Minister for Agriculture and Member for New England Barnaby Joyce says that farmers should be able to immediately claim the same tax concessions as small businesses.

It was announced in the budget that from July 2017, farmers will be able to claim an immediate, total deduction for any spending on fencing and water infrastructure.

However Mr Joyce has spoken with Treasurer Joe Hockey about bringing the measure forward to be in line with the tax breaks being offered to small business. 

“I've been following it up with the Treasurer and I hope to do something to truncate that timeframe into a more immediate form and do it in the very near future,” he said.

“The depreciation for silos, the fencing and the water reticulation were announced in the Budget and the timeframes didn't match up. It's most logical if we talk about it during the white paper, because they were agricultural white paper initiatives.

“We will now make them match up and we'll do that when we release the white paper. What it obviously means is those timeframes will come into the more immediate term.”

However, Shadow Minister for Agriculture and Rural Affairs Joel Fitzgibbon says that while he welcomes the asset write-off program as a sensible move to improve cash flow, Barnaby Joyce is giving “false hope” to farmers that these changes will happen quickly.

“Of course, last year’s Budget is still biting rural and regional Australia harder than it is our city cousins. There are the cuts to health and education and fuel tax rises these all hit hardest in rural and regional Australia,” he said.

“But the problem is that many farmers have now been in drought for three years and the announcement last Tuesday night tells them that they can now get a new depreciation schedule but not until 2017.

“Well, we all hope and pray that the drought will be over in 2017 and now Barnaby Joyce is saying “mea culpa” we got that wrong.  This is one of the centrepieces of their Budget and he is now lobbying the Treasurer twenty four hours after the Budget was delivered to change it. Well I hope he is successful.  But it just shows this is a Government not properly focused on the real problems being faced by people on the land.

“It’s time Tony Abbott and Barnaby Joyce stopped raising false hope and started delivering something substantial for farmers.”