economy to remain in positive growth. People will put off many things when times are tough, but they still have to eat. Still, rural and regional communities and families are not immune from what’s happening around the world.

Yesterday’s nation building Budget includes major investments in roads, in rail, ports, broadband and rural health. These investments will make rural communities stronger. They will also help us return to a surplus with a stronger economy than before. In the short term we are still faced with a massive write down in revenue, resulting in $22 billion dollars in savings across the next five years. We’ve had to ask a very simple question: `what can we afford to do?’ Obviously when the economy is booming you can afford to do more than when you’re in the middle of a global recession.

As the budget papers showed, we’ve decided to wind up the operations of Land and Water Australia and to reduce funding to the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation.

With Land and Water Australia we had the best chance of work being picked up by the department or by research partners. With RIRDC the cuts go to their rural issues program, it won’t actually affect its research budget and it won’t affect important programs like the Rural Women’s Award.

Overall the 2009-10 budget delivers a record $24 billion dollars for rural and regional Australia. This includes $715 million dollars for ongoing drought support. We’ve also extended vital drought support measures such as the rural support services, mental health support for drought-affected communities, drought assistance for schools, family support, drought response teams initiatives, the re-establishment assistance.

The Budget includes new funding to help deliver broadband to rural and regional Australia. There’ll be an extra $14 million dollars over four years to accelerate the benefits to regional communities of high-speed broadband access.

And there’s $5 million dollars over four years for the rural NBN coordinators to engage with local government, community and business.

For small business, we’re increasing the tax break from 30 per cent to 50 per cent for purchases made this calendar year and delivered by the end of next year.

In water, $300 million dollars has been announced for new on-farm irrigation efficiency grants. This funding will help irrigation communities adjust to a future with less water, helping farmers invest in water saving technology on their properties. It’s infrastructure investment at a local scale on farmer’s own properties. And in health, we’ve delivered significant new incentives to help attract and retain healthcare professionals in local communities. Almost 500 communities will become eligible for rural incentive payments. More than 2,400 rural doctors will, for the first time, become eligible for grant payments to live in rural and remote areas.

We’ll also provide up to $260,000 for doctors relocating from a major city to a very remote area. And 260 doctors currently practicing in the most remote locations can now receive a retention grant payment of $47,000per year—it used to be $25,000.

Finally, in infrastructure, a record investment of more than $21 billion dollars on regional roads, on highways and railways over the next six years.

This includes the Pacific, the Hume and Bruce highways, the upgrade of northeast freight roads in Tasmania and freight rail upgrades between Sydney and Newcastle in New South Wales. These are all real investments, which will make a difference to farming families, regional communities and the national economy.

I’m looking forward to working with farmers and people in the fishing and forestry sectors to build a stronger future for their jobs and their families.