Interview with Paul Murray - Paul Murray Live, Sky News Australia
29 October 2019
Prime Minister
PAUL MURRAY: We've got a lot of questions from people and we'll get into some of them, some of them are detailed, some of them are generic. I’ll ask a vague question first. To those who think you're not doing enough or you don't care or you don't understand how serious it is, why is that perception false?
PRIME MINISTER: I don't think the information has got out there about the response that we have made. Literally the day I became Prime Minister, Michael McCormack and I sat down and we were of the same mind. The most important thing we had to do was to up our level of response to the drought. And so as people know I went straight to Quilpie, and from that day to this, this has dominated both mine and Michael’s attention. We have announced and implemented a large amount of measures since that time. We had the National Drought Summit, you’ll recall, where we got everyone in the whole country together and from that flowed another set of initiatives. See, the thing about a drought is it keeps going on, and you can't just say at any one point in time ‘well, that's it. That's all that's all the measures.’ You don’t stop listening and stop working on the next set of measures, you keep responding. David Littleproud talks about, it’s like this, it's like walking up a flight of stairs, and as the drought continues, well, you keep stepping up. And you also need to be in a position to keep stepping up in the future.
So our response has three components. The first component is to provide direct assistance to farmers and graziers in their households. The second component is to support the communities in which they live, and that are affected more broadly by the loss of income going in to those communities because of the drought. And the third is to do with longer term resilience issues. And they're all important. And our response has covered all three and continues to be added to. The first one, the farm household allowance, what that means is over just over a four year period, they will have received each family, about $125, 000 dollars each family. Now that's on top of what other income they may be able to earn. See if you go on Newstart, let’s say you lose your job in the city and you go on Newstart, you can't earn $100,000 dollars and still get Newstart. You can’t have $5.5 million dollars in assets and still get Newstart. So that's what we do with Farm Household Allowance. And it's the right program and we’ve eased it up, 4 years out of every 10, when we started it was 3 years forever. And we raised the income and assets tests, so it meant that more people could get access. Then we put money into the communities themselves by putting money into the councils, $1 million dollars. And we've had five rounds of that as the drought’s got worse, we've put more and more in. And then the other work we’ve done is around water infrastructure. That's both on-farm so people in times of drought, those who were able to, they will go and upgrade their turkey-nests and do that sort of work or they’ll put other irrigation piping in and this sort of stuff. And we put in $50 million dollars’ worth of rebates to support them to do that, and there was other grants and support to sink bores. There was grants to support pest and weed management on the properties, and there was $75 million of tax incentives to actually build new silage facilities. So that's also keeping the farm labourers in work for those who can do that work, you know, they're not, you know, not getting the army in to do that. They're actually employing people to do them in the towns. And when the fodder is being transported to these farms, it’s using contractors, there are truck drivers affected by this. I mean, people say, ‘oh, you should bring the army in’, why would I want to displace someone getting a job, driving a truck or doing some water infrastructure work or mending some fences, dog fencing up in Queensland where a lot of that money went. So it's comprehensive, and we're going to keep doing it. And we'll be announcing more measures soon too.
MURRAY: I might ask about that military stuff in a second, cause that's quite a lot of questions because as a symbol of urgency, I think is why people might be relying on that. But John writes to me and he says, what did you think of the TV footage of a farmer standing on the Bank of the Murray River? He was crying as he was watching water flowing through to a red gum forest. Why are there still environmental flows at a time of drought?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, the environmental flows are part of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, as everyone knows. And when you're talking about the Darling, well there's nothing really flowing down that. And in the Murray, there's water that is up in the Hume Dam and others that flows through in the allocations, which are determined by the state governments I should stress, and the environmental flows are a part of that. But that's an allocation, it's not, there's not that physical water necessarily in all cases which is being held there. I remember when I was growing up and I was studying these issues at university. Now I'm not a farmer and I've never pretended to be, but one of the biggest issues in that Basin was salinity. And that was killing our agricultural sector. The salinity. And one of the things the Basin Plan has achieved over a long period of time as it has been addressing those issues, is salinity. But we're looking at that issue very carefully. The other issue down there is the price of water and there are some agricultural production that today can't actually earn enough to buy the water. And that's why we’ve got those issues, particularly with the almond farmers down that way, and the water was going to where the users can pay for it. Now, that's a separate issue. That's about running a national water market and the Murray-Darling Basin plan. It's got nothing to do with drought. I should stress, on the Murray, that's about how the plan is working. And there are legitimate discussions that are being held around that and I have met with many of those farmers as well, and Sussan Ley in particular has been bringing those concerns to me, and I’m meeting with the Murray-Darling Basin team this week.
