Tuesday, 27 May 2025

Grievance debate

Drought

Roma BRITNELL (South-West Coast) (16:01): Today I rise to grieve for all Victorians, who are struggling under a government that sees the only way to govern Victoria as to keep slapping taxes on Victorians, ignoring the fact that families are struggling and that families cannot take any more taxes under this cost-of-living crisis – they just cannot take any more. I grieve for our farmers in South-West Coast; I just do not think they can take any more.

South-west Victoria is in the grip of the most devastating drought ever seen. In south-west Victoria a land once lush with promise is cracking beneath our boots. The paddocks are dust, not a blade of grass to be found. The dams are dry. Our people, the farmers, the lifeblood of this land, are doing everything they can just to hang on. These are our food producers. They rise before the sun, their hands are calloused and their spirits are tested, and they are still trying to do what they have always done: feed this state, feed this nation, feed you and me. How much do we think they can take? How much should they be pushed by this government ignoring them? Their mental health is under enormous strain. And what do we think is going to happen when their backs are pushed too far up against the wall? There is a six-week wait to get in to see a rural financial counsellor, and that is the only mental health support that is available.

The farmers feel like this government has deserted them. They cannot afford to feed their stock, they cannot borrow any more from the government and they are taxed to the hilt by a government more interested in ledgers than livelihoods – a government that treats our producers not as partners but as numbers on a spreadsheet.

Where is this government’s understanding? Where is the Allan Labor government’s genuine support? And where are the leaders? Where are they when these farmers are crying out for assistance? The Minister for Agriculture is missing in action, unable to answer the question: when were you last here, Minister? Well, I think from my calculations, it was eight months ago when the Minister for Agriculture visited Mortlake – eight months. So much has happened in those last eight months. I think if Minister Spence visited Mortlake again, she would be shocked at the landscape that was terrible then but is devastated now. These men and women, these farmers, are not asking for handouts; they are asking for fairness, for vision – for rain, yes, no doubt about that, and not 1 mil or 3 mils, like we have seen in the last couple of days. That is not rain and it is not hope. But without our farmers, we need to recognise there is no food security, no economy, no future.

The Allan Labor government have run Victoria into the ground. This enormous debt facing Victoria of $194 billion is no excuse for deserting our food producers now.

What we need to understand, though, is that this debt the government have racked up equates to $29 million per day in interest payments required to be paid by the government – not to pay the debt down, just to pay the interest on that debt. Compare $29 million a day with how much drought relief the government has offered farmers – not even $29 million, not even one day’s worth of interest payments. This government has got its priorities all wrong.

We saw this week a multimillion-dollar injection into Luna Park. Just two weeks ago the grand prix, a four-day event, was given $350 million. What would $350 million do for our farmers? Our community are reaching out to help. They are doing whatever they can to demonstrate to the farmers that they care. They are putting on drought relief concerts. There are 240 people booked in for a drought event tonight. That will demonstrate to our farmers that their community wants to see that they are okay, but it will not actually fix the problem. That is the government’s job, and we are not seeing any empathy or understanding. Mark my words, the ramification of this will be felt across all Victoria. Families who are struggling with the cost-of-living crisis will struggle more when they have to pay much more for milk to put on the Weeties in the morning for the kids, to buy a latte in Melbourne and right across Victoria or to buy the lamb chops for dinner on Sunday night, or the roast, the steak or the mince meat. These are the ramifications of this drought. Without assistance, prices will go up – if you can actually get products, because many, many animals are being sent to slaughter. There just is not any feed, and the government needs to help.

There is feed in Western Australia. The Victorian Farmers Federation have come out today with a drought relief strategy that they are asking the Premier to listen to, and they have talked about some things that can be put in place now to halt this terrible situation and give the farmers some relief. So I ask – no, I do not ask, I demand – that the Premier and the Minister for Agriculture wake up to the reality of what is happening in the west and come and stand in the dust with us, feel the heat of the anger from being ignored, look into the eyes of farmers who have just sent their last cows to slaughter and tell them to just keep going. How? It is time to act. It is time to invest in our farmers and our food future. It is time for the Allan Labor government to care, because when our farmers go under, the rest of us will not be far behind.

