Wednesday, 18 June 2025

Motions

Drought

Rikkie-Lee TYRRELL (Northern Victoria) (10:47): I move:

That this house notes that:

(1) Victoria is currently under the worst drought conditions in decades according to the Victorian Farmers Federation, with some areas having their lowest rainfall totals on record;

(2) farmers are bearing the brunt with:

(a) high feed and water costs;

(b) high fuel and energy costs;

(c) high freight costs;

(d) ever-increasing costs of day-to-day life;

(3) farmers are concerned with the proposed increases to the Emergency Services and Volunteers Fund levy for the 2026–27 financial year and beyond;

(4) agricultural production in Victoria in 2021–22 was valued at $20.2 billion and employed over 153,000 Victorians;

(5) the announcement of the expansion of the Allan Labor government’s drought support package on 30 May 2025 is commendable but more needs to be done;

(6) in October 2019, the then Andrews Labor government announced the farmers drought fund, providing payments of up to $3000 to farming families;

(7) farmers and councils have been pleading for this kind of targeted help to ease the strain of the ongoing drought;

and calls on the Allan Labor government to implement hardship funding for farming households to help with the pressures of the ongoing drought.

Today I rise to seek support for my motion, which quite frankly should not need convincing. This is not a partisan issue. It is not about politics; it is about people, about families, about the backbone of our state – our farmers, who are staring down one of the worst droughts in living memory. According to the Victorian Farmers Federation, Victoria is currently enduring the worst drought conditions in decades. Some areas have had their lowest rainfall totals on record – not in five years, not in 10, on record. That is how bad things are. And who is carrying the weight of this crisis? It is our farmers, the men and women who put food on our tables, who fuel our economy, who keep regional communities alive. They are battling not only a lack of rain but the crushing burden of high feed and water costs, skyrocketing fuel and energy bills, unaffordable freight costs and the proposed increase to the Emergency Services and Volunteers Fund levy in the 2026–27 financial year. On top of that, they are struggling with the same rising cost of living that every Victorian faces. It is relentless, it is unsustainable and it is unacceptable that more has not been done by this government to provide real targeted relief.

Let us be clear: Victorian agriculture is not a niche sector. In 2021–22 it was valued at $20.2 billion. It directly employed over 153,000 Victorians. These are real jobs, real livelihoods, not just in the bush but in our regional towns, our supply chains and our export markets. When farming suffers, Victoria suffers. Now, I do acknowledge that on 30 May the Allan Labor government expanded its drought support package. That is commendable, but let us be honest, there is more to be done. Our farmers have been pleading for help for months. Councils have been calling for targeted support and they are right to do so because they remember what real help looks like, such as the $3000 payments made to farming families back in 2019 under the farmers drought fund. What I am calling for in this motion is not radical. It is not excessive, it is reasonable, it is needed and it is overdue.

This house must send a clear message to our farmers, to regional Victorians, to every person working in agriculture, that we see them, we hear them and we will back them. I urge all of my colleagues to support this motion. Let us come together, not as political opponents, but as representatives of the people, and call on the Allan Labor government to implement genuine hardship funding for farming households now, because if we fail to act, we are failing the very people who feed us.

I would like to share with you now my own personal experience with surviving the drought. In 2018 and 2019 my husband I were trying to get our own dairy farm up and running. New to owning a farm and this part of Victoria, we were faced with the harsh reality of just how fast and severe a drought can strike in northern Victoria. My husband is a fifth-generation dairy farmer who has lived and worked through droughts before, but this was something new and devastating. The effects on my family were deep and lasting, from the stress taking a physical toll on both me and my husband, to the mental stress and anguish, damage to my marriage and the toll it took on my children, which is often overlooked. I had friends checking in on us daily for two years out of fear that they would find something tragic had happened to us. My children hid birthday invitations and they hid camp notices so as to not add to the burden that my husband and I faced. Six years on from that drought, the fractures in my family still remain. Drought leaves a lasting mark on not only the land but also the people who live and work that land.

Jacinta ERMACORA (Western Victoria) (10:51): I want to start by thanking Mrs Tyrrell for bringing this motion forward. I heartily support her sentiment expressed about not politicising this; let us understand the dynamics and support our farming communities and farming regions.

I would also like to say that I have seen firsthand the extraordinary stress that drought conditions have placed on our farmers and our farming communities. We have spoken in this chamber before about the pressures on farming communities, but I will just give you some additional examples. This motion provides an opportunity for me to do that.

Where the purchase of stockfeed is usually done on an account paid over time, after a month or three months or so, stockfeed suppliers are now demanding cash payments. Farmers are now approaching their banks to actually get extensions on their overdrafts or indeed extensions on their mortgages to pay for stockfeed. As we know, stockfeed is an operational cost, not a capital cost. Increasing credit risks mean that many farmers are having to pay on the spot to secure feed, and this means negotiating with their banks, which is also an extremely stressful thing to do given the circumstances. It is a stressful experience at the best of times, but when the outcome is so important and so critical it is doubly so. Farmers are struggling to source and pay for feed while watching the condition of their stock deteriorate. Sheep farmers are watching ewes abandon newborn lambs, cattle farmers are weaning calves before their time to save the mothers, and many are making the heartbreaking decision to destock, which represents decades of careful breeding basically lost.

These impacts have a ripple effect on the rest of our communities. I would point you all to a really good article in today’s Standard – I have not checked to see if it is in the paper version, but it is in the online version – written by Jessica Greenan, and it takes the town of Cobden as an example. All of the businesses have spoken about their experiences in recent months and years, and it is a beautiful microcosm, a very sad microcosm of how struggling farming communities play out across the entire economy. If you imagine what is happening in Cobden and times that by much of regional Victoria and certainly in the south-west of Victoria, you really do get a very clear and very distressing picture.

