Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee, , 6:06:07 to 6:08:52
Senators question the government's priorities, comparing the interest rates offered to struggling farmers with lower rates available to large-scale renewable energy developers.
Topics: Drought and disaster support, Renewable energy
Speakers: Speaker 12, Speaker 5, Speaker 28
>> yeah, please follow. I don't know if you've seen, but the government's announced that uh, uh, large scale uh, wind and solar developers can get an interest rate of 100 basis points below the 5-year government bond rates for the net zero fund. Why are multinational companies building solar and wind projects getting an interest rate much lower than what you're offering to
farmers in drought? I haven't I'm not aware of that that information.
>> So, it's 5.1% here. >> Mhm. >> When I checked last week, the 5year bond rate was 4.2 4.3%. And so, those those developers getting 3.3. I just trying to understand what the government's priorities are here. Why would a large massive multinational company build projects get interest rate two percentage points below a struggling
farmer who's facing drought? Perhaps um Senator to answer your question in a different way and to to pick up on Senator Rustin's um Senator Rustin's remarks. Um we we we've heard the same feedback from farmers around not wanting a a hand out but wanting a hand up and and managing cash flow issues. So um that was what the underpin and certainly that came through in the drought forum as well. uh and that that was underpinning our work on the drought hardship loan that Minister Collins recently announced in December. Um and to give you a sense of the settings of that loan, um it's targeted concessional finance, it recognizes that um I guess interest from farmers around having an interest free period. So, it has a 2year um basically repayment holiday um for a loan of up to 250,000 which um what we're hearing is um goes
to >> repayment free but it's not interest free. >> No. >> No. So, if it's repayment free, so you don't have to pay any repayment over that period of time, but you're still being slug 5.1% interest. So that that
that's right, which acknowledges that that farmers might have short-term cash flow issues as a result of experiencing significant drought conditions. Um but acknowledges that they don't want to hand out um they're happy to repay the
money. >> So first of all um going to Senator Canavan's point about um you know the 5year bond rate being 4.3%. I mean clearly the government has access to finance at at particular rates. So I mean is this loan program actually making money for the government?