Grievance Debate

Drought Assistance

Ms PRATT (Frome) (15:13): Mr Speaker, thank you for giving me the call and I want to echo your sentiments. I thought that the house had forgotten its manners there for a while, but we welcome our friends from Salter Springs, Burra, Kimba, Saddleworth, Riverton, Marrabel and Manoora. You are welcome in this house and we thank you for giving up your time today, stepping off farm, leaving your work behind to come and share an important message with us today, and that is to bring awareness back to the chamber, back to the government, back to the city about what it means to be a primary producer at the moment.

We have seen the chamber emptied—government members have got other places to be—but the Liberal Party is with you all the way. In regard to the comments that we have heard from the Premier today—questions about where is the relief coming from, when will it come, how long do you have to wait—our challenge back to the government is that they need to do more, they need to do better, and they need to do it faster.

You cannot wait, our primary producers cannot afford to wait, until the budget. They are hurting now. This is not a drought that has taken place in the last six months. This is not a drought that has just appeared over the last 12 months. We have seen a decline in rainfall for up to 18 months and, for some farmers in lower rainfall territory, it extends for years, and the government knows this.

We have ministers who are getting briefings from bureaucrats. You are getting advice—some of it I would contest is misguided—but the advice is clear: we are in a drought. That dirty D word: it took the government a long time to use it; they were not prepared to use the word 'drought' last year. We are in drought conditions now and we want to see a better, faster response from the government by comparison to some of the relief packages that they are quick to offer on other issues.

The word 'emergency' has applied to a reduction in water supply in the Adelaide Hills, and there are members in my team who represent those areas. But there is an emergency elsewhere. It is statewide and this government does not have an answer to the water infrastructure crisis that we are facing. We see it in pricing, we see it in quality, we see it in supply, we see it in pressure. For the farmers who are here today representing their regions, the government needs to put boots on the ground, come out, meet you where you are at and have conversations with you about what you need.

It is a nuanced response. There is not one answer. We cannot have a single sentence on a document that says, 'This is the fix'. We need funding, but we need the Minister for Primary Industries to get out into regional South Australia, not in a car that is driven by a driver that has public servants in the back telling her what the answers are.

The farmers who are here are representing groups that have been hurting for a long time, and I do not get any feedback that they are seeing their Minister for Primary Industries where they are at. It is dusty, it is dry, and there are details that might sound little, like clothes which are difficult to wash and gardens that are dying, bores that are salty and dams that are empty, and families that are paying a levy for the privilege to pump no water from an empty dam. These are the kitchen-table issues that families are facing.

We have a fantastic representation from people who have come off farm today to come to the city, come to the government, meet the government here in this chamber because they are not seeing the government out on the ground. The Premier wants to pat himself on the back for a country cabinet coming 40 minutes out of the city, but that is not dryland farming.

We are amazing in our capacity to farm dry land. To think that on rainfall alone we can get up to seven tonnes off prime arable farming land without irrigation puts South Australian farmers at the top of the pack. But they are struggling at the moment, and we are hearing really sad stories of farmers who know they have to diversify their income—they are driving buses, they are contract fencers, they are teachers—we even have mental health workers who have to stay on the farm. This government needs to do more, needs to do better, and it needs to do it faster.

There being a disturbance in the gallery:

The SPEAKER: I think they are clapping for you standing up there, member for Mount Gambier.