Suppliers have told me of their fears for the wellbeing of customers that they have worked with for years and about how their staff are coping with the constant conversations about prices, credit limits and the desperate need for feed and water. Charities have reported increased demand for their services. More farms, farm labourers and small business owners are seeking help for immediate personal needs. One south-west charity has set up a service to discreetly deliver food to farms because farming families are embarrassed to be seen seeking help. One service is busy putting together hampers for women in their community with items such as pads and tampons, shampoo and other toiletries, because women simply cannot afford these simple items anymore.

A timely autumn break would have allowed pasture growth to recover prior to soil cooling in the winter months. Unfortunately this did not eventuate. We are finally seeing some rain across south-west Victoria and western Victoria – last weekend Warrnambool had over 50 millimetres and it has had another 18 millimetres in the last 24 hours. However, while the rain is very welcome, we are now past the point where that rain can make a difference to pasture growth, so the benefit of that rain really is to soak the soil, and we are hoping that will continue, because if it gets down into the roots of trees, then once spring comes and the soil warms up you will have already wet soil ready for growth. Pastures are really not going to regenerate for six months, and it will take even longer for feed markets to recover because no-one will have spare to sell.

That is why the government has acted by expanding our drought support package to meet the real and immediate needs on the ground. I want to highlight one particular aspect of the drought package announced on 30 May which demonstrates the tailored and adaptive approach that we are taking. Recognising that farmers in the south-west are suffering the worst drought on record, the package includes specific additional supports such as $10,000 for farm drought infrastructure grants, with revised eligibility that includes water carting and pasture re-establishment for both crop and livestock farmers; a south-west drought coordinator; a south-west small business financial counsellor; additional capacity for the Rural Financial Counselling Service in the south-west; one-to-one mental health and wellbeing support; and the Victorian drought freight network, which will allow road trains up to 84 tonnes to transport critical grain and fodder to Victorian farms in need in the south-west. The drought package has been welcomed by many farmers and councils who have been calling for support that addresses not just immediate needs but also builds that resilience into the future.

The motion also refers to the farmers’ drought fund announced in 2019. That program offered direct payments and served an important purpose during a different period of dry conditions. However, today’s model reflects lessons learnt then. Rather than focusing solely on one-off payments, we are now working with a broader strategy that includes financial, technical, mental health and infrastructure assistance.

Whilst the drought is widespread, the particular circumstances of each enterprise vary. Each farm has a different mortgage level. Each farm will have different stock conditions and different feed reserves. The status of their in-ground pasture will vary, as will the type of farming. Then you have got localised weather conditions – whether your farm is in a valley or up on a hill or facing the northern slope or the southern slope. All of these create unique individual, different circumstances, and that is why this adaptive package that the Allan Labor government has put together is in place, so that each enterprise can apply for and seek help in the unique way that matches their circumstances.

That is why our drought package is more adaptable and sustainable, because the challenges we face are more complex. Droughts are becoming more frequent, more intense and more unpredictable due to climate change, and that means our response must also evolve. The adaptive model we have taken allows farmers to tailor the assistance that they seek. It is also worth noting that the Victorian government continues to advocate strongly to the Commonwealth government for national consistency in drought relief and long-term climate adaptation funding. This would be a really valuable contribution if the federal government did move in that space.

Whilst states have a key role to play in delivering support on the ground, a shared funding responsibility would ensure that communities can rely on robust safety nets no matter where they are in the country. As Mrs Tyrrell has said in her motion, Victoria’s agriculture sector contributes a significant portion to our economy. I would definitely say that the south-west of Victoria exists because of farming and profits because of farming, and that is why we are all there.

I want to thank the farming families, community leaders and local governments in western Victoria and across the state who have taken the time to share their experiences and their stories to help us put the package together that we have, and we are continuing to listen. I thank Mrs Tyrrell for her motion.

Bev McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (11:02): I thank Mrs Tyrrell for bringing this motion forward, but I also thank Mrs Tyrrell for coming to the farmers rally at Bookaar, where we benefited, as best we could, those farming families with a day of barbecue and conviviality. So thank you, Mrs Tyrrell. Mr Bourman came as well, as did the Leader of the Nationals Mr O’Brien – a very good turnout. But I did notice that not one person from the opposite side was there, even Ms Ermacora. You were down the road at Mount Noorat at some sort of truth-telling march or something. You could have just dropped in to the Bookaar rally to support all the farmers. In Ballarat on Sunday, there was not one Labor member. Minister Tierney, you could have turned up, Ms Settle – everybody could have turned up. You have never turned up at one meeting of farmers or firefighters on this issue, so do not pontificate over there about your concern, because you will not actually front the people that are really concerned.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Michael Galea): Mrs McArthur, I ask you to talk through the Chair, please.

Bev McARTHUR: Well, could you please ask your colleagues to refrain from interjecting as well, and I will keep going.

But, Mrs Tyrrell, thank you for coming. Mrs Tyrrell was at Bookaar, and she would have heard this amazing poem that was recited by a farmer and a firefighter of 40 years, Mr Patterson. It brought people to tears, and it was again recited in Ballarat. I am going to read it out here because I think it is very important. It is called ‘Rain from Nowhere’ by Murray Hartin:

His cattle didn’t get a bid; they were fairly bloody poor,

What was he going to do? He couldn’t feed them anymore,

The dams were all but dry; hay was thirteen bucks a bale,

Last month’s talk of rain was just a fairytale.

His credit had run out, no chance to pay what’s owed,

Bad thoughts ran through his head as he drove down Gully Road.

“Geez, great granddad bought the place back in 1898,

“Now I’m such a useless bastard, I’ll have to shut the gate.”

