Effectiveness of drought assistance measures
Overview
In response to unprecedented conditions faced by farmers and affected businesses, the government introduced drought response measures that directly targeted business assistance. This included the municipal rate subsidy and rebate for fixed water charges (water rebate) in 2005 and 2006 respectively.
Just over 48 per cent of funding has been allocated to the water rebate and municipal rate subsidy between 2005–06 and 2008–09. Both these schemes provide business support to certain eligible categories of farmers. This audit focused on these schemes, given their materiality. The balance of funding is spread across approximately 50 other drought programs.
The audit objective was to assess the effectiveness of the water rebate and the municipal rate subsidy measures in terms of how well these measures have achieved objectives.