MURRAY: Gordon from Canberra says, my question to the PM relates to towns that are running out of water due to the drought. Australia has a national power grid. Why don’t we have a national water grid?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, we are putting that very water grid in place now. We only stood up this month and that will build, and that will be managing some 21 national projects which are running in several states around the country, including the Dungowan Dam, and I was up there with the Premier announcing it the other day. And so there is this network of water infrastructure. But what I need to stress is when you're managing a drought, that everyone has a job, Commonwealth Government has a job, state governments have a job, local councillors have got a job. And our job is to look after directly those farm households with income support, to look after their welfare. And we've also put money into these towns as well. But we've let them make the decisions. So we've put $1 million bucks into over 120 shires and council areas. But we've said you've got the projects. You tell us what you think is most important. You make those decisions. And those projects have been everything from upgrading the local amenities block, and the town hall, which has put people in work, through to water cartage as well. State governments look after the animal welfare. Now, what that means is, the fodder subsidies, the freight subsidies, that's done by state governments and they pay for that. And those programs exist in New South Wales and in Queensland. Now, I've been assured by the New South Wales government that they have the arrangements in place to support those towns, that as their water draws right down, that they will be having the water in place in those towns to avoid that outcome. Now, that's their job, but it's a bit like saying, ‘well Scomo, why haven't you put more New South Wales police officers on the beat during a time?’ Or when that situation was happening down in Victoria some time ago and there was a real law and order problem down in Victoria, ‘Why won't you put more Victorian police officers on the beat?’ Well, it's because we don't run the Victoria Police Force or the New South Wales Police Force. In a drought, everyone has to do their jobs and we'll do our job. State Governments need to do their job. And local councils need to do theirs.
MURRARY: Well this, you may have pre-empted this one, which is Wayne who’s watching us in Rockhampton tonight. He says the PM could allay the fears about the drought, if we could, buy fodder from places like the US, New Zealand or wherever has it, by the shipload, send a ship to all the large ports in drought areas, sell this hay at $10 dollars a bale, which farmers would be prepared to pay, with the federal government picking up the difference in any way. Apart from sourcing it, what's your view about the federal government subsidising or outright buying the feed that would keep the animals alive?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, getting access- this is what's been advised to us from the feed sector, and that is, they haven't asked us to do that. There is Australian farmers who are actually growing feed and they’re selling it into this environment, and that's important to them. But there are also Australian farmers who are buying feed that aren’t necessarily affected by drought. Now, what they say to us is you go and subsidise something, and that pushes up the price. But again, that's not a matter that we're getting directly involved in because it's not for us to determine fodder subsidies or freight subsidies, the New South Wales and Queensland governments will be making their judgments on that. Now, I've been meeting obviously, as you’d expect with the National Farmers Federation pretty regularly and certainly the drought minister, and ag ministers have as well. They haven't recommended, they had their drought strategy they released just last week I think it was, they have not recommended additional freight or fodder subsidies. Now, it's a contested area. The thing in a drought is, I understand mate, while everybody feels passionately, this isn't a competition about who feels the most. We all feel it, all feel it. Your viewers will feel it. Listeners around the country. They all feel it, but most importantly, the people who are experiencing it are feeling it. So I'm not particularly- I'm less concerned about how I feel or how those who are delivering the support feel, or how politicians feel about this and what parties they are from, who cares? What matters is not how we feel, but what we do and what we do is important. And so I'm listening carefully to those producers around the country, and those communities. That's why we've kept stepping up. People have said, ‘Why have you gone and announced this again, and this again? Why couldn’t you have done that before?’ Because we made one announcement, we’ve gone back, how’s that going? Need a bit more? Ok great, we’ve worked that through, here’s the next announcement. And that's going to keep happening for as long as it takes, until it rains. But, you know, after the rain, the support is going to need to be there because people are going to need to restock. People have to get back on their feet and we need to be there for them then too. And we will be.