“Can’t support my wife and kids, not like my dad and those before,

“Crikey, Grandma kept it going while Pop fought in the war.”

With depression now his master, he abandoned what was right,

There’s no place in life for failures, he’d end it all tonight.

There were still some things to do, he’d have to shoot the cattle first,

Of all the jobs he’d ever done, that would be the worst.

He’d have a shower, watch the news, then they’d all sit down for tea

Read his kids a bedtime story, watch some more TV,

Kiss his wife goodnight, say he was off to shoot some roos

Then in a paddock far away he’d blow away the blues.

But he drove in the gate and stopped – as he always had

To check the roadside mailbox – and found a letter from his Dad.

Now his dad was not a writer, Mum did all the cards and mail

But he knew the writing from the notebooks that he used at cattle sales.

He sensed the nature of its contents, felt moisture in his eyes,

Just the fact his dad had written was enough to make him cry.

“Son, I know it’s bloody tough; it’s a cruel and twisted game,

“This life upon the land when you’re screaming out for rain,

“There’s no candle in the darkness, not a single speck of light.

“But don’t let the demon get you, you have to do what’s right;

“I don’t know what’s in your head but push the bad thoughts well away.

“See, you’ll always have your family at the back end of the day;

“You have to talk to someone, and yes I know I rarely did.

“But you have to think about Fiona and think about the kids.

“I’m worried about you, son, you haven’t rung for quite a while,

“I know the road you’re on ’cause I’ve walked every bloody mile.

“The date? December 7 back in 1983,

“Behind the shed I had the shotgun rested in the brigalow tree.

“See, I’d borrowed way too much to buy the Johnson place;

“Then it didn’t rain for years and we got bombed by interest rates.

“The bank was at the door; I didn’t think I had a choice,

“I began to squeeze the trigger – that’s when I heard your voice.

“You said ‘Where are you Daddy? It’s time to play our game’

“I’ve got Squatter all set up, we might get General Rain.’

“It really was that close, you’re the one that stopped me son,

“And you’re the one that taught me there’s no answer in a gun.

“Just remember people love you, good friends won’t let you down.

“Look, you might have to swallow pride and take that job in town,

“Just ‘til things come good, son, you’ve always got a choice.

“And when you get this letter ring me, ‘cause I’d love to hear your voice.”

Well he cried and laughed and shook his head, then put the truck in gear,

Shut his eyes and hugged his dad in a vision that was clear.

Dropped the cattle at the yards, put the truck away,

Filled the troughs the best he could and fed his last ten bales of hay.

Then he strode towards the homestead, shoulders back and head held high,

He still knew the road was tough but there was purpose in his eye.

He called his wife and children, who’d lived through all his pain,

Hugs said more than words – he’d come back to them again.

They talked of silver linings, how good times always follow bad,

Then he walked towards the phone, picked it up and rang his Dad.

And while the kids set up the Squatter, he hugged his wife again,

Then they heard the roll of thunder and they smelt the smell of rain.

So we are in a terrible situation in western Victoria and across many other parts of Victoria. This drought is probably the worst since 1900 – the federation drought – and more can be done by government and local government too. I just want to refer you to some people who are doing it really tough and who have called out government and bureaucracy for being totally uncaring and hopeless in this situation. One was a post by Posie Mann. She was trying to feed her stock on the roadside. She has no food in her paddocks.

[QUOTE AWAITING VERIFICATION]

Basically, hay is now so expensive that it is almost impossible to buy or find. Somebody came along, a pathetic individual –

she refers to –

who obviously has nothing better to do in the Moyne Shire Council for grazing the roadside. I know of other farmers locally who have been threatened with fines for doing the same thing. I was reported for ultimately reducing roadside fuel, reported for allowing my starving cattle access to the thousands of kilos of feed growing on our roadsides, with no other purpose than to regenerate and die back on a yearly basis – reported for allowing my cattle to supposedly roam free whenever they wanted, even though they were manned by people and dogs with legal roadside signs at each end. The shire’s reply projected with justification: ‘Roadside grazing –

listen to this –

puts motorbike riders and cyclists at high risk of hitting a cow pat and it spraying over them, which could cause an accident.

I mean, I ask you. And anyway, Posey says:

I have never seen a bloody cyclist down my road, which is a sleepy single-width track majoritively used by locals. Maybe we should be plucking every third bird out of the sky in case one shits on a cyclist and puts him off balance.

These are the sorts of nonsensical things that are seriously affecting farmers. Let them graze the roadsides. You will be doing us all a favour. And your grants are a complete farce. Nobody has got a spare $10,000 or $5000 to actually match them, and what will they buy in any case? So well done, Mrs Tyrrell, for the motion. I thank you.

Jeff BOURMAN (Eastern Victoria) (11:12): I rise to speak in support of Mrs Tyrrell’s motion. I could go through everything that is in here, but I am sure it has been gone through already. Farming communities and rural and regional communities have been suffering on a greater scale as time has gone on as we have the urbanisation of society. What that means is there is less attention being paid to the regions, and from successive governments you just see that happening. There are times when there is an attempt made to deal with it, and whether it is any good or not is for history to decide. But what I reckon has really come in at this stage is the drought. I remember the drought of the early 1980s. Ironically, I lived outside of Stuart Mill in central Victoria at the time, and even though it snowed one year, the rest of the time it was pretty dry, and then we saw over the years it did not rain, and eventually we had Ash Wednesday and things like that. And the poem Mrs McArthur recited, I heard that read out at a rally against the tax earlier. I think of the people I knew at the time, and I wonder how many of them felt that way. I will put it on record I remember one of my first dealings with someone that suicided was a friend from one of the neighbouring farms. I do not know what was going through her mind at the time she decided to do that. From a mid-age teenager – what do you want to call it; a teenager in the mid teens – it did not seem to make sense, but with the benefit of the years that go on you can see how things can get overwhelming for people. We have high feed and water costs, high energy costs, high fuel costs. I have brought up in this place a number of times that even just collecting firewood is now becoming a drama. You have got certain places, certain times, and if you do not own a four-wheel drive, a lot of it is just down to pure luck, about making your way down there.

