Senator TROETH (12:59 PM) —Before I sum up the points on the Rural Adjustment Amendment Bill 1998 , the FarmBis legislation, I have some information for Senator O'Brien. In a further response to your question on notice, the Tasmanian agreement on FarmBis has been signed off and the Queensland agreement is very close. I hope that clears up that misconception.

Senator Forshaw also commented that the AAA package carried on many of the supposed improvements made by the previous Labor government. I make no such qualification. The AAA package, which is Agriculture—Advancing Australia, is significantly different from anything that has been done before. Not only has this government introduced the Farm Family Restart Scheme to enable those families who wish to leave the farm in a dignified manner to do so; we have also extended pension eligibility to farmers and we have extended exceptional circumstances. We have not only introduced this legislation, the FarmBis legislation, but last week at the Wimmera field days I launched farm management deposits, which are a significant improvement on the previous IED and FMB schemes.

In response to your point, Senator O'Brien, the rural summit of 1996 mentioned by Minister Anderson not only brought forward the packages that I have just mentioned but also introduced a first in that it ultimately set up the Consultative Rural Finance Forum, which I chair and which is a forum which meets four times a year, enabling farmers to understand better how banks work and banks to understand better how farmers work. That has never been attempted before. On that forum we have representatives of the leading banks, we have rural counsellors and we have representatives of farming organisations; and that will, I hope, significantly extend farmers' and banks' knowledge of each other's operations.

As Senator Sandy Macdonald remarked, the introduction of the Farm Business Improvement Program under this legislation represents a significant shift in government assistance towards the farm sector in helping it adjust to the challenge that it faces. Senator Macdonald detailed that farmers will be encouraged to expand their range of management skills, seek farm business and financial planning advice, undertake farm performance benchmarking, implement quality assurance programs and invest in stronger risk management programs and natural resource management. All of this is vital to the continuing viability of agriculture in Australia if it is to continue to be competitive on world markets, which is where our future lies.

This program involves $50 million of Commonwealth funding over three years and it represents an integral part of this government's past and ongoing support for the rural sector and farmers throughout Australia, a group of which I am proud to have been one. I commend the bill to the Senate.

Question resolved in the affirmative.

Bill read a second time, and passed through its remaining stages without amendment or debate.