Senator O'BRIEN (12:54 PM) —The amendments proposed in the Rural Adjustment Amendment Bill 1998 give effect to the government's announcement in September 1997 to introduce the Farm Business Improvement Program, known as FarmBis. The objective of the scheme is to increase farmers' participation in learning activities, with the aim of improving the performance of their business. This program picks up where the former Labor government left off in that regard. The scheme is based on a cooperative arrangement between the Commonwealth and the states. The majority of funds are to be allocated through state based components to finance state, industry and community agreed priorities in relation to training and education.

I asked a question on notice about this program on 10 December last year and I recently received an answer. I was advised that the Commonwealth was still in negotiation with two states—Tasmania and Queensland—about the terms of the FarmBis agreement; that is, even though this program was announced in September 1997, the details have still not been settled.

The government had actually made funding available for the so-called Agriculture—Advancing Australia package, which incorporates FarmBis, in the May budget of that year. Senators would recall that in the previous budget, the 1996 budget, the government ripped funding out of a whole range of programs that provided assistance to people living in regional and rural Australia. For example, the Rural Communities Access Program, the Rural Telecommunications Upgrade Program, the Rural Adjustment Scheme Reserve Fund and the Agribusiness Program all lost their funding.

In those budget papers, under the heading `Purpose', it stated that the cuts were to contribute to `meeting the government's fiscal target'. This was, of course, at the expense of the fiscal targets many farmers and others living in regional Australia had set them selves—and their target was to try to survive. In the following budget, the government put some of those funds back into programs with different names but similar objectives. Here we are in March 1999 still trying to get the enabling legislation through the parliament and still trying to get an agreement with the states to implement these new arrangements.

The tortured process followed in relation to this program has been a feature of the management of the primary industry portfolio and now the Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry portfolio since March 1996. One of the Howard government's first actions when it won office three years ago was to hold a rural summit. The then minister, Minister Anderson, brought the rural community together to develop an action plan. This program, and the AAA package more generally, flowed from that process. When the Prime Minister launched that package in September 1997, he said that it would `provide the rural community with the new start, the fresh and positive start that so many are looking for'. It has done no such thing.

At the National Press Club four weeks ago, the Minister for Transport and Regional Services, Mr Anderson, announced a major initiative for the bush. He said he was going to call a summit. He said he was going to draw together business and community leaders from across the nation and he was going to ask them to help the bush. This proves that the government have failed the bush badly. They have no clear vision for rural Australia, and that has been reflected in the adhocery that has plagued the administration of this portfolio right from the beginning.

The government have pulled sensible and effective programs apart, only to attempt to rebuild them later. They were obsessed with free trade—an obsession that has at times clouded their judgment as to what is good policy for regional Australia—and now we are back to the beginning. It seems we are going to have a rural summit to sort out what we need to do to save the bush.

This failure has added to the burden for many Australians living in rural areas. It has been reflected in many votes of no confidence in Mr Anderson and calls from key organisa tions for his resignation as minister, and it has also badly damaged the National Party. This damage has been reflected not only in the rise of One Nation but also at the cabinet table in Canberra. The most recent example is the failure of the then minister, Mr Anderson, to gain cabinet endorsement for his plan for the future of the wool stockpile. He took a unified industry position to the cabinet room, and it and he were thrown out. Mr Anderson said in July 1996 that he belonged on the land and he would return to it. I suspect that this will happen sooner rather than later and that Minister Anderson will never lead the National Party.