I am hardly a libertarian, but the government should be staying out of people’s lives unless they need assistance. I am not talking about handouts. Handouts are good, but that does not fix the problem. The wild cost of hay and things like that – the government can help with that, whether it is through transporting, and there is the need for feed and hay runners and things like that. They could all benefit from government help.

That is where I think governments can step in and do some good, as well as giving cash grants as needed. But energy relief – we saw recently, I think it was last week, that there are going to be increases in electricity prices. As we are getting pushed further and further towards being electrified, the prices are going up. For us in this chamber that is not going to be a great hardship, but there are a lot of people that live week to week, and a lot of people are living less than week to week. In the rural areas you can be asset rich – you can have millions of dollars in assets – but your income, what you can spend on your house, is sometimes quite little. You have got hundreds of thousands of dollars in machinery, but if you have a bad year, that machinery might not bring in enough to cover the costs of running it. That gets absorbed on the premise that there will one day be a bumper year, but the droughts go on. We have boom and bust. We have droughts and flooding rains – I cannot remember the term, but there is a poem about that. This is a harsh country, and it is very unforgiving.

There are people out there in the rural and regional areas fighting it every day, fighting to feed us and fighting to keep the cities, the suburbs and that, fed and going. I feel this is a good time for the government – we have got people in drought now – before there are massive problems on a wider scale; I mean, South Australia I believe has just appointed a drought commissioner; to look at giving people assistance before they get to the point of being almost destitute. That is when I say government should be helping people. There are people out there that maybe need more rebates on their energy costs or maybe they just need to be able to go and get more wood to fuel their wood fires. I think holistically this needs to be looked at, and I commend Mrs Tyrrell for bringing this to our house. I think we speak on this a little bit, but I do not think we can speak on it enough, because even if it starts raining in a nice way and we get a bumper crop this year, which is yet to be seen, there will always be the fight. And they are the people out there fighting for themselves and also fighting for the whole of Victoria.

Tom McINTOSH (Eastern Victoria) (11:26): As Ms Ermacora noted, the government will not be opposing this motion. I would like to thank Mrs Tyrrell for bringing it to this place and for sharing her story. Farming is one of the most difficult games to be in, particularly if we are talking about farmers in a small business, farmers with smaller acreage or medium-sized acreage and farmers that – as to some of the comments Mr Bourman was just making – do not have the cash to back up the assets when times are tough and when times like these hit. This drought has, through its prolonged nature, become worse and worse for farmers hit.

Mrs Tyrrell talked about the $20.2 billion the agricultural sector is worth to Victoria. That is product that we are consuming here in Victoria. It is product, I might add high-quality product, premium product, that we are exporting to the world. The agriculture sector is not a nice to have, it is a must have. We must have agricultural produce for ourselves but also to feed other parts of the world who are looking to purchase our product. Obviously with a growing global population, it is a big conversation about how we feed the world. We have seen with global wars like in Ukraine, the breadbasket of Europe, the impacts that has on Africa and other nations. But it is incredibly important for us that farmers are supported and able to produce for Victorians.

The drought has been absolutely horrific in the west of the state, in Ms Ermacora’s region and Mrs McArthur’s region. It has also touched eastern Victoria, particularly severely in Benambra and Omeo up in the top north-east, and also impacted on southern Gippsland. So I really want to start by acknowledging farmers who are finding themselves through this drought in a horrible, horrible situation. Mrs Tyrrell shared some of her stories from being impacted in drought. Those stories are going on in families, particularly small farming families. We are not talking corporate farms with thousands of acres and deep pockets, perhaps owned by large companies. We are talking family farms.

The corporatisation of farming has been occurring over decades. It happened with my farm. My parents bought into 400 acres, hit the 1983 drought and basically got smashed and then had to wipe out half of the farm. With that drought, I will note, the rains came at the end of April; now we are talking about rains coming in June. This is a significantly worse drought, as Mrs Tyrrell talked about in her contribution. The thing that we all need to come together on and acknowledge is that these weather conditions are getting worse and worse. We are talking about bringing feed in, but it gets pretty hard when South Australia is smashed with drought and New South Wales is smashed with flood. We could be talking about any sort of product, but we are talking about feed. When the conditions are not right for feed, even with the extended network of resource sharing that have here in Australia, and are fortunate to have, that leaves us in a precarious position. When there simply is not the feed, we are all pretty attuned to the fact that the prices are going to go up. The cost to people who are already doing it tough is getting worse and worse.

We need to come together and acknowledge some long-term problems and challenges and find some long-term solutions, otherwise what we are going to see is small family farmers, as I said, with limited cash flow and without those deep pockets, as Mr Bourman said, having to finance machinery. The other way you can look at it is when you have to finance crops like horticulture. In eastern Victoria we have veggie farmers. We do not hear too much about veggie farmers, but they can get smashed and lose an entire crop – you can see them disappear overnight.

We are talking about people going into small business. We have heard about the passion that exists within farmers, about the love for what they do – it is not a job, it is a vocation – and it is generational. It is passed down through those families over generations, and that brings an added burden of responsibility, an added burden of guilt. When we are talking about mental health I do not think we can ignore all those other factors. If someone has a business in metropolitan Melbourne and they have had it for five to 10 years, there will be a lot of mental anguish if that business does not succeed, but is there that generational layer of feeling of failure for not being able to do what generations did before? To meet farmers where they are at, we have got to acknowledge the increased challenges.

