Mr O'KEEFE (5:19 PM) —What we see here in the resumption of the second reading debate on the Social Security and Veterans' Affairs Legislation Amendment (Retirement Assistance for Farmers) Bill 1998 is a day of reckoning in some ways for the government in relation to something which it described as a `key measure' of the integrated rural policy package entitled Agriculture—Advancing Australia, which was announced and launched in September last year.

I will come back to those words, Mr Deputy Speaker, because you may remember that in September last year with great fanfare the government announced that, after a long and exhaustive overhaul of all of Labor's programs for assistance for farmers in various need of government assistance, they were not going to just simply continue Labor's programs in their first budget; they were going to scrap Labor's programs and come in with this brand new integrated rural package to show they meant business for the farm sector in Australia. This was after many years of them spending their time traipsing around rural Australia, talking about how Labor did not understand farming, did not understand farmers and never provided properly for them in the budget,

We had all that build-up—and in fact it became quite drawn out—but then we had the day of the big announcement in September last year. We discovered when it all came down to taws that of a package of $517 million, if I remember correctly, the National Farmers Federation—not me—had worked out within 24 hours that at best there was $30 million of new money—and my figure was $17 million—and that in fact all they had come back with was $500 million worth of programs which Labor already had in the budget. Every one of those programs was renamed and hardly any of the conditions changed. If you talk to any farmer in Australia and ask him or her, `What actually is different in the AAA package?' they will say, `Hell, I don't know,' and they would be absolutely right to say that.

But one thing was marginally different and it is described in the legislation here today—and I am reiterating this for a point which I will come to. In the explanatory memorandum of this bill the words used are:

This Bill gives effect to one of the key measures—

and I will repeat those words—

one of the key measures—

of the policy package. What does it do? It introduces—listen to the description—a three-year `window of opportunity' which, the government purported, would provide the older generation who were ready to move off their farm the opportunity to hand the farm over to the younger generation and still qualify for the pension. That was basically the aim: to enable them to transfer the farm assets and move out.

On the day this was announced I had a quick look at it and described it the following day as a `sad rural hoax'. I remember my words because I was pilloried by the minister and by most of the hugely enthusiastic farm lobby. I described it as a `sad rural hoax' because, from my experience and having read through the conditions once, my immediate question was: who could qualify? That is exactly what has transpired. And I find it laughable that the government could be introducing this bill using these terms—`a key measure' to provide a three-year `window of opportunity'.

On the day the package was launched in September last year—nine months ago—the statement in respect of this particular measure said that this initiative was:

. . . a comprehensive response by the government to the many challenges facing the farm sector.

On the issue of retiring farmers it said:

The intergenerational transfer of the family farm from older farmers to younger generations is a major issue in rural Australia.

I will use those words again—`a major issue in rural Australia'. One assumes therefore that this must be a major response. In the press release issued on the day, the Minister for Primary Industries and Energy (Mr Anderson) described it as:

. . . assistance to allow older farmers to transfer ownership . . . estimated cost $76.6 million.

The Prime Minister (Mr Howard) issued a statement on the same day, because this was pretty big stuff; this was going right to the heart of the constituency—`Look what we have done for you.' The Prime Minister in the highlights to this press release said the package:

. . . brings together a number of reforms to lift the viability of farmers into the future and lay the basis for greater self reliance. It also provides scope for farmers to exit with dignity if they so desire.

Included in there was a gifting moratorium. In other words, this was referred to widely. In the `Highlights at a glance' attached to the Prime Minister's release, the fifth dot point says:

. . . assistance to allow older farmers to transfer ownership of the family farm . . .

I know I am labouring the point, but I am doing it for this reason: it was a sad hoax to come out responding to what you perceived to be `a major issue in rural Australia' and then produce this package. In the Senate estimates hearings today we were told the figure. Nine months later it is not the 10,000 family farms that were quoted on 19 September and not the 2,000 family farms quoted in the Senate a couple of months ago. What is the figure today? The figure quoted to a Senate estimates committee today was 14 successful applications—a major rural initiative! I described it on day one as `a sad hoax' in that the guidelines rule out anybody who really should be able to apply. Nine months later what do we find? Fourteen successful cases.

