Peter Walsh deputy Leader of the Victorian Nationals, Shadow minister for Agriculture and MP for Swan Hill writes:
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The Brumby Government has abandoned Victoria’s agricultural exports and job creation in a bid to slash spending on primary industry.
The budget contained virtually nothing to promote new industry or agricultural exports at a time when the global financial crisis was beginning to affect agricultural communities across the state.
Last year the government introduced $67 million in new initiatives to support the agricultural sector, but in this year’s Budget that figure has been reduced to $500,000.
At a time when our agricultural industries are driving the fight against the global recession, food producers and foresters are receiving little assistance from the Brumby Government.
Over the past six months the Australian economy shrank by 0.4 per cent on a seasonally adjusted basis, while during the same period the farm sector grew by almost 25 per cent – which shows the agricultural sector should be helped to create jobs, not penalised by having its funding slashed.
Labor is so out of touch with the realities facing Victoria’s farmers it believed the drought was at an end.
Drought-stricken communities again face an uncertain future as a result of the government’s decision to leave drought assistance measures out of the budget.
Tomorrow drought counsellors will go to work knowing they won’t have a job come the end of June.
Irrigators will face massive bills for water they never received, because the government refuses to guarantee the continuation of the water rate assistance.
Nor is there funding for the municipal rates subsidy, the drought apprentice retention scheme or the drought employment programs run by Catchment Management Authorities.
Labor had also abandoned initiatives aimed at controlling fruit fly, locusts and potato cyst nematode – all crucial to keeping Victoria’s farmers competitive in the global market.
Instead of continuing support for these measures, Labor has halved the department’s output initiatives and tried to promote existing weed control funding as a new initiative.
Labor could have used this budget to provide some kind of security to regional Victoria, but instead it has bled the state’s agricultural sector dry.
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(thanks to Victorian Agmate Jenny Bird)
Have Your Say!
May 6, 2009 at 5:15 pm
Join the club, Mr Walsh.
Unfortunately your problems are not confined to Victoria. Everything you identify is being suffered by many of your interstate compatriots. Personally, I think that is part of our problem, the Commonwealth playing the states off against one another in order to divide any sort of unity. Witness the Murray Darling Basin water issue for example.
While ever the state governments or farmers’ organisations have the slightest weakness in their positions the state & federal governments will exploit it for their own political advantage. Canberra must be falling about laughing when they see the states threatening to take each other to the High Court. It creates the perfect opportunity for them to step in & pain themselves as the saviour of the Environment, never mind that a few thousand ‘greedy, conservative’ farmers get busted in the process. I don’t believe the Labour Party have anything to lose in the regional seats, as their constituency is in the industrial cities & the trendy Chardonnay socialist seats. As a result, they will do what they bloody well like to the regions to satisfy the well-intentioned but poorly informed urban voters. They have not considered the contribution that agriculture makes to the nation as far as its ability to feed & clothe itself so cheaply.
Unfortunately, I have not heard much sense from the Liberal Party on this either. I hope you can convince us otherwise.
Back to you.