RADFORD:
Welcome to the programme Prime Minister.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well thank you and good afternoon to the school children of the Condobolin district.
RADFORD:
First up farmers...
PRIME MINISTER:
I am still getting a bit of feedback.
RADFORD:
I apologise, we'll try and work with that, but farmers in South Australia and Western Australia, Mr Howard, feel that they've been left out with the recent improved package that you've announced. What hope can you offer for them?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, get their state governments to put in the applications and they will be treated fairly, like other Australians. We are not playing favourites. The reason why I made the announcement on Monday was that the areas covered by that announcement, their EC circumstances were due to run out later this year and they've been extended to March of 2008. Some of the other areas, they are not due to run out until early in the New Year, that's early in 2007. We want to apply similar treatment to all people similarly affected all over the country. We provide the money for the Exceptional Circumstances support, the states look after the application so I would encourage farmers to encourage their state governments to put in the applications, don't try and double guess whether they may or not meet existing criteria, it's pretty obvious from the announcement I made on Monday that we are erring on the side of generosity and liberality in relation to support. So, please, I say to the farmers in those areas, get on the backs of the state governments to put in the applications.
RADFORD:
People in all of our capital cities are listening today, what do you say to people like Clive Hamilton from the Australia Institute, Prime Minister, who says that farmers shouldn't be getting assistance, they should be leaving the land when it is like this?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I reject that, completely reject it. I mean the basis of his argument is that in some way the payments farmers receive under Exceptional Circumstances represents paying people to stay on the land. I think that would come as a great surprise to farmers who know that the Exceptional Circumstances gives them the equivalent of the dole and provides some interest rate subsidies. That's hardly paying people to pay on the land...stay on the land, it is in many cases paying people to put some food on the table, and it's a very unrealistic attitude for people to take. We are not a country that pays people to stay on the land, we are a country that gives people who want to stay on the land, support to survive through desperate drought circumstances, and that's what we are living through at the present time. So I reject completely the argument that this drought assistance is, quote, paying people to stay on the land, unquote. In fact, in some of our agricultural policies we do provide assistance for people to leave the land if that is their wish. I believe very strongly in the maintenance of a viable farm sector, I know it is an easy thing to say, it is almost a clich‚d thing to say, but I do find, both in a political and social sense and also in an intellectual sense, it quite absurd and ridiculous for somebody to say that what is the equivalent of the dole and what is an interest rate subsidy represents a payment to somebody to stay on the land. I think it's a payment for somebody to survive who happens to be on the land.
RADFORD:
What about the long-term, Prime Minister, many people like one of your own Senators, Bill Heffernan, believe that we are seeing climate change, that we'll see more of this in future. How as a nation can we plan for landscapes and land-use to change?
PRIME MINISTER:
We are certainly required to recognise that what we are now experiencing could go on for some considerable period of time. There are some people who argue that the drought circumstances we now have are more akin to the circumstances on the land more than 50 years ago and that perhaps some of the recent years have been atypical of the experience on the land over a hundred year period. We certainly have to be a lot cleverer in conserving water. We have to get our National Water Initiative working effectively. We have to get a proper trading system for water. We have to find ways of conserving water; there are any number of challenges. But for people who have a day to day challenge to exist on the land the important thing is to keep them going and that is what drought assistance is required to do and I don't think anybody imagines that there aren't longer term water challenges of this country has, I've just come from an hour and half meeting with the National Water Commission to talk about the water challenges this country has. Now they're in part related to climate change but it's an over simplification to say it's entirely due to climate change. This country has gone through drought periods in the past and it will face them again in the future.
RADFORD:
Just briefly Mr Howard, you could hear a pin drop here, everyone in the local community is listening intently, we have some very young Australians out here from the local schools, do you feel, briefly this afternoon, that these kids have a future in rural Australia?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I want them to and my Government will do everything it can to help them to have that future if that is their wish. We must, as an absolute essential, we must maintain our faith as a nation in the farm community. I have said before and I will repeat it again with great feeling, that we would lose something of our identity as a nation, an important part of our psyche as a nation, if our rural communities fell below a critical mass. The essence of being an Australian includes the bush being part of our existence. Now I don't have a romanticised view of it, I know how hard it is, I didn't grow up in the bush, I grew up in a south-western suburb of Sydney, but over the years I've been in public life, I've had a lot of contact with people on the land and I do care about them and we want to help them. And we need, as a nation, to understand that our farm sector is not a protected sector of our economy. The amount of assistance we as a nation give to our farm sector is less, as far as protection is concerned, than many other countries and that's one of the other reasons why I reject the views of people like Mr Hamilton. We are not an over-indulged rural sector as far as protection and subsidies is concerned and that makes it all the more essential that when a drought comes along, a Government is generous.
RADFORD:
Prime Minister thanks for your time on ABC local radio across Australia this afternoon.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you.
[ends]