Jaclyn Symes needs to make a strong case for agriculture

VICTORIA needs an agriculture minister that leads not follows, writes PETER HUNT.

Speak up: Victoria’s new Agriculture Minister Jaclyn Symes is failing farmers with an inadequate response to their crippling problems. Picture: Yuri Kouzmin

IT’S time Victorian Agriculture Minister Jaclyn Symes stepped up to the mark and delivered for the state’s farmers and timber industry.

Animal activist invasions, Gippsland’s prolonged drought, northern Victoria’s unfolding dairy crisis and uncertainty over cutbacks to native forest logging for 4000 timber workers are all in need of urgent attention.

But to date the newly-minted minister seems either unwilling or unable to gain her Cabinet colleagues’ support in delivering meaningful action on any of these issues.

Ms Symes didn’t do her reputation any good by making her first one-day drought tour out to an irrigated dairy farm just before Christmas, where she stood up to her calves in lush green pasture.

It took until February 22 for her to finally land in Giffard, the epicentre of the drought, where she drew the scorn and derision of most farmers by offering them $2500 Farm Business Assistance grants.

The message was clear — “Why did she bother?” and “Give us rates relief”. It was little more than tokenism.

Since then we’ve had what borders on mismanagement of $8.45 million in taxpayers’ drought aid for educational support, which has funded free school camps for Gippsland Grammar kids, school shoes for Sale lawyers’ children and free kinder for the kids of offshore oil and gas-rig workers.

Oh and now we find out Gippsland businesses are missing out on supplying local families with uniforms and shoes purchased by parents using this drought aid, as most of the spend is going straight back to Melbourne.

Let’s not forget the massive collapse of northern Victoria’s dairy industry, which has gained even less attention from the Government than the Gippsland drought.

Then there’s the ominous delay in the release of VicForest’s timber release plan, which was due out last July.

While Ms Symes has inherited this ticking bomb, she must deliver access or meaningful support to central and eastern Victoria’s 4000 timber workers, mills and their communities.

It is the minister’s job to deliver certainty, not exacerbate fear of the unknown.

The challenges are great. But the minister needs to prove she is willing to work for farmers, not just follow the lead of the Premier and Treasurer.

As Minister for Agriculture and Regional Development Ms Symes must demand a greater share of funding for the country.

She cannot sit by and simply nod in agreement with the Government’s obsession with blowing billions on level-crossing removals and Melbourne’s Metro rail tunnel, while offering drought-stricken farmers $2500.

She cannot sit by while 70 animal activists storm a farm and then sit on the sidelines as one of them gets a $1 fine for stealing livestock and breaching Victoria’s biosecurity system.

Why can’t Ms Symes follow the NSW Government’s lead and introduce aggravated trespass laws that hit activists with decent fines, recognising the risk, fear and isolation many rural people feel when their homes are invaded?

And why can’t the minister let the timber and northern dairy industries know she is in there battling to get the best deal she can for them and their regional communities? It’s her job.

• Peter Hunt is a Weekly Times senior reporter