Don’t expect to see any significant drought reform before the next federal election.
Parliament has scheduled just eight sitting days before the federal poll is due, on May 18 in 2019, and little time to develop policy beyond the agreement the federal and state governments signed up to at the Council of Australian Governments meeting in December.
The COAG agreement essentially reiterated the governments’ commitment to promote preparedness measures and risk management.
It even stated a goal to move away from the Emergency Circumstances regime which, oddly, hasn’t been in place for more than a decade.
Conspicuously absent was discussion of a national drought policy, with consistent measures across state and federal governments, which has been a key goal across the rural sector for years.
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Prime Minister Scott Morrison nominated drought as his top priority when he assumed office in August and has made a string of announcements since then.
But despite the headlines, little policy change has occurred.
In October Mr Morrison convened a National Drought Summit, where he announced more than $90 million of in-drought support funding. He also announced a Future Fund investment of $5 billion that would pay out $100 million a year toward drought prevention and support from 2020.
Whichever party forms government will have their work cut-out for them on drought policy.
The Coalition has moved quickly to address complaints about the difficult application process to access financial assistance through the Farm Household allowance.
It is now gathering feedback from ongoing stakeholder meetings following on from the Drought Summit.
Labor agriculture spokesman Joel Fitzgibbon has committed to deploy 100 extra Centrelink Community Response Officers to work in drought hit communities and to reform a COAG committee to implement drought reform policies.