We have talked about the economic challenges at the moment – the war in Ukraine, inflation and fuel prices – every time a farmer has had to stick diesel in a trailer for the last few years and every time they have had to buy equipment, everything has significantly risen in price. Are they seeing those returns on the other side of the farm gate? Probably not. They have had to take that on board with their operating costs. They have still got to look after their family, they have still got to feed them, they have still got to educate them, and they have still got to do all these things, which is why I am really proud to be part of a Labor government that invests in our regions and rural areas with education, with child care, with public transport infrastructure, with health infrastructure. Something I have spoken a lot of times about in this place and I am passionate about, is about putting in that support network and the layers of things that regional and rural communities need to exist. We cannot rip those services out like happened in decades gone.

Once the services are there, it is important that these small businesses – again, not the corporate farms; they are big enough and ugly enough to look after themselves – are set up for success. If we can all come together and acknowledge these challenges and the challenges that our weather systems are giving us, making things harder and making it harder to do what previous generations did, then I think it will be easier for our current farmers to accept where they find themselves at and then make decisions, whether they be investment decisions or decisions about working off the farm. My dad was a shearer, he worked in factories and he worked driving a taxi until he got hit by a truck at 4 o’clock in the morning because he was working around the clock.

These are decisions that have to be made by farmers, that have to be made by families and that have to be made by communities about how we ensure that people are going to live happy, healthy, well lives. Mrs Tyrrell talked about her kids not wanting to bring birthday party invitations and not wanting to bring school camp letters home because of the cost that would be put on the family. I remember that as a kid; I would not go and get a biscuit out of the biscuit tin because that was a luxury that need not be afforded when we simply did not have money. We all need to be very strategic in our thinking about what future decades of Victorian farmers need to be prepared for the challenges that are there and need to be able to succeed, not only to remain viable as businesses but to be healthy, happy families and therefore healthy, happy communities.

Melina BATH (Eastern Victoria) (11:26): We the Nationals are really pleased today to support Mrs Tyrrell’s motion on a very significant issue – the issue of the sustainability of our farmers, our primary producers, across Victoria. Mr Bourman was referencing a poem, the Dorothea Mackellar poem:

I love a sunburnt country,

A land of sweeping plains …

and off it goes. We have had drought and our farmers across Australia have known drought for centuries: the federation drought; the World War II drought; the 1967–68 drought; the 1982–83 drought – I remember that one on our dairy farm at the time when interest rates were 17 per cent; think about how that works; the millennium drought that lasted so long and was so devastating, particularly in East Gippsland; and the 2019–20 drought. I certainly was up there on a number of occasions pre and post the devastating bushfires that ravaged that area. There is something very humbling about working with various charity organisations taking boxes of food to farmers who greet you at the door and who are actually struggling to keep their stock alive, to keep their families fed and to keep themselves from not doing what Mrs MacArthur’s poem very much focused on, and that is keeping people alive. Indeed this drought in western Victoria unfortunately is now reaching its way all the way into eastern Victoria and into my patch, certainly in West Gippsland, South Gippsland and the Bass area. I have had farmers contact me in Yinnar and that Morwell area, and they were hit too in that Latrobe Valley area in 2019–20.

Farmers by their nature do not do the 30-hour week or the 38-hour week; farmers by their nature do not take holidays. I know there are many stories, and I am sure we have heard them in recent times, where a farming family may get a holiday once every four or five years for a week away. Farmers by nature have broad shoulders, men and women farmers, and farmers by nature do not want a handout. But when there is no food on the table, when the fodder and your hay reserves have gone, your silage reserves have gone, your grain has gone, your dams are dry and there is dirt where there used to be grass or else there is dying grass, you need a hand up. We have heard today some of the speakers talk about coming together and the must-haves and we must support our farmers. Well, I feel this current government’s coming together is not up to standard. It is not acceptable and it is insufficient in its entirety – $67 million of government grant support is completely ineffective.

We have heard of the importance of our farmers. They clothe us; they feed us; they drive our communities. Regionalisation comes off the back of primary producers. We do not want our small towns, our regional centres, to decay, because that would put more people back into the city, and that would have impact upon impact. We need to value our farmers.

In recent times I have had conversations in my town, in the supermarket, as you do. Farmers are really concerned about their animals. It galls me in the neck when we hear, as we have heard in past inquiries – the animal activist inquiry and others – that farmers are somehow hard people who just want to squeeze the living daylights out of their animals. Nothing could be further from the truth from my experience and my understanding.

During this crisis – and it is a crisis – this government and all of us need to understand the impact that is having at the kitchen table on farmers’ mental health. You can talk about how we need to come together, but it needs to be demonstrated. I am speaking with rural financial counsellors, and they are saying the kitchen-table conversations that they are having with farmers are quite often on a daily basis to keep them away from a dark place. It is hugely important that this government recognises that. We have the seasons; we have animal welfare, which is primarily the focus; we have heartbreak; we have mental health issues. I know my colleague the member for Lowan, who is both the Shadow Minister for Agriculture and the Shadow Minister for Mental Health, is very strong on the need to support farmers through this terrible battle.

We have had, honestly, no grass growing. Victoria has experienced a little bit of rain, but it is not raining grass, and grass will not be growing until the spring – if we are lucky. Farmers also then take their cattle to market, and of course prices go down. If they are lucky, they can get agistment further away. Or they sell their stock, and then they do not have that breeding stock for when the drought finally breaks.

