National Farmers Federation solution is to get rid of the farmers

Farming is an essential service

Barnaby Joyce joins in the chorus to throw farmers off the land

KAP Federal Member for Kennedy, Bob Katter has today slammed the National Farmers Federation (NFF) after they appeared on national television and announced they were lobbying the government to provide financial incentives to drought-affected farmers to leave their land; a campaign which is being echoed by the National Party.

A livid Mr Katter said, “Your solution is to get rid of the farmers. It is in the back of the mind of every intelligent Australian ‘why do you want these people out?’ So your big corporate masters, Chinese investors, prominent amongst them can buy them out and we can have corporate farmers.  The city suits and foreign nations will be our farmers and we peasants will be out there working for nothing in little towns that are vanishing. That is the solution by National Farmers Federation.”

The NFF, a farming lobby group, proposed six measures to the Government last week, one of which was an incentive payment to leave the land. Other measures in the proposal were rate relief to help pay local government charges, payments that are the equivalent to Newstart allowance, $2,000 top-up of the Assistance for Isolated Children allowance, two-year interest free government loans and a plan to work with state and territory governments to eradicate feral pigs.

Former Nationals Leader Barnaby Joyce has joined into the NFF chorus to get rid of family farmers saying if they can’t make a profit they should get out. Liberal policies for decades have ensured farming is the most over-regulated industry in the nation and almost impossible to show a satisfactory return. There are no Nationals left, just Liberals wearing Akubras. Lost is recognition by political parties that Australia will starve if we lose any more family farms. With less than 120,000 remaining farms, we have reached the point of no return. The Liberals and ALP will allow China to take over economically distressed farms.

While the NFF has been critical of the ad-hoc response to drought by the Government, Mr Katter believes that exit packages are not the answer.

“The KAP, the political party I belong to, says Reconstruction Bank. It’s just so simple that you’ve got to be curious why they won’t do it.

“The Reconstruction Bank, through the Government, can borrow at, probably, a bit below 2% so it can lend at 1.9%. Where aa farmer now owes an average $1 million, he has to find $54,000 a year to pay to the bank. Under the Reconstruction Bank he’ll now be paying $16,000 to the bank.

“The Reconstruction Bank buys bad ‘in danger’ debts at a discount. The farmer will then owe the Reconstruction Bank not the full $1 million he owed the bank but only $850,000 giving him leeway to buy fodder.”

Mr Katter also took aim at the Government’s sorry attempts at financial assistance for primary producers, “The Federal Government claiming they have done something with the farm and financial assistance grants, that one is one huge whopper. Hungry Jacks would love that one, that’s the biggest whopper of all.

“It was the Rural Action Council of Far North Qld, secured at Wayne Swan and Kevin Rudd’s Drought Summit that gave us that concession. The tragedy is when Rural Action was screaming against former Deputy Prime Minister, John Anderson’s, dreadful comment that “we don’t need 240,000 farmers in Australia we only need 120,000”, well the National Party has achieved its objective, we now have less than 120,000 farmers and of those farmers around one in 10 have been on welfare payments, the Family Assistance Grants, given to us, not by our traditional party, the National Party, but by our traditional enemies the ALP.”

“If the KAP gets a commanding position in the Parliament, as Knuth, Katter and Dametto have said again and again, they will immediately reintroduce the reconstruction bank which was successfully run for over 100 years in Queensland.

“We have already lost half of our farmers in the last 20 years. Clearly it is the intention of the NFF, and their political wing, the National Party, to get rid of another half. The farmers are doing it tough? Their solution: get rid of the farmers.”