MURRAY: Noel says, he's ex-military. The best people to handle a drought situation is the military as they know how to put plans into action now. We have a natural disaster and water security issues, so let's make an immediate response rather than buggerising around with politicians. Noel, watching us in Mackay.
PRIME MINISTER: I want people whether they’re dam builders, water carters, fodder transporters, earth moving equipment on farms, farm hands, I want them doing the work because then they’re employed and that's good for the towns. That's why, I understand the- again, I understand the sense of feeling of urgency, but that's why we make these funds available at a local level directly within the farm, to ensure that they can be employed to do these very, very jobs. One thing you got to be careful of in this drought, is also do no harm. You want to help, but in your enthusiasm and in your passion and strong feeling to assist people, you don’t want to hurt at the same time and put someone out of a job. And we saw the same thing up in North Queensland when they had the floods. And the army had a role there for a period of time, particularly when we’re assisting with things like carcass removal and transporting some things around in an urgent situation, because that all happened in the space of 48 hours. So you’ve got to address the crisis situation as you find it, the drought is something that goes on for a very long period of time. And so if we believed that the, bringing in the military at particular points to assist, well those resources are available. But so far, that would mean putting someone out of a job to do just that, putting someone out of a job in a town that we want them to be in a job in. So they’ll go to the local IGA, or they’ll go to the local pub, or they’ll you know, pay for whatever they need to pay for, in the town.
MURRAY: This is from me. How do we make sure that that we don't get a school-halls like effect when you've got a lot of money and a lot of assistance going around…
PRIME MINISTER: It’s a good point.
MURRAY: …that we don't end up with a $800,000 dollars for a patio.
PRIME MINISTER: But this is very important. And that's why the program that we've had is sort of dripped out. So there’s time for the local councils, they already had some projects ready and that their current budgets weren't allowing them to do. And so that enabled them to go over some backlog of projects that had already gone through that proper process. And by having $1 million in to each council, that's a program that they can locally manage and not lead to those sorts of outcomes, because those big school hall programmes, that came from writing huge cheques to big contractors that ran across a whole state. And we know what happened. We want this- you know, we need this to be very targeted and we need to make sure we contain the benefit in these towns. I mean, a lot has been said about how much we're putting in, well the big number is about $7.5 billion. Now, that includes the Future Drought Fund. That's $5 billion. So let's put that to one side. There's $2.5 billion thereabouts over from last year all the way over about a 5 year period that we're putting into this. And each year alone, particularly right now, there's over $300 million dollars going in. And that's largely, almost all of that going into things like Farm Household Allowance, you know, the $65 million dollars we've given to Vinnies and the Salvos to go and give people $3,000 dollar payments to help them meet whatever bill they had coming up or put food on the table. It's, you know, $30 million or thereabouts that is going into things like mental health and health care support in these towns, rural financial counsellors, which I've got to tell you, they have been the angels of the drought. They have sat around kitchen tables and they've helped families make decisions, sometimes very difficult decisions. See in a drought, you can't wave a wand and make it like it was before the rain stopped falling. Droughts are hard. They're horrible. They're tough. They're difficult. And that is what droughts are. And we can provide a lot of support and assistance through that program together with state governments. But we don’t make it rain. And during that period, families will make difficult decisions and they need the best information and the best help to make those decisions for them. And the rural financial counsellors have been really important to that project, and they've been a key part of how we've tried to help people make the best decisions for them and their families.
MURRAY: PM, I look forward to doing this again very soon.
PRIME MINISTER: Thanks Paul.