I want to also commend the Victorian Farmers Federation, who have come out very strongly in their position. If we need to come together, the government could certainly listen to what the VFF, the United Dairyfarmers of Victoria and others are saying. The Nationals and the Liberals certainly support the Victorian Farmers’ call for a tiered drought response. To capture that, tier 2, moderate drought, includes activating infrastructure and reseeding grants, and I will speak to that shortly; hardship support; rate relief – the importance of getting that little bit of a rate break for farmers; assistance for family participation in education and mental health; but also and primarily cartage subsidies. I understand that it is very challenging to give direct grants for fodder – I understand there are a whole lot of implications there – but cartage subsidies for water and for fodder must be considered by this government, and there must be value in that in order to keep these people on their farms.

Finally, part of the discussion in this motion is around the Emergency Services and Volunteers Fund. I always struggle to say that, because it is not a fund. It is not for volunteers. We have seen the government over time, over the last two years, cut $164 million out of the CFA, FRV and SES budgets; $164 million has gone, has been reduced, has been cut. Yet we are having this new impost, this new tax – a 150 per cent increase on the previous levy – for farmers. Now there has been a reprieve, and we are all supposed to go cap in hand and thank the government for it. It is a stay of execution. That is what it is. It will come. It is for one year. If they were really serious about coming together and finding a strategic way of thinking, they would actually just cancel this tax. They would scrap the tax, and I vote that we do scrap the tax. The Nationals and the Liberals will scrap the tax when we come into government in 2026, but we will fund the FRV, SES and CFA. We will fund them properly.

This government has decided to blow out the black hole in the budget to $194 billion in debt over the forward estimates. This motion is very important. We support this motion, we support our farmers, we back our farmers, and if we are having must-haves, we must have a focus on this drought and a focus on the people that feed and clothe us. We must come together and we must support our farmers. I commend Mrs Tyrrell for bringing this motion forward.

Sonja TERPSTRA (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (11:36): I also rise to make a contribution on this motion brought forward by Mrs Tyrrell, and I thank her for her advocacy in regard to this matter. I might be the first city-based MP to speak on this motion this morning. We have heard contributions from many regional colleagues, so I want to also thank them for their contributions. I do want to make mention of Mr McIntosh’s contribution, which I thought was a very thoughtful and considered contribution from someone who spoke with lived experience – experience of him growing up on a farm and his father’s experience in managing some of the challenges that we are talking about today in being a farmer. What I heard coming through in Mr McIntosh’s contribution was just how nimble his father was in coming up with solutions to help manage the difficult times, but also what became clear in Mr McIntosh’s contribution were the ongoing challenges that we face in Australia due to climate change.

Australia is already a country of droughts and flooding rains, and we have heard other contributors talk about that today. Droughts are not new in Australia and they are not new for farming communities, but what we are seeing with climate change is that we know that there will be floods that are more severe, there will be droughts that are also more severe and we will have less water over time. These are the challenges Mr McIntosh articulated so well: if you do not have water, you do not have grass that grows and therefore you cannot feed your cattle. And you have the impacts of the war in Ukraine that are also driving up prices.

I will not use the term in here because it is unparliamentary, but it is a cluster-bleep of challenges that are coming together to put immense pressure on farming communities. As a city-based MP, I want to acknowledge that our farming community feed us and clothe us, and in Victoria we are lucky in the sense that Victoria is one of the most impressive food bowls in Australia. So much farming and so many agricultural items, whether you want to call it food or clothing or whatever, come out of Victoria. The produce that we produce here is amazing and it is sought after all around the world. We know our farmers produce really good products, and we recognise that.

Having said that, I am going to go to some of the things that our government is providing but also some of the information that I think has been disappointing to see. There was an article I read in the news this morning about the disinformation and misinformation that has been used in this debate, and I am going to go to that today, but I am going to do so in a very sensitive manner because I like to talk about research but I also like to talk about organisations that are accredited to make those comments and contributions. I will come back to that shortly.

Our government has provided direct support, drought relief, of $69 million to farmers across Victoria impacted by drought and difficult seasonal conditions: $5000 on-farm drought infrastructure grants; technical decision-making support; Look Over the Farm Gate mental health and wellbeing programs; the Rural Financial Counselling Service; the National Centre for Farmer Health support resources and programs; capping the Emergency Services and Volunteers Fund at 2024–25 rates; $1.8 million to fast-track the assessment of lethal and non-lethal control permits for kangaroos and to support farmers with a rebate to engage commercial shooters; streamlining processes and waiving fees associated with fodder entering Victoria without compromising our strict biodiversity controls; additional south-west support of $10,000 in on-farm drought infrastructure grants; the south-west drought coordinator; the south-west small business financial counsellor; additional capacity for the Rural Financial Counselling Service in the south-west, as well as one-on-one mental health and support; Victorian drought freight network released to allow freight road trains up to 84 tonnes to transport critical grain and fodder to Victorian farms.

That is just a very quick overview of the things that we have introduced. And of course the Premier has now stood up a Drought Response Taskforce. This is in direct response to the challenging seasonal, economic and social conditions. On 30 May 2025 the Premier announced that the Drought Response Taskforce would be established. The Premier is chairing that taskforce. It includes the Minister for Regional Development Jaclyn Symes, Minister for Agriculture Ros Spence, Minister for Water Gayle Tierney and many, many other people who have deep connections to rural and regional communities. Also on 30 May $37.7 million was committed to on-farm drought infrastructure grants, as I said earlier. So there are many, many things that are targeted and tailored to regional and rural communities but with specific assistance for farmers.

