14 May 2009

Mr CHAMPION (3.54 pm)—My question is to the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. What is the impact of the budget on rural and regional Australia, and on Australian farmers?

Mr BURKE—I thank the member for Wakefield for the question and for his strong engagement with the farmers in his electorate. The budget, as it has been described, is about nation building for recovery. It is about supporting jobs today by building the infrastructure Australia needs for the future. It is also about tough savings to deliver the lowest net debt of all major advanced economies. And there are savings within the department of agriculture; there is no doubt about that, and the government has been upfront about that.

I was interested to hear among the interjections that came from the member for Murray that she asked why we got rid of the dairy money that was there, when the only way of keeping that was to continue to charge consumers 11c a litre every time they wanted milk. If it is the position of the opposition that that should be brought back in, that 11c a litre should continue on milk, then perhaps we will hear that in the speech tonight. It clearly has support from one of the rural members of the Liberal Party.

But what was more extraordinary was the claim from the National Party that there had been a $1 billion cut—a $1 billion cut—to agriculture, fisheries and forestry. Now, there have been cuts, and those cuts are real: $13 million from Land and Water Australia, a $3 million reduction in the rural issues program from the Rural Industries RDC and a $3.4 million reduction in funding for DAFF. But only the National Party could say $13 million plus $3 million plus $3.4 million equals $1 billion! National Party mathematics have created this extraordinary situation where they can get those figures and then run around regional radio across the country claiming that there have been $1 billion in cuts. It is not surprising they have come up with their own form of mathematics; they are only used to counting to nine in this room! We then also had the shadow minister for agriculture describing it as—

Dr SOUTHCOTT—Mr Speaker, on a point of order: it was a very tightly crafted question asking the minister for the reaction in rural Australia and by farmers, and I invite you to ask the minister to come back to the question.

The SPEAKER—The member for Boothby will resume his seat. The minister will respond to the question.

Mr BURKE—And, if it is a position of the opposition that they are irrelevant to farmers, then they can say that tonight too. The shadow minister for agriculture put out the position that this was a ‘horror budget’ for agriculture. He always makes a thing about his background with the New South Wales Farmers Association, so I thought: well, what did the New South Wales Farmers Association say about the budget in their media release? ‘Budget winners: infrastructure, water and drought assistance’. That was the headline on their media release, which I am very happy to table. I am very happy to table that, Mr Speaker.

The National Party have developed this concept of the bush where they just go looking for gloom— looking for gloom and looking for misery wherever they can find it. We saw it earlier with the question that was asked by the Leader of the Nationals, where he complained about the method of forward estimates on drought funding when it is identical to how it was done when he was the minister for agriculture. At first I thought, ‘How outrageous for him to do that; he would have known.’ Then I thought: ‘Well, he’s the leader of the Nats; maybe he never knew. Maybe he never understood that that’s how they work it.’ The way they go around looking for gloom, it is like they have become the political equivalent of the bogong moth that just wants to hug the mozzie zapper. They just want to keep going out there and looking to the most miserable stories they can find.

But we have a budget that is good to the bush. We have a budget that delivers infrastructure nationwide, that is community based and that goes all the way down to the farm—infrastructure for roads, rail, ports and broadband, all of it bringing farmers closer to their markets and closer to each other. There is community based infrastructure through local councils and local schools supporting rural communities, support for rural health including incentives to get GPs to the bush and infrastructure all the way back to the farm. There is the $300 million to provide on-farm irrigation— infrastructure on the farm. There is the increase in the small business tax break from 30 per cent to 50 per cent so that farmers can make their own choices about their own infrastructure on-farm.

The opposition need to detail which of these programs they would cut, which savings they would make or which measures they would abandon. We have got no idea what their direction is going to be on this, given the Leader of the Opposition has only asked four questions since budget night, keeping him off TV during that time. How long would it be since a Leader of the Opposition has asked so few questions following the budget? I thought it might be decades, but it was pretty similar to what we saw from Brendan towards the end.