Alan Jones: Farmers get nothing in $1b drought relief package
Music festivals? Cemetery upgrades? It’s worse than a joke when the government promises money for farmers and then sends it to programs that won’t help them, writes Alan Jones.
Opinion
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I am broadcasting this week from drought ravaged NSW, focusing on Bourke and Dubbo.
As happens in the bush, people have come from hundreds of miles to tell their story and be heard.
Two issues dominate all others; firstly, water and the appalling imposition that is known as the Murray Darling Basin Plan, but that will have to remain for another day.
But secondly, there is the so-called $1 billion package released recently by the Morrison government, presumably to assist beleaguered farmers.
The anger in the bush about this is palpable.
As the horseracing commentator Ken Howard used to say, I’ll bet London to a brick that no one in the Morrison cabinet has read this unreadable document.
Remember, it was announced as “another” package, meaning that everything to date in this adhocery had failed.
Of course, there is the Farm Household Allowance of $250 a week when a bale of hay is, these days, $200.
Why, in anybody’s name, is $25 million being given for “combating pests and weed impacts” during a drought?
Canberra hasn’t yet learnt that nothing grows during drought.
What about $77.2 million for Bureau of Meteorology radars?
You could not make this stuff up.
Then the federal government announced a billion dollars for the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, almost joining the Extinction Rebellion mob arguing, apparently, that climate change is such a crisis that the taxpayer has to fork out a billion dollars to subsidise renewable energy projects.
Not one cent for coal-fired power.
Following that outcry, up Canberra comes with a $1 billion program for farmers.
This was meant to tell Australians that the government was looking after our farmers, but, as one farmer said: “The one thing that breaks our hearts is knowing that Morrison and Frydenberg will not help us.
“They don’t want us anymore. They don’t believe in us. We know we can make it through but we just needed a bit of a hand to get through. They have refused to give us a hand at all.
“Everything they have promised, all the loans and handouts, is just smoke and mirrors to convince the public. There is no money anywhere out here. We are all broke. But you know what, we are not yet broken.
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“We are Australians and we have the blood of the Anzacs in us. We will never give in. But we will tell you this, our political leaders are complete bastards because they have deliberately turned their backs on us and they thought they could get away with it. But while ever we still have a sandwich and a drink of tea we intend to fight on. They thought we were as weak and gutless as they are in Canberra. Well, Alan, they don’t know us.”
It is brutal language, but these are brutal times.
I always say my listeners and readers are my best researchers.
If anyone in Canberra had cared to read this nonsense before releasing it, they could have saved themselves the public anger that I have detected in the bush.
Peter, a farmer from Blackbutt in Queensland wrote to me to say: “I worked with an American colleague some time back and he had a favourite saying, always do the math.”
Peter did and I have.
So, what does the math say?
Peter was generous enough to suggest that some are saying the package is $1.5 billion.
Let’s give the Morrison government the benefit of the doubt and say it’s $1.5 billion.
There is $200 million of it for ‘Building Better Regions’.
A limit of $10 million per project.
But there are 122 drought-declared shires. $200 million won’t go far.
And none of this $200 million is for farmers, or to feed stock.
This is about promoting music festivals and cemetery upgrades.
Then there is $139 million for the ‘Roads to Recovery’ program.
As Peter pointed out: “It costs about $1 million per lane per kilometre to construct a standard class 3 road … So a two-way carriageway over a kilometre costs $2 million.”
Do the math.
This will build about 70km of roadway.
Peter again: “There are 7000km of unpaved roads in my shire, let alone how many there would be in the 122 drought-declared shires … It is like putting a Band-Aid on an elephant’s backside.”
$10 million is to go to schoolchildren in drought-declared regions.
But the money goes to schools!
Nothing for the kids of farmers living miles from nowhere who have to board to obtain an education, while parents are struggling with school fees.
Then, $122 million to 122 councils.
None of that will provide rate relief to farmers.
A $50 million discretionary fund. No one knows what that is for.
Someone has dreamt this stuff up.
Government by bureaucrats!
All that comes to $521 million, and not a cent to a farmer!
If the package were $1.5 billion, and it’s not, but supposing it is, that leaves $979 million for concessional loans.
But according to the Australian Department of Agriculture, in a report titled Agricultural Lending Data 2016-17, and released in October 2018, there are 145,656 farm business entities in Australia.
According to the report, Australian banks held a little over $70 billion in lending to the agricultural sector.
So average farm debt is $481,428.
These concessional loans are capped at $500,000 maximum, supposedly available to farmers and supporting agribusinesses suffering from the effects of drought.
So not all will go to farmers.
But if a billion dollars is available at a maximum of $500,000 per loan, that is 2000 loans.
As Peter says, halve it and say average, $250,000, which is about half the average farm debt. That would provide for 4000 loans.
If there are 145,656 farm businesses in Australia, and probably more than 100,000 suffering from drought, here is uncle Canberra offering 4000 loans! Big deal!
That is 2.7 per cent of all farmers who could get a loan under the scheme.
Put another way, if the Australian farm debt is $70 billion, the $1 billion offered addresses 1.4 per cent of the total farm debt; and still no money for fodder, water, freight and rates.
Imagine a drought package which, at best, could assist only 3 per cent of farmers. And that is providing the scheme works.
I keep saying, you can’t make this stuff up.
From the government’s last concessional loan package, only 93 applied, that is 0.06 per cent of all farm business entities, and only 67 of the 93 got a loan.
That’s 67 out of 145,656 farmers.
Even if the farmers could qualify, the package is useless, but it is totally deceptive.
As farmer Peter says: “It’s designed only to make the government look generous while doing absolutely nothing to confront the real drought issue; and make many think bloody farmers have just been given a billion dollars and they are still whingeing.”
If you do the maths, this is a gigantic ruse which totally undermines the credibility of the Morrison government.
The most telling fact is there is no money for farmers. Never has been and never will be under this absurd package.
It is all smoke and mirrors.
Peter concludes: “If this drought assistance package has the signatures of the Nationals, Littleproud, McKenzie, and the missing-in-action McCormack, Australian farmers have been sold a pup not the working cattle dog that was desperately needed. This could never work. The farm HECS scheme is the only workable solution, but those ignorant bastards in Canberra just won’t listen.”
Scott Morrison needs to start listening to those who know, not the bureaucrats who do not know.
Catch Alan’s special radio broadcasts this week on 2GB today, 5.30am-9am from Dubbo RSL, Wednesday, 5.30am-9am at Dubbo Harvey Norman, and Thursday, 5.30am-9am at Dubbo RSL. Alan will also be broadcasting tonight on Sky News at 8pm from Dubbo RSL and tomorrow at 8pm from Dubbo Harvey Norman. There is a special drought fundraiser
Thursday, November 28, 6pm, Melos Italian Restaurant, Potts Point, Sydney.