One of the things that has been talked about – it was touched on in my earlier comments about Look Over the Farm Gate – is a program designed to assist farmers with mental health challenges. I just want to say that in researching this matter I wanted to look at what research had been done on the mental health of farmers. I was able to find a report done by the Centre of Research Excellence in Suicide Prevention, an organisation that brought together collaborative partners such as the Black Dog Institute, University of New South Wales, Australian National University, Deakin University, University of Newcastle, Uni of Melbourne, Orygen, Macquarie University, University of Sydney, Lifeline and Everymind – some very eminent organisations who are well credentialed to study the impacts of suicide. According to their report, suicide is the most common cause of death in Australia for people between 15 and 44 years of age. It is more common than motor vehicle accidents or skin cancer and the 10th most common cause of death overall for Australian males. In rural communities – and this is coming from this report, and I am happy to provide it to Hansard so they have got all the details – suicide is a critical issue, and focusing on the underlying causes that contribute to the tragic outcome is important. It is also important for understanding how you can develop tools for essential prevention strategies tailored to the unique challenges faced by rural populations.

In the report it talks about one of the primary factors contributing to rural suicide being limited access to mental healthcare services. This report also then goes on to talk about how you can have more online services or other services that can be accessed rather than in a physical presence, whether that is online support or telehealth or those other sorts of things. But research indicates that more than 50 per cent of people who die by suicide have not been in contact with healthcare services before their attempt, which highlights a significant gap in early intervention. And this goes into some other anecdotal evidence and information that I saw from the Country Women’s Association, talking about their husbands as farmers and the fact that they are reluctant to reach out to get assistance. This then also talks about the social isolation and lack of connectedness as critical contributors:

Rural residents may face physical isolation due to distance and limited transportation ...

… cultural factors and stigma around mental health and suicide in rural areas can prevent individuals from seeking help. There is often a strong cultural emphasis on self-reliance and privacy, which may discourage open discussion about mental health struggles. Research exploring suicide stigma in Australia highlights how these attitudes can be barriers to effective intervention.

… occupational risks are relevant in rural settings, where certain industries such as agriculture, mining, and construction are prevalent. These occupations may involve high stress, physical danger, and access to lethal means, all of which increase suicide risk.

So as you can see, for many men and women as well who are running farms, the challenges are immense, and we have highlighted why that is today. But I would urge everybody in this chamber and anyone who wants to talk about this issue to please consider those families who are connected to people who have suicided. I myself have a family member who has committed suicide, and I can tell you this: there are families attached to these people. There are children, there are friends and there are connections. All of them do not want this. What they want is help for those people who are considering this. That is what farming communities and farmers want as well. They want us to come together and provide assistance and help – mental health supports. The weaponisation of this – I have found it breathtaking and inappropriate.

I have talked to my regional colleagues who sit in this chamber on the government benches, and they have confirmed that what rural communities and farmers are seeking is help. The weaponisation of this is really inappropriate. So again, our government is working with rural and regional communities –

Bev McArthur interjected.

Sonja TERPSTRA: The interjections from the other side of the chamber, again, just go to the points that I made that when there is an opportunity for bipartisanship to come together on an issue such as this, which is very sensitive and critically important, banging on about attacks as a campaigning tactic is highly inappropriate because again it goes to the weaponisation of people who are suffering as a result of a range of factors which I just talked about. Again, I urge everybody in this chamber to please deal with this issue in a very sensitive manner. I thank Mrs Tyrrell again for her considered advocacy in regard to this matter and, as I think Mr McIntosh said, the government will not be opposing this motion.

Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (11:46): I rise to also speak on Mrs Tyrrell’s motion. I thank her for bringing it to the house, because this is a terribly important issue for the constituents in Northern Victoria and also in Western Victoria and Eastern Victoria, right throughout country Victoria at the moment, where we are suffering horrendous droughts.

I have been a member of this place for 22½°years, and I have seen many, many things that have impacted on my electorate in that time. I am often heard to say that farmers are the eternal optimists, because if it is not fires, it is drought, or it is a plague of mice or locusts or it is floods – it is just never-ending for them. I can say that, when I was first elected in 2002, we actually had bushfires that summer up in the north-east. We had bushfires again, the great alpine fires, in 2006. Of course in 2009 we had the horrendous Black Saturday fires and in 2019–20 again, the Black Summer fires. We have had floods in 2011 and 2022 and also in 2010. We have had mice and locust plagues within that time. We have had drought in 2019–20, and of course for the first 10 years of this millennium we had the millennium drought.

I was first elected in 2002, and during that campaign the drought was very much spoken about as went around the electorate campaigning. I remember being at the Elmore Field Days and hearing one farmer tell a story. He actually spoke about the Ansett collapse, because Ansett had collapsed in 2001, it was still in the papers in 2002 and there was a tremendous amount of support offered to those Ansett workers to tide them over until they got new jobs or to retrain them for new jobs. The farmer actually said, ‘I feel really sorry for the Ansett workers, but the reality is there is assistance for them to tide them through this really difficult time. And the reality is that they will stay in their same homes, and they will retrain or apply for other jobs and be able to move on with their lives relatively soon.’ But he said, ‘You imagine for a farmer, when you lose your income, as you do during a drought, you not only lose your income, but you run the risk of losing your farm. And sometimes that farm has been in the family for generations, and you’re the one that is going to lose that farm. So you lose your home, your job – you lose your family history.’

I can remember many kitchen table conversations with people who were suffering from drought. I remember one particularly. It was a dairy farming family and it was absolutely heartbreaking, because the father broke down in tears as he told me he had told his daughter he could not afford to send her to university the next year. She had just completed her year 12 and he could not afford for her to continue her studies. But he also said for his daughter who was halfway through her degree at university, he had had to tell her that she would have to withdraw from university because the family could not afford to keep her at university. This is an additional impact on farming families. To educate your children at university, you more than likely have to send them away to Melbourne or to one of the larger regional cities like Bendigo to access a university.

