DPIRD Growing or Sinking

Finally, we are getting the beginnings of a public debate on the funding and operational capability of DPIRD, albeit it is between myself and the Minister.

Normally this would happen in parliament, but the government with its overwhelming numbers and its dismissive attitude to the processes of open and accountable government tends to ignore any questions, preferring to play the scratched record of the failures of the previous Barnett administration rather than answer hard questions.

Unfortunately for McGowan his government is now into its fifth budget, which when forward estimates are include it gives us a full nine years of financial planning on where they are prioritising their expenditure.

Readers of my weekly column may recall past articles that deconstruct the budget papers and have highlighted the cuts that DPIRD has suffered under this administration.

My most recent article The Sinking Ship - HMAS DPIRD details both the funding cuts, the loss of experienced staff and the various reports that highlight functional failures.

Readers may also have seen the Ministers follow up response letter in last week’s Farm Weekly, which failed to address the questions posed or put to rest her claims that all is well on the sinking ship.

Unfortunately, the Minister was more interested in highlighting my past role as Chief of Staff working for a previous Minister for Agriculture than addressing the issues raised or taking responsibility for the current woes of the Department.

While I would have quite liked to have been the Minister for Agriculture with a seat at the cabinet table and in state parliament, I was in fact but a small cog in the wheel far below the power a Minister can wield.

Minister MacTiernan is the real deal, she can use her formidable political power to roll other sitting members in preselection battles to extend her political career, she can end the careers of heads of department and she can extract tens of millions of dollars from Treasury to pump into her regenerative and carbon projects.?

Which means she is more than capable of ensuring that DPIRD has more staff today that when she inherited the three departments of Fisheries, Agriculture and Regional Development nearly 5 years ago.

But assuming the Minister is the one in charge and not her Chief of Staff she can continue to blame me all she likes about what happened under the previous government, but this is nothing more than an attempted distraction from what I have been saying for some time and that is, this Minister and this government have continued to cut funding to Agriculture since their first budget in 2017.

And yes, the Barnett Govt also cut the Ag Depts real funding as did the Carpenter, Gallop, Court and Lawrence governments. This has been going on for decades and both sides of politics are guilty of it but that is no excuse for it to continue in the era of sustainable economies that are not reliant on unsustainable industries.

So, lets recap, in 2016 the Department of Agriculture was reeling from the loss of staff under the previous government, hence the Stocktake Review commissioned by then Ag Minister Ken Baston, note that this was never hidden from the public like the Capability Review that this government commissioned.

The Stocktake review called on the Department to focus on core business and develop a clear strategic plan, it certainly did not recommend amalgamating the Department with fisheries and regional development.

Next point; the Minister in her letter claimed she killed off the idea of moving the 120 grains researchers into a joint GRDC, State Govt and industry controlled research entity called Grains West.

She didn’t kill it, former Liberal Minister Mark Lewis killed it by never signing off on the idea which was championed by the Department.

The idea was to form a powerful Grains Centre of Excellence in WA, free of the public sector inefficiencies and political interference of Ministers who are dismissive of the importance of increasing yields or are fascinated with regenerative agriculture.

Grains West is an idea whose time has come, with tens of millions of GRDC levy funds about to leave the state, it should be revisited.

The Minister also failed to mention the loss of Royalties for Regions and the $350m that the previous government pumped into 54 research projects under the Seizing the Opportunity Program, or the $300m that went into mobile phone towers, or the $350m into Ord Stage Two.

Well over a billion dollars was spent with more to come from the annual R for R fund had the Barnett government not lost power.

Unfortunately, the funding cuts by Treasury (starting with R for R) have kept coming and as I detailed last week, the failed Machinery of Government structural changes blew away most of the experienced senior staff who had agricultural related degrees in what I termed the Killing Fields, leaving a listless and demoralised Department open to ministerial interference.

Another misleading part of the Ministers response to my article is where she thought she had caught me out by claiming that the new Director General was killed under my watch during the Barnett years and not under her watch.

In fact, I am correct as rereading of what I had written will show:

“Strangely enough, Terry was one of the past seven ag science qualified directors back in the days of the old Ag Department, but was smart enough to retreat to the Pilbara Development Commission to avoid the killing fields, which is what the Department has turned into under this government.”

In other words, Terry was lucky to bail out before this government came to power and started hacking into its senior executive ranks.

I make the point again, under this government the Department has killed off most of the senior people who come from the bush and understood broadacre agriculture and I stand by my point that over the last five years all the old guard who had ag related degrees have been replaced with compliant bureaucrats with little to no agricultural expertise.

We watch with interest who gets appointed to the full time position.

I also made the point which the Minister conveniently overlooked in her letter that all three reviews completed under her watch are critical of the Department’s performance (Im assuming the secret report is highly critical).?I call on her again to release the one that sits locked in her safe – this is not open or accountable government.

Unfortunately for the Minister I’m not going to go away, my job is to keep a close eye on the Department, which includes trawling through the budget papers and talking to senior staff (they call me) because believe it or not you can’t always believe the spin that comes out of Ministers’ offices.

