15 May 2009
DAFF09/115T
Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Tony Burke
Interview Rural Focus with Vin Dawes, RadioWest, Western Australia
(E&OE)
SUBJECTS: Rural and regional Budget funding
VIN DAWES: Well the Federal Budget was handed down by the Treasurer Wayne Swan earlier this week. It’s been a pretty difficult week as far as the Labor Party is concerned with all the things that have been happening on the world scene. But of course in the lead up to the budget there was a lot of speculation about what would and would not happen, and as far as regional Western Australia is concerned we’re just wondering what’s in it for us. We take the opportunity now to talk with the Federal Agriculture Minister, Tony Burke MP, who joins me online this morning. Good morning Tony.
TONY BURKE: G’day Vin.
VIN DAWES: Tony, great to have you on the show and thanks for taking the time to have a chat with us I realise its pretty busy over in Canberra at the moment. What is in it as far as agriculture and regional Western Australia’s concerned?
TONY BURKE: The first thing to note with the budget, is we’re trying now to be in a situation where the nation building work that we’re doing is actually to position Australia for recovery. So this is the next stage where we’ve dealt with a lot of the fundamentals that have hit us during the global recession but we want to make sure we’re not just supporting jobs now but that we’ve got a program in place that creates the infrastructure we’re going to need as the world goes into recovery. So some of that infrastructure goes into your massive, the ones that make the headlines, nation building infrastructure some of it goes to more of a community level and some of it, which I’m really proud about actually, goes all the way down, not just to the farm gate but inside the farm. So your big note items, that tend hit the headlines are things like the common user facilities for (inaudible) and the money that’s being committed there. As well, the north bridge rail link is another one, those sorts of key note major projects are there. But additional to that supporting jobs in those sorts of projects doesn’t get you far enough, you want to make sure that you’re supporting jobs throughout all the communities and different areas, particularly in country areas. If unemployment knocks out people, for example, in the construction industry during a time of global recession, then it’s difficult to ever get those people back to the town. That’s one of the reasons why we’ve done the focus that we’ve done on the primary school and the redevelopments there. Because there’s one thing about the primary school, it doesn’t matter where you are if you’re in the suburbs or the country, these things are everywhere. So, those redevelopment projects right around the country make sure that for rural and regional communities there’s still construction opportunities going on even at a time when private investment is not going to be as strong as it used to be.
VIN DAWES: Tony, its interesting isn’t it, because there are key factors in life out there, one them is health and one of them is education now a lot of these are State duties and others are Federal and combined duties and I think one of the things that came out of the Federal budget was perhaps a willingness for the Federal Government to look at infrastructure in relation to rail systems and things like that as well.
TONY BURKE: yeah, that’s right and it’s been a long time since you’ve heard people talk seriously about major investment in rail. The infrastructure investment we’ve got here, it’s the biggest infrastructure investment the country’s ever done. Simple as that. At that level, can I also raise, just before I get to the farm gate infrastructure, you mentioned the issues of health. One of the aspects of the budget that hasn’t received a lot of publicity yet, but I’d like your listeners to know about it Vin. Is what we’ve done in attracting rural doctors out into rural and remote areas and there’s a new bonus system in place for grants which goes up to $120,000 for doctors who are relocating, gets their retention payments up to $47,000 it used to peak at $25,000 now it goes all the way up to $47,000. There’s a simple formula that it works on which is the more remote that you go the higher the incentive will be and while it doesn’t come under the agriculture portfolio I’ve got to tell you if there’s one thing I’ve had farmers raise with me , no matter where I go in the country it’s the irritation about trying to get a GP and to be able to having those incentives in place should mean that we’ll now start to see a much strong reason for doctors to relocate away from the major cities. But I did want to say something about the on farm infrastructure and this is something that hasn’t been badged as a farming measure. It’s been called the small business tax break but it has been of great use to family farmers. Now you’re big corporate farms, they won’t get anything on this but for your small family farms, they get a tax break which used to amount to 30%, which was due to wind up. 30% for their infrastructure purchases which might be irrigation equipment that they’re doing or it might be new farm machinery. Rather than abolishing it, which was due to happen, that’s gone from 30% to 50% for purchases made this year. That’s where we can get Infrastructure Australia to help classify what are the big ticket items on infrastructure but for a farmer, there’s a whole lot of infrastructure that they want on their property that only they’re in the best position to decide how they’ll spend that money. The 50% tax break gives them that incentive to be able to make purchases that otherwise at a time, internationally, where we’re currently in they may well have otherwise decided to put those purchases off. So it gives them the help in getting the infrastructure now so that we don’t want to get into a period of recovery where people say, oh I wish I’d bought this stuff a couple of years ago because I’d be so much better off now. This way, the investment can be made and afforded now so that as the world moves into recovery our farmers are in the front line to benefit.
VIN DAWES: A final thing I just wanted to touch on was communications, and I think it’s fair to say that regional Australia hasn’t been as well off as some of the coastal areas as far as communications is concerned, particularly in relation to broadband.
TONY BURKE: Yeah and I’ve got to say, the regional and farming impact of broadband was something I didn’t fully appreciate until I got this job. I started to understand pretty quickly, I’d go to visit any family farmer and the computer was there at their home and the most visited sites on the Australian Government portal was actually the Bureau of Meteorology site. That’s not people logging on in the cities checking whether or not they can have a family picnic on Sunday. That’s farmers logging on day after day to check the forecasts and make serious business decisions as a result. The involvement online in the agriculture sector is really important and yet the frustration at the speeds they’ve had to put up with is enough to drive anybody nuts. So we’ve got the situation now where the government wanted to make sure with the commercial roll out of broadband that we didn’t fall into the situation of where the business decisions were simply made of, well it’s cheaper to roll it out in the big population centres first and then rural areas wait. We didn’t want that to be the case so there’s a whole program in place in this budget that puts a series of incentives in place, and puts some coordinators out into regional areas so they are getting the roll out of faster broadband right from the beginning of the process.
VIN DAWES: Tony, it’s been great catching up with you on the program and we look forward to doing this on a regular basis as we go through the year and let’s just hope that talking to you today has put some renewed confidence back into the minds of a lot people in regional Western Australia as we wait for our opening rains, which hopefully aren’t that far away.
TONY BURKE: No, looking forward to talking to you again and I agree with you on the rain.
ENDS