You are entitled to ask: was I right in describing this as a hoax or was it just a huge case of incompetence from the Prime Minister down? How could members of a government who claim to have been in touch with the rural constituency, who had a massive landslide towards them in rural Australia at the last election, who claimed to know and understand these issues and who bagged Labor mercilessly for not understanding and responding to these issues sit around a cabinet table, go through the provisions of their rural package with a fine tooth comb—because it is a $500 million package, even though it is only Labor's programs re-badged, and even the dollars are the same—have a massive launch by the Prime Minister and get something as basic as this so wrong? Are they incompetent or was it a deliberate hoax perpetrated on what they claim to be their own constituency?

My answer to that question is that is was both. It was incompetence at the time. I cannot conceive that the Prime Minister or the minister or any of the department officials giving the advice—wherever it came from—would have started off on day one, knowing that this day of reckoning would arrive tonight, and proceed. I cannot believe that they would have done that. Maybe they did. If they did it was a hoax and it was incompe tent. It was not just my words that afternoon or those of the National Farmers Federation 24 hours later—`Oh, hang on, there's not so much new in this after all.' Certainly by 23 September, a fortnight or so later, we had the first questions raised about this, apart from those which came from me.

This figure of 10,000 was not a figure I made up. This was the figure that the government put out in the marketplace as of day one. I quote from the Land of 23 October last year, a rural farm journal widely read on the east coast of Australia. The first paragraph of an article by one of the rural journalists, Ian Paterson, states:

The farm handover gifting moratorium—part of the Federal Government's $500 million "Agriculture—Advancing Australia" package—could allow as many as 10,000 retirement-age farmers to pass on the farm to their offspring and immediately get the Age Pension.

It was not myself or journalists making up the figure. This was the figure being put out by the government and its press team. If you know you are going to come to a day of reckoning like today, you do not market a figure like that. You do not market a figure of 10,000 when you know it is going to be 14. I can only assume that, at the time, the government thought that lots of these farm families would qualify. What that tells me is that at the time they were incompetent and all those ministers and backbenchers who had claimed to be in touch with the rural constituency did not understand what a farm is worth, how much income a farm has to generate and that hardly anybody could qualify under the criteria they set.

In October last year, the first public utterances—apart from mine—started to come forward. Ian Donges, the then President of the New South Wales Farmers Association, now the President of the NFF, wrote a letter to the editor of the Australian. This is my first public opportunity to congratulate Ian on having been appointed to that position. I have considerable regard for Ian. I think he knows his stuff. He demonstrated that in this letter back in October last year when he said:

Farmers will face stringent tests, and it remains to be seen how many can take advantage of this initiative.

On 30 October, the New South Wales Farmers Association put out a press release entitled `Farmers urged to phone on changes to age pension assistance'. The chairman of their rural affairs committee, John Cobb, is quoted as saying that `overly stringent eligibility criteria are likely to significantly reduce the number of potential beneficiaries of the program'. He went on to say:

The expectations of farm families have been raised significantly—

Of course they have been raised significantly. The Prime Minister and the Minister for Primary Industries and Energy boasted about it. They put it out in the Land and everywhere else that the figure would be 10,000. As John Cobb continued to say:

. . . expectations have been raised . . . by the announcement of this measure, yet anecdotally, it seems clear that very few families are likely to be eligible for the measure.

So O'Keefe said on 14 September that this was a sad hoax and no-one would qualify. By 30 October the government had the New South Wales Farmers Association saying that very few families were likely to be eligible.

On top of this came the nursing home fiasco. You might remember back then that the government had made its announcements on the new charges for nursing home entry fees and the application of the gifting provisions. It soon became clear that here was another part of the incompetence chain because, within 10 seconds flat, when the minister was asked in here by me, `Does a farm handed over under the gifting provisions for the AAA package mean that you will not have to pay the nursing home entrance fee; in other words, is it exempt from the new measure?' the bumbled answer was, `God, we haven't thought of that.'

