Subjects: Coalition Government support for Australian dairy farmers; approval ratings; Labor’s budget black hole.
EO&E…
KIERAN GILBERT:
This is AM Agenda, with me now is Liberal frontbencher Scott Ryan. Senator Ryan, thanks for your time. First of all, the announcement by Barnaby Joyce the support package for dairy farmers, we have a lot of viewers in regional and rural areas who would be interested in this. It relates to the mishandling, really of a large cohort of dairy farmers by Murray Goulburn and Fonterra are having their incomes retrospectively cut. Can you talk us through exactly what has gone on here?
SCOTT RYAN:
Murray Goulburn and Fonterra, as we have read in the newspapers and seen here, announced some significant price cuts over the last fortnight. A lot of those are backdated and have a huge impact on the livelihoods of dairy farmers, particularly in my home state of Victoria and southern New South Wales. And so dairy farmers are undergoing a unique period of hardship because a lot of those price cuts, as I understand it, are backdated many, many months. It is not just a reduction of their income going forward, it is almost clawing back past income. And so the package Barnaby Joyce has announced today, in many ways is akin to the sort of support that is seen for drought stricken farmers for similar conditions outside of the farmers control. There is access to concessional loans, there is access to farm household payments where there is genuine hardship and there is support for financial counsellors to assist farmers and dairy farmers get back on their feet. In Victoria this is particularly acute because Victoria is Australia’s largest dairy producing region and because the price cut relates particularly to the world price, Victorian farmers are very exposed to that because the overwhelming majority of what we produce here is linked to the export market.
GILBERT:
This issue though, and the Murray Goulburn matter particularly, this has been something which has been the focus of much reporting in the AFR and elsewhere over a number of months. Is this just a short-term election campaign fix?
RYAN:
No, dairy is one of Australia’s great exports at the moment and even greater export opportunities moving forward under deals like the China free trade…
(Interrupted)
GILBERT:
So why hasn’t the Government done something sooner then, is the question?
RYAN:
What we have had is, yes there have been some issues with Murray Goulburn , and these are really about processes changing the price that they pay farmers and the contracts those farmers are under to processors. These price changes and clawbacks of income, that are quite extraordinary and outside the normal range of movement of prices, have really only happened since the election has been called. They really have only happened over the last fortnight. That is when it has become particularly critical, and Barnaby Joyce, who has long talked about these issues and also the opportunities the dairy industry has to export, has quickly to ensure that similar sorts of arrangements that are available to farmers impacted by drought, circumstances outside of their control, are available to dairy farmers. Because of the unique nature of the clawback that these price cuts are having on income, that in some cases they have already been paid. It is not all dairy farmers, dairy farmers supplying other processors haven’t had these price cuts and clawbacks. This is really something that is exceptional in nature, and that hasn’t happened at least in my memory.
GILBERT:
Let’s look at some other matters around there – I want to get your reaction on. Across the board the character traits surveyed by the Newspoll have Malcolm Turnbull losing a bit of paint. I guess that’s understandable when you look at the overall approval rating down, but is it a worry that the trajectory continues in that way and that Shorten continues to improve his numbers?
RYAN:
Well Kieran, I don’t follow the tables quite the same way others do. What I can tell is that my experience in the last three weeks but also over the last six months has been that the public are very warm towards the Prime Minister. The public understand that he is a person with his business experience, with his commitment to a growing economy and with his plan for a growing economy, has their interests at heart. They know that he leads a Government and he will make difficult decisions and that he will be honest about them, but also outline how they are part of a larger economic plan that provides for jobs and that provides for a transitioning and changing economy. The response I get with Bill Shorten is that no one wants him to be Prime Minister, and they know that he doesn’t have a plan for the country or for them, he just has a list of grievances that he is trying to get elected upon.
GILBERT:
And finally in relation to the costings issue –like some commentators this morning, and several of them, saying that Scott Morrison over-egged it yesterday; did the Treasurer and the Finance Minister over-egg their claims about this black hole?
RYAN:
Not at all. I think the Treasurer and the Finance Minister made it very clear that Labor has a black hole of somewhere between $32 or $35 and $67 billion dollars. Labor hasn’t even been specific enough about all their policies to provide an exact number. Some of their policies such as higher education don’t even have costings detail attached to them. And what we know about Labor is that when they were in office, when Bill Shorten was part of the Rudd and Gillard government, every single budget promise they made was broken. Every deficit ended up being worse than what they promised the year before. And so if Labor wants to go out and admit that they’ve got a $35 billion dollar budget deficit, and that they think that is good news somehow, then I look forward to Bill Shorten spruiking that. Because his record as part of the previous Labor government we all know it will be worse than that when the truth comes out.
GILBERT:
And a $30, $35 billion dollar discrepancy is pretty big. It’s your own black hole. It’s hardly credible isn’t it?
RYAN:
No not at all. No, no, not at all Kieran. What the Coalition pointed out yesterday and what Scott Morrison, the Treasurer, answered in great detail last night, was that if you look at everything Labor has said, there’s a $67 billion dollar black hole. Tony Burke’s histrionics sort of response to that, in that extraordinary press conference yesterday was basically to say look there’s only $35 billion dollars. Now, we know from Labor’s track record that it will always be worse than what Labor said, and when you look at what they have said over the last three years, it comes to $67 billion dollars.
GILBERT:
We’re out of time. Scott Ryan, appreciate your time this morning – the Minister for Vocational Education and Skills.
RYAN:
Thank you.
(ENDS)