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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2025-09-17 Daily Xml
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Bills

Drought Response and Recovery Coordinator Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 3 September 2025.)

Mr PEDERICK (Hammond) (10:33): I rise to speak to this very important bill relating to drought response and recovery. I note—and I say this in a very broad sense—that I believe that across the last two seasons in the agriculture area we have had only about 40 per cent of the rain, or less in places, right across the state, and this has had a devastating effect not just on our primary producers but on communities, small, large and medium-sized communities, right across the state. It has been a devastating impact.

The costs of farming these days—and I have talked about it many times here—run into the millions of dollars just for plant. Many of your major items are $1 million each if you are buying new plant. Yes, not everyone buys new plant, but then you still have to spend many hundreds of thousands to have the appropriate plant to put a crop in, and not just that: even on a small scale these days, just on your farming inputs, many people would be spending if not $1 million, very close to it.

Some of the bigger operators would be spending $4 million to $5 million just on inputs. When I talk about inputs, that is your seed, your fertiliser, your chemical inputs. It is not just during the growing season but during the preparation to put a crop in, making sure you conserve all the moisture that you can. Then if you have lay paddocks that you have to set up, it is spray topping them beforehand. Mind you, most cropping land nowadays is cropped all the time, though there are significant parcels of land that were left out this year. I know at some down home, in particular my property that I leased out, there was some land left out just to keep stock, to keep ewes alive and to keep lambs alive, because they were lambing at the time when a decision was made to put a crop in or not.

Last year especially was devastating. It was a devastating drought year for this state. We had way below average rainfalls—that far below it is not funny. It was not just the driest year on record; it was the driest year not on record, l believe. Just because we do not have records does not mean it was not that dry. It was a very tough year to get through. Crop yields were way down. There was black frost. A lot of people cut wheat for hay, putting maybe two header runs, which could be 12-metre runs each way, so 24 metres of crop into a windrow. If you did not do that, it would not be tall enough to rake. It would fall out of the hay rakes and you would lose whatever return you had.

So it has been an incredibly difficult time. Then we get into this season, where there were a lot of late starts. Most crops are probably at least six weeks behind. Yes, as you drive around the state, you can see some pretty handy-looking crops, but they are short. The canola is out in flower and that looks all good, but I can tell you that in a lot of places there still is not enough rain. In some areas there has been just enough rain to stabilise the crop. We need all the rain we can get through to November-December so that we can get not just grain and oilseed crops off but vital hay crops.

People have been spending an incredible amount of money. In some cases, people have been spending a quarter of a million dollars just on their own to keep stock alive. People have taken the brave decision to hold all their breeding stock, 8,000 ewes and lambs, to keep their production alive. Others have taken the drastic step of reducing numbers or getting right out of stock, which means that they have a long way to come back to recover from this drought if they have to buy stock in. It is having devastating impacts right across the state.

We see what happened the other day with those fierce winds. That would have taken whatever available moisture was there, noting that in most places they are only getting five to six millimetres of rain a week, if they are getting that. The winds would have just sucked almost the life out of the soil, so that much-needed rain is vitally needed. That is the real answer for agriculture: it is rain, but it is not coming. In the meantime, we need to have the appropriate drought response and recovery coordination to make sure we do get the right response.

I note that the government's response to put in $73 million has beefed up Rural Business Support. That is a vital service that operates all the time, providing vital mental health counselling and directing people to services and farm household support, but the reality is that probably 10 per cent or less of farmers can access farm household support, so the rest have to get on with their lives.

There are other grants that have been put up by Infrastructure to offset the drought with better times, whether it is buying field bins to feed stock in the dry times, whether it is buying water infrastructure like tanks and pipelines. That is all good stuff, but the trick is you have to have money to co-invest, whether you are making a $5,000 co-investment alongside $5,000 from the government or $20,000. I can tell you that when people have literally not just scraped the barrel but have scraped out the bottom of the barrel and are through the bottom, there is no money to co-invest.

I note that federal drought response loans are available, but they are still running at 5.18 per cent, and that is still a lot of interest in this day and age to pay for the many millions of dollars that are needed for a successful farming operation in this day and age. We have called for low or no-interest loans to get people through. I think it would have been an appropriate response to go down that path, knowing that governments can borrow money on the bond markets pretty cheaply and probably still could have come at a net zero result for government or just down a little bit. I think that would have been a much better response to facilitate people getting through the seasons.

I note that in recent times Alex Zimmermann was appointed as the drought coordinator, and that is a good thing. I have worked with Alex whether in fire or flood, but we need more than that. We need people to have access to real support. Beyond that, we need people to know—I know with the National Drought Agreement that has been in place for probably nearly a decade now, people say drought does not get declared, but people out there in the real world, outside politics, generally do not know that that exists because it is not publicised.

It is far better, as this bill suggests, that we have a declared drought emergency so that not only farmers know that drought has been declared, because they have been frustrated not knowing how the system works at the moment, but also the bankers and the financiers, the ones who need to know what is going on. I am sure there were plenty of straight-up conversations late last year and early this year—and obviously going into this next harvest season—with their farmer clients on how the future is going to pan out. I think it would be better for everyone involved, including those in the political sector right across the board, because this is just about showing the reality of it so that people know that they are taken seriously.

I have said in this place before, with the way farmers are farming now—and have done for 20 years, 30 years, some for 40 years—with no-till farming methods, and a lot going to disc seeders with very minimal disturbance of the soil, or their single-pass seeders, there is very little disruption to the soil. I can tell you that if we had had these two years of drought even 30 years, 35 years or 40 years ago, you would have seen, as we used to see in the old days, dust blowing across roads, blinding people as they drove around the country, and you would have seen graders literally grading that valuable topsoil off the roads.

I can assure you that farmers are doing their bit. They are making absolute use of every inch, every millimetre of moisture that they can get to produce what they can. They are doing great things with the moisture that they are obtaining and the moisture they are saving by browning out ground before putting in a crop. They need to be acknowledged for what they are doing in supplying many, many billions of dollars to the state's economy, and they need to be recognised appropriately.

When times are tough like they are now—and I salute all the hay runs that have been happening as well—farmers need to be appropriately acknowledged so they know that not only do people care but they know that farmers are doing their best to feed not only South Australia but Australia and the world. I commend the bill.

Mr ODENWALDER (Elizabeth) (10:43): I move:

That the debate be adjourned.

The house divided on the motion:

Ayes 27

Noes 14

Majority 13

AYES

Andrews, S.E. Bettison, Z.L. Boyer, B.I.
Brown, M.E. Champion, N.D. Clancy, N.P.
Close, S.E. Cook, N.F. Dighton, A.E.
Fulbrook, J.P. Hildyard, K.A. Hood, L.P.
Hughes, E.J. Hutchesson, C.L. Koutsantonis, A.
Michaels, A. Mullighan, S.C. Odenwalder, L.K. (teller)
O'Hanlon, C.C. Pearce, R.K. Piccolo, A.
Picton, C.J. Savvas, O.M. Stinson, J.M.
Szakacs, J.K. Thompson, E.L. Wortley, D.J.

NOES

Basham, D.K.B. Batty, J.A. Brock, G.G.
Cowdrey, M.J. Cregan, D.R. Ellis, F.J.
Gardner, J.A.W. Hurn, A.M. Patterson, S.J.R.
Pederick, A.S. Pisoni, D.G. Tarzia, V.A.
Teague, J.B. Telfer, S.J. (teller)

PAIRS

Malinauskas, P.B. Whetstone, T.J.

Motion thus carried; debate adjourned.

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