Surprise, surprise that Tony Burke's Department would receive a cut back. Mr Burke would not have put up much of a fight -he has bigger fish to fry.

Face it there are no votes in the rural seats for Labor and the Labor politicians still believe food comes from the supermarket. Like Australia's bank account the rural areas are in crisis, but agriculture still out performs most other industries as far as trade income goes. Labor is NO friend of agriculture. One day when the food in the supermarket is all imported and very expensive the penny may drop to these boof heads in power.

At 715 million to assist the 21,000 farms and businesses that need it in Australia, that is about $34,000 each before admiistraion costs. I wonder how much will actually get on the ground.

Not suprising. Labor has always hit the rural sector in every budget. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you! One Labor politician once asked why won't most farmers vote Labor!! Labor govts always run the country into debt and seem to have plenty of money to hand out to areas, as long as it is a non-productive area, eg dept environment, heritage and arts.

Few arguments with the infrastructure spend, only that it should have happened long before now & there is no Melbourne to Brisbane rail project as has been promised. That could actually have benefited a few regions, but agree with Barely Surviving above, they have no votes to cultivate in the regions. Fully support pension increase as well. If I live to 67 I might need it soon. It was really an election budget that was spun beforehand to be a horror budget, but wasn't.

The Liberals set the path to ruin and recession with their green policies. Now Labor puts the nails in the coffin. Where is the old Country Party when you need it? Gone to the coast chasing votes? Tony Windsor has shown what one independant can do. In WA the Nationals got a good deal for the country by negotiating to form a coalition with both major parties at their last election. City folk think money grows on trees but we country folk know it doesn't. Do we country folk tell the city folk how to run their cities and make laws to put them out of work and stop them making money? Who will step forward like David, and attack the Goliath of the cities? We need to regain our freedom to use our God-given blessings for productive purposes for the good of our great nation?

Australia's farmers should be wary of these policies which are consistent with the preaching of some of our radical academics, i.e that Australia should shut down agriculture altogether. Remember, this is a government of bookworms. R & D is nowhere more important than in agriculture. It is R & D which keeps agriculture one step ahead of pestilence.

You will all be pleased to know that the Department of Climate Change has been given plenty of money. Maybe the focus in the future will be to prove farming is destroying the planet and must be stopped rather than giving farmers the tools to be even better than they already are.

Farmers and the country have been ripped off for years and maybe it is time for a REAL country party to be formed. The National party could offer the Labor party some room in the Senate if they modererated some anti farmer policies and gave famrers as good a deal as other sectors.

Another $300 million into the farming sector above the coal industry would have helped.

As I have said, nationalise the coal industry and let all Australians have cheap power. It will not contribute anything meaningful to global emissions and spend profits on making this the best farm in the world, because food security is going to be the real threat to human civilisation.

Why is it that when money is needed to be found in any government budget, it always comes out of agriculture and emergency services?

Federal politics are no exception. We can also note that while everyone seems to be tightening their belts our pollies are loosening theirs, with a substantual increase for the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet...oh, what a shock and horror if this portfolio faced huge budget cuts.

The government claims money can be found through identifying inefficiencies and duplication. Does that mean that, in the next budget we will see cuts to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, as we have numerous inefficiencies in the duplication of procedures, and an over commitment of human resources?

If all country people rejoined our National Party, we could actually make some sort of difference. But it will take all rural voters to make the difference.

I've written about this before...agriculture is poorly represented in Canberra, both by politicians and lobbyists.

All of you are correct, cheap food is something that people believe that they have as a 'right', and whatever political party is in power they know that farmers will continue producing, because that is all they can do.

The RBA site on rural debt will show the true picture of agriculture. Mind you, over here in WA it is difficult to explain why a D of A research officer goes on the radio every year to tell farmers how to feed sheep during pregnancy and late autumn.

There are many cases of this no-doubt expensive, patronising attitude from 'advisors', and a quick look at the average age of farmers will show that if there is still a need for that kind of 'service' then we are all extraordinarily slow at learning even the basics of our industry.