So, yet again let’s go through the budget numbers and wait and pray for some real answers that address the questions the industry and Departmental staff would like answers to.?

Anything else is a distraction aimed at avoiding the no doubt painful political truth which is that while the government banks billions in surpluses, the industry is seeing millions of dollars leave the state in levy fees, our biosecurity defences are struggling, the government won’t properly fund what’s left of the Department of agriculture.

DPIRD Net Appropriation?$186m in 2017-18 to $190m in 2024-25, which after inflation is factored in equates to a real cut of around 5%.

Staff Numbers FTEs at 1,736 in 2016-17 falling to 1,695 2020-21 is a cut of 41.

Total cost of Services?$528m in 2017-18 but by 2024-25 that figure drops to $435m which is equivalent to a real cut of 20%.

Total Income from State Government?$401 in 2017-18 but drops to $328m in 2024-25 which is equivalent to a real cut of 20%.?

Employee Benefits?$206m in 2017-18 by 2021-22 it was down to $212m, which equates to an annual cut of 2% a year for the past four years.?By 2024-25 it rises to $213m, indicating the 2% annual cull is set to continue so potentially another 40 jobs to be cut.

Biosecurity $101 in?2020-21 but is budgeted to fall in 2024-25 to $94.8m, a real cut of 10%.

Agricultural and Fisheries Natural Resource Management $73m in 2020-21 but will be down to $71m in 2024-25 a real cut of 5%.

Regional Telecommunications?17-18 budget $33m, this year it’s down to $20m, then $0 , $0, and $0 for the next three years which indicates no more matching funding for mobile black spots.

Regional Grants?in 2015-16 they peaked at $245m by 2021 they had fallen to $50m?

Carbon Farming $15m, Climate Resilience $15m, Oats?$10m,?Sheep?$4m and Wine?$3m. But in comparison to the Previous Government’s $350m Seizing the Opportunity Program which included 54 research projects.

======================================================

Clarity Needed on DPIRDs Budget

John Hassell

Following the article penned by WAFarmers CEO in the Farm Weekly ?The Sinking Ship - HMAS DPIRD I got a call from the Ministers Office requesting a meeting.

Obviously, the Minister was not happy with what she had been reading believing the articles were too political in nature and the CEO should be told to write about something else.

My response was the articles are a useful addition to public discussion around agricultural policy and the door is always open for the Minister to reply in the Farm Weekly.

Feedback from across the state is farmers are interested in the weekly WAFarmers opinion page, and in fact they would like to see more public debate and responses by the government on the issues raised.

I did make the commitment to the Minister that if there are any glaring factual errors then we would follow up with a published correction but in turn we would like to see a considered public response from the Minister.

We have seen this recently with media responses back and forth in the Farm Weekly on the issue of BJD with the Minister and the Department responding to our position and a debate taking place that airs the various positions.?

All too often political discussions are held behind closed doors with the government dangling the carrot of political access subject to not relaying publicly what was discussed behind closed doors.

The end result is usually nothing happens other than bland joint press releases and photo ops all designed to control the messaging.

While this might be good for the government it is not good for the body politic and leads to the growing distrust we see in our political system.

On that basis I hope the Minister takes up our offer to engage regularly in open and honest debates through the rural press.

As outlined in Trevor’s latest opinion piece the issues of the Department’s budget is one issue that deserves a frank and honest discussion.

The Minister has been adamant that the budget numbers quoted by Trevor are not correct, and the general premise that the funding of agriculture has been cut is untrue.

In turn Trevor is adamant that his interpretation of the budget numbers is correct and the Department has suffered cuts under this government and is facing future cuts in its staffing and service provision.

Both can’t be right.

As you can see from the points made in Trevor’s article the financial budget numbers quoted don’t look very promising, but I accept that the budget papers can be confusing and different interpretations can be taken from the different line items.

In addition, the forced amalgamation of the old Ag Department with Fisheries and Regional Development make it difficult to obtain a clear historic picture to benchmark between governments.

It gets even more complicated when we factor in the cuts to the Royalty for Regions program that was used under the Barnett government to fund around $100m of agricultural related programs each year including a range of research programs.?

But for the sake of putting this question to rest once and for all and noting that this government now has five budgets under its belt and we can see what it plans to spend out to 2025.

Hence I have written to the Minister asking for clarity on these issues and have put 12 specific questions to the government which I look forward to publishing along with the answers.

The information from the replies should be available to all growers so we can understand the priority and support that the government places on primary industry and regional development and confirm if DPIRD is still facing cuts in its front-line services.

With the government pocketing massive surpluses from mining it should be reinvesting more of these funds into a sustainable industry that supports regional communities.?

The alternative is the latest boom in mining undercuts agriculture by out competing us for labour while generating a flush of royalty income that then gets spend in Perth and coastal regional centres to buy votes.

The Minister is supposed to be backing her portfolio areas and the best way of showing that is to ensure the budget funnels more funds into regional projects that support agriculture.