Alan Jones: It’s time to call a national disaster and co-ordinate all the resources of the nation
The government’s so-called plan for farmers in need is simply to saddle them with more debt, which they will never be able to repay, while foreign interests swoop in, writes Alan Jones.
Opinion
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- ‘We could have done more to reduce bushfire risk’
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From drought to bushfires!
Surely it is time to declare a national disaster and apply, in a co-ordinated way, all the resources of the nation.
And surely it is time for a National Disaster Fund where, each Budget, money is appropriated to that fund, the money invested and managed, for example, by former prime ministers.
Take your pick — Keating, Howard, Gillard, Rudd, Abbott.
Whatever the political persuasion of government, these disasters are always met with ad-hocery.
Last week we had what was called “another” drought package. The “another” proves the point.
Previous packages failed to address the issue. Tragically, so does this latest one. It’s been cobbled together again by bureaucrats, presumably because politicians have little understanding of the reality of drought.
Fancy telling farmers they can borrow $1 billion, interest-free, from the government.
The $1 billion figure is instructive because the electorate is incensed $1 billion has been given to the Clean Energy Finance Corporation by a Coalition government; yet Tony Abbott twice went to an election promising to abolish the CEFC.
In the process, Abbott won 25 seats from Labor. A Coalition-dominated House of Representatives twice voted for the abolition of this corporation.
Yet here is a Coalition government, in 2019, giving this outfit another billion, concessional loans not to be repaid, to renewable energy projects.
This on top of the billions that have been given to renewable energy projects, which distort the energy market and prop up one energy product at the expense of another, coal.
Indeed, one condition of this latest $1 billion is none of it goes to a coal-fired project.
But back to the drought and the loans to farmers. The first two years of loans, we’re told, will be interest-free.
Presumably government thinks the drought will be over in two years and money will fall from trees because after two years, the interest rate is 3.11 per cent, more than three times the cash rate. Presumably someone in Canberra thinks the cash will start rolling in 2021.
It seems no one in Canberra understands what a loan is. You sign up and commit to monthly repayments.
No farmer will sign up to these loans because they know in 2021 they will have no cash to repay the 3.11 per cent, let alone the principle. Even if the drought broke today, there is no likelihood of cash flowing to the farmer by 2021.
The Prime Minister said he had been “on the ground listening to farmers and their communities”.
I don’t know which farmers. They need money, now, to pay for fodder, water and freight/transport.
Why do we underwrite university students but not farmers?
We do not say the only people who can go to university are sons and daughters of the rich. We have a HECS scheme, now called HELP (Higher Education Loan Program). The cost of your university education will be paid for down the track when your income, post-graduation, reaches $45,881.
The total student indebtedness is now in excess of $60 billion.
That means student education is underwritten by the government, which is us, the taxpayers; just as in the global financial crisis we, the taxpayer, underwrote the banks.
We still do. Your deposits up to $250,000 are guaranteed if the banks fall over.
But not the farmers, nor regional businesses. Those businesses, too, can “borrow” $500,000 on the same terms as farmers if such businesses are “affected by the drought”.
Time and space do not allow me here to document the bureaucratic codswallop that has to be navigated even to make application.
I would venture to say not one farmer will be dipping into this $1 billion.
They can’t afford the repayments on their existing loans, let alone new loans. And under the stupid criteria, which no politician would have read, few farmers qualify!
Unbelievable!
But we subsidise renewable energy. That money is not paid back. We subsidise childcare to the tune of $12 billion a year. That money is not paid back.
In an interview I conducted last week with the Deputy Leader of the National Party, the current Agriculture Minister, Bridget McKenzie, she cheerily advised farmers could agist their stock in parts of Australia where there is fodder and water. I couldn’t believe what she was saying!
Here are farmers who have no money to pay off existing loans; they can’t pay boarding school fees although many of these farms are miles and miles from schools; they can’t pay the butcher or newsagent or mechanic.
If you wanted to agist 3000 cattle to, say, Victoria, you’d need about 30 B-doubles. The cost of a B-double for freight is about $7000. Can Canberra multiply: 30 by 7000 equals $210,000.
Then when you get there you have to agist the cattle: $6 a week each, that’s $18,000 a week.
We could feed Asia if we looked after our farmers. We’re supposed to be the great food bowl. But we are destroying the bush, or what is left after the fires. Destroy the breeding stock and our rural industry is gone.
Farmers can’t handle their current debt. And a bureaucratic-inspired government is offering new loans.
Based on the latest forecast, we have mapped where fires on the north coast are likely to spread during tomorrow's dangerous weather. The red shows the predicted spread of fire. Check https://t.co/NXTTCbYtYQ for detailed information, advice and maps. #nswrfs #nswfires pic.twitter.com/gVstnWDrxC
— NSW RFS (@NSWRFS) November 11, 2019
When farmers shoot or sell their breeding stock, they have no revenue stream when the drought breaks; but in parts of Queensland and NSW the stock are so poor they can’t be moved. You can’t get them to the sale yard or into a truck. You know what happens then.
But we are sending our farmers broke. As the farmers say to me, it is a politician-inspired crisis.
China is moving in, buying the dairy farms and beef farms and avocado farms. They are using our paddock to put our food on their plate.
But we give foreign mining companies water for free and we deny our farmers access to water flowing past their property and call that water “environmental flows”.
As if the farmers were not part of the environment.
Incidentally, on bushfires, where are the Greens? Out there fighting the fires, do you think? But in good times, they will not allow the fuel on the floor to be removed.
And where are the animal welfare mob?
Are they concerned that a farmer has to shoot his breeding stock because they are too poor to be moved and he cannot afford to feed them.
We are living in strange times.
But if common sense answers do not prevail, we are doomed and that is not an Orwellian prediction.
Listen to the Alan Jones Breakfast Program on 2GB weekdays from 5.30am-9am.