DROUGHT RELIEF
21. Hon COLIN de GRUSSA to the Minister for Agriculture and
Food:
I refer to the continuing dry
seasonal conditions in Western Australia and the significant impact they are
having on our primary producers and regional communities.
(1) What
financial assistance has the state government provided to date to assist
producers or regional communities in response to drought conditions?
(2) What
departmental resources are being provided to support producers and communities
in the drought?
(3) Is the state
government providing or considering any other assistance measures, including
in-kind support, freezes on pastoral rent increases or exemptions from
transport permit fees for destocking?
Hon ALANNAH MacTIERNAN
replied:
I thank the member for the question.
(1)–(3) As
I have probably pointed out before, it was decided in 2008 that we would move
away from the exceptional circumstances–drought declaration mode and
move into assessing farms on a needs basis to encourage farmers to develop
resilience. A range of strategies, including the farm household allowance, were
established around that. I would like to again table some maps that show that
although there is absolutely no doubt that
2019 was a horror year right across the state, particularly in the southern
rangelands, which had far less fat to play with in terms of water
resilience, if we look at the maps for 2018, 2017 and 2016, we can see that
even under the old terminology, a drought would not have been declared for the
majority of those areas, and particularly the southern rangelands. Under those
circumstances, we are certainly not looking at making changes around the
payment of lease fees.
The
government has been making significant contributions to cell fencing to provide
employment opportunities for pastoralists who are struggling; settling the
carbon farming initiative, which is going to enable a lot more resilience for
those southern rangelands farmers; and investing in ways in which we can
provide longer term resilience. Our problem is not a short-term deficiency in
rainfall or something that will stop in a couple of years. We know that we have
had a decade-long decline in rainfall, so we have to invest in systems that
will turn around that resilience. Carbon farming is part of that. We are
working on a range of programs with the Minister for Water that will be
submitted to the federal government for assistance under its future drought
fund. However, we have to change the fundamentals. We are not going to solve
this problem with a short-term approach. The millennium drought cost the
federal government around $7 billion. The current drought had cost the federal
government $15 billion by the end of last year. What we have to do is to make
sure that we have a new basis, new farm management systems and new rangelands
systems to ensure that this is an affordable and sustainable area for farming.
We cannot just have that old mentality of providing short-term handouts.
[See paper 3587.]