Here was a case where the same people sitting around the cabinet table not only made an absolute mess of this program but also did not think of the relationship with another one that they were about to drop on the community, which was probably being discussed on the same day. What on earth is going on around this cabinet table? After a few questions and heaps of embarrassment, finally there was an announcement: yes, a farm that is handed over under the intergenerational transfer provision will be exempt from the gifting provisions of the assets test for nursing homes. But, of course, what none of us twigged to then was that that was not nearly as generous an announcement as it sounded on the day because none of us knew that, nine months later, there would be only 14 of them. They thought it would be 10,000. We knew it would not be anything like 10,000, but none of us conceived it would be 14. Then the penny started to drop.

By 20 January the spokesman for the National Farmers Federation, Mr Douglas, made a statement and described the limits as unreasonable. His words were:

It might be a joke but we are still looking for the eligible farmer.

They could not find anyone who qualified. The headline in this particular country newspaper was, `Ridiculous conditions placed on farmers'. That is the fact of it. The editor of that newspaper, the Daily Liberal in New South Wales, had it dead right—ridiculous conditions had been placed on farmers.

There is a point to me going through this chronology because what might have been incompetence became a hoax. By the time this bill was introduced into this parliament for its second reading, the government had had nine months to understand what had happened. It had nine months and yet nothing has been changed. I will come back to that in a minute.

On 18 May the New South Wales Farmers news release was headed, perfectly correctly, `Farmers Retirement Assistance Scheme unworkable'. Then, in the analysis of this bill by the Senate estimates committee on social security and veteran's affairs, they discovered not only that the conditions were absurd but also that there were taxation and legal implications associated with the intergenerational transfer which the government, again, had not thought of. The Senate committee has been told that the Department of Primary Industries and Energy is in discussions with the Taxation Office. Isn't that fabulous? Every example we have to date of the Minister for Primary Industries and Energy having a discussion with the Treasurer (Mr Costello) about issues which affect the farm sector show that the Treasurer comes out on top and the B team lose again. I had not thought of this at the time, but I would not be hanging my hat on the DPIE having successful talks with Treasury about a measure that works for 14 families. What we have is not only massive incompetence but also a sad hoax.

I go back to that original statement in the launch, which described this as a major initiative and something that was responding to `a major issue in rural Australia'. Even after the last nine months of this whole sorry hoax unfolding, they still brought this bill into the House today and used the words that I started off with—this bill gives effect to one of the `key measures'. How could something that benefits a handful of families be a key measure in anything? What are they trying to say? How can you describe it as a window of opportunity when it works only for a handful of people because you have put absurdly stringent conditions on it?

That is why I say it has moved from incompetence to a deliberate attempt to deceive people by saying that it is what they said it was on day one. When the Treasurer and the Minister for Finance and Administration (Mr Fahey), who is at the table today, sat at the cabinet table discussing this particular issue, I do not know whether they knew that it was the mess that it is. But certainly the Treasurer and the finance minister are laughing now because there are allocations in the budget of several million dollars over four years. I think the figure, if I remember correctly, is something of the order of $60 million; I have the exact figures here but I will not dig them out. Whatever the figures are, we all now know that they are going to be left over. They are going to be part of the surplus for the tax cuts because they are certainly not going to be used in the intergenerational transfer of funds.

To sum up, the opposition has, from day one, supported the principle of facilitating the intergenerational transfer of funds and we still do. Therefore, we are giving passage of the bill without any impediment in the parliament. But I take this opportunity to make it very clear that I was absolutely right on day one when I described this as a sad hoax. It dem onstrates both incompetence and deception on the part of the government to have done this, to have not understood in the first place what they were doing but to have continued to perpetrate it and to try to describe it in this legislation as a `key measure'. As I said before, when the negotiations take place between DPIE and Treasury it will be yet another case of the B team—the Nationals—being rolled by the A team. In both cases, none of it will be of much benefit to the farm sector.