The government can start helping farmers by scrapping the new emergency services volunteer tax. It rips $2.1 billion out of all Victorians’ pockets. It targets farmers in particular. At a time when they can least cope with the pressure they are under, this government targets them by charging them three times their current fire services levy fee. It is a tone-deaf government. Residential home owners will be paying double. For businesses and commercial properties it is a massive increase as well. Renters, as Treasurer Symes said in the debate last week in the Parliament here, will be affected, with $310 million coming out of renters’ pockets. But renewable developers will pay 96 per cent less as a reduction by this government to ensure we have more renewable energy. These are overseas multimillion-dollar companies, often, who already get subsidies to assist with renewable energy, and they are often foreign-owned companies such as IKEA or Vestas. Where is the reasonableness in this?

CFA volunteers are rebelling against this government’s cruel trickery. They are going offline – brigade after brigade, truck after truck – as a show of defiance of this levy. It is insulting to the CFA and SES volunteers, who were told they would get a rebate – an exemption, actually, not a rebate. The government has tried to fool them into believing that they are exempt from the levy, but they know they are paying three times more, which equates to actually thousands of dollars a year more than last year – year in, year out. The exemption which they are getting, which is actually a rebate, is on average just $108, and the details of how they get it – in your frequently asked questions – are yet to be determined.

So insulting is the claim by this government that emergency services will get more funding from the increased tax – well, that is the claim that the government have been making, but the reality is quite clearly outlined in black and white in the budget papers. Have a look at page 158 of budget paper 3. You can look it up online. Have a look; it is there to be seen. The government’s increase in income from the levy equates to $600 million, yet you can see there is a decrease in income going to the emergency services, like the CFA and SES, of $203 million less than last year. The government get more in tax coming in to fill the coffers of consolidated revenue. Do not believe they are going to be giving it all to emergency services, because right in front of your eyes on that budget paper 3, page 158, it tells you they are getting $203.1 million less.

At a post-budget breakfast attended by 200 people the Treasurer Jaclyn Symes was so tone-deaf to the pain felt by our community, who are taxed to the hilt, she asked the audience, ‘What’s your favourite tax?’ This Treasurer, tone-deaf to Victoria’s pain from the 61 taxes inflicted by this callous government, was making a joke. What else could that have been? A developer in the audience said, ‘It’s like the Victorian government wear this punishing tax regime as a badge of honour.’ How tone-deaf, making jokes: ‘What’s your favourite tax?’ The councils across Victoria are all banding together, saying no to the government. They do not want to be the dirty tax collector for this exorbitant amount of money. It is not what they were being asked to do in the past; it is a hell of a lot dirtier. They know their communities cannot take this tax. They know the farmers cannot tolerate it. They know there is not $2 million or $4 million, depending on the size of the council, that is in the community – they just cannot do it. And then the government makes jokes.

We Liberals recognise the pain of the emergency services and volunteers tax, and we will scrap it when elected next year. This tax causes pain for every Victorian – home owners, renters and businesses – and targets farmers specifically with a 150 per cent increase. We Liberals understand you incentivise, you enable, and you will get an economy to grow. Punishing taxes hold back Victorians. You will not get growth from punishment.

This government are still handing out money. I think Victorians are seeing that they are giving more than they are getting back, though, in the freebies that are being announced, like the free public transport for kids under 18. That is a great announcement for people in the city, but as my country counterparts keep telling me, there is no public transport in the country. Our kids cannot get from Woolsthorpe to Warrnambool on public transport or from Mortlake to Warrnambool or Port Fairy. There just is not the public transport. So it is a cruel joke when the country is doing it so tough. It is a useless promise.

Let me be clear: what is happening right now in South-West Coast is not just a rural issue, it is a crisis with shockwaves that will be felt across every town and every city, all the way to the kitchen tables of Melbourne. This drought is gutting our farmers, stripping them of their livelihoods and leaving entire communities on the brink. As they fall, so too will the stability of our food supply, with skyrocketing costs for meat, milk and everyday essentials that every Victorian depends on.

Premier Allan and Minister for Agriculture Spence, it is time to get out of your offices and come to the south-west, see the dying paddocks, speak to the farmers and hear the desperation in their voices. You cannot keep being so tone-deaf to this devastation. Announce drought disaster relief now – not next month, not next season, now – and scrap this cruel and cowardly emergency services tax passed last week, which slaps just another burden on farmers, our CFA volunteers and every single Victorian household, renters included.

This is not leadership, this is abandonment. And let me remind you: without food producers there is no food, and without food there is no future. Ignoring this crisis is not just negligent, it is foolish and it is dangerous. South-West Coast will not be silenced – our farmers are way too important. We all understand their value, and we know that the community around the farmers will also be absolutely devastated for years and years to come. The farmers have asked me to beg the government to come and listen. South-West Coast cannot take this irresponsible government much longer.