It is an additional cost because there is the cost of accommodation as well as the everyday cost of a university education. It is heartbreaking to think families are telling children, ‘We can’t educate you because of the impact of the drought.’

We know that kids are coming to school hungry. Many of the breakfast programs in our schools were started during the millennium drought because kids were coming to school hungry. I remember taking Louise Asher to a meeting of the wives of a group of irrigators from around Rochester who had not had an allocation for about three years. There were so many tears at that meeting that I actually had to go to the supermarket and buy a box of tissues. Louise Asher said to me, ‘As metropolitan members, we don’t face these things in our electorates.’ But in country Victoria, as country members of Parliament, we face these things day in, day out. It is not only the stories during the drought, it is the stories during bushfires, it is the stories during floods. It is difficult.

I remember during that millennium drought our federal member Sharman Stone used to live across the road from me, and if we saw each other’s lights on we would often debrief at night. We would debrief about things like how many farmers had rung in and talked about committing suicide that week. I remember one day my father was there while we were talking and he said, ‘At the end of the day, you’ve dealt with all of this. What do you do?’ We said, ‘We call the mental health counsellors. We send them out to do a cold call to see whether it’s just a threat or whether it really is an emergency, and the mental health workers deal with it.’ He said, ‘But then who counsels you?’ In those days we did not get much support.

We all know that when something is happening, like during COVID, we are offered support left, right and centre in this place. Things have changed, and in the workplaces around the city there is plenty of mental health support for workers when they are going through tough times. But in the country, that support is not there for our farmers. In fact if you look at the government’s website that they have set up for the drought support package and you go to the bit that talks about their mental health support, ‘Statewide mental health and wellbeing support’ – this is a package the government announced weeks ago – it says:

A ‘Look Over the Farm Gate’ mental health and wellbeing grant program will be available –

will be available –

statewide to help communities come together and support farmers and farming families under stress.

More information will be available soon.

That information is needed now – not to be available soon; that information and support is needed now. It is not like this is a new thing that the government did not know they were going to need. The drought has been impacting parts of our state for many, many months now – in fact for years now. We have also been through the recent floods. They have seen the impact that they had on communities then. They knew they needed mental health support for people.

The loss of farmers’ blood lines for their cattle will have a horrendous impact on their future livelihoods as well. As they cannot access fodder to feed their cattle, we are seeing more and more entire herds being taken to the abattoirs. This is really having a huge impact on farmers’ mental health. Their animals are like family to them, but also those blood lines have been carefully, carefully bred over generations of cattle to make sure that they are either the highest producing dairy cows or the best beef cattle that they can possibly produce. The loss of those blood lines will not come back quickly to our state.

This will impact on our state’s productivity, and it will impact for a very long time.

I have already spoken a lot about mental health, but Mrs McArthur’s poem, the line that said the father said to the son, ‘I know that road because I have walked every mile’ – I feel like that, because over the last 22 years I have walked every mile with my community. I know that we need far more assistance for our farmers, and we need it now. What we need is a support package for this drought, not a support package for the next drought. I understand that governments cannot make it rain, but there are many things that governments can do to assist farmers now. The $5000 infrastructure grants are an absolute joke because they need a match component. It costs to get all your financials together, and farmers cannot invest in their farms when they cannot even feed their animals or their families. Those infrastructure grants – (Time expired)

Michael GALEA (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (11:56): I also rise to speak to the motion that has been put before the house today by Mrs Tyrrell. As many other colleagues have done, I would like to acknowledge and thank Mrs Tyrrell for her longstanding advocacy on both this issue and issues surrounding support for our primary industries and our farmers. I also acknowledge her great bravery and fortitude in sharing what was a very personal story from her experience as a farming family in the north of Victoria. It was a very moving contribution to hear, and I would like to particularly acknowledge her for that. It was moving and important because it so well highlighted the sorts of issues that we are discussing here today and the severity. From the speeches I have heard in the chamber today from across the house, especially those regional members who have spoken, members have had stories to share from all corners of the house. When it comes to discussing these issues, it just underscores the importance.

There has been and there continues to be work done to support farmers affected by drought across the state. We know that there are particular areas that have been the target of focus, and that has in many cases been expanded out and those support measures have been expanded out statewide. We know that just a few weeks ago an additional $37.7 million was committed to the on-farm drought infrastructure grant program, which provides grants of up to $5000, or, in the case of those perhaps hardest hit in south-west Victoria, up to $10,000. There are also measures being implemented as part of the taskforce, including with the waiving of any increase to the Emergency Services and Volunteers Fund for all primary industry across the state so that they can focus on the most important thing right now, and that is getting through these drought conditions. That is one of the most important things that they have on their plate. That is why the government and indeed the Treasurer have taken the courageous but very strong and wise decision to suspend that for primary producers. As a result, primary producers across the state of Victoria will pay no more than what they would have in the current and previous years.

There is significantly more work to be done, and that is why it is so important that the taskforce that the Premier has put together, reaching across from different parts of industry, indeed from across the chambers in this building as well, is so important – to be as quick, to be as effective and to be as responsive as possible in order to provide the best and most on-point and reliable support for our primary producers right across the state.

There are many, many more things I could talk in great detail on, and I am mindful that I will be cut off quite shortly. Perhaps we will come back to it after question time. But when it comes to the question of drought support, it is something that we have spent quite a bit of time in this place talking about in the last few weeks in particular, but it is something that our farming communities have been facing for months – well over a year in some cases. We have seen what has been termed the ‘green drought’, where appearances of greenery are often nothing more than a misty facade to be blown away as quickly as the wind changes. And indeed we have had some modest –

The PRESIDENT: Sorry, Mr Galea. I have to interrupt your contribution for questions and ministers statements.

Business interrupted pursuant to sessional orders.