VICTORIAN Farmers Federation Whittlesea president Judy Clements believes local farmers have been kicked while they are down and discriminated against when it comes to bushfire relief.

While Ms Clements welcomed the announcement last week of $5000 grants for those not previously eligible for financial assistance after the Black Saturday fires, she said that after 11 years of drought, red tape and bureaucracy were blocking postfire assistance and adding to the hardship of rural landowners.

“Soon after the fires, the (State) Government made an announcement of two payments in the forms of grants specifically aimed at farmers and it was administered through the Rural Finance Corporation,” she said.

“One was an initial clean-up or restoration grant, $5000 for primary producers, the other one was $20,000 for commercial farmers, landholders, that might have been used for some other aspect of fencing, crop restoration, machinery, not covered by other grants.”

Ms Clements said the extensive paperwork involved in claiming the two grants and eligibility criteria caused great confusion and stress for landholders, with the main criteria actively excluding many “genuine” farmers from eligibility.

“Landowners had to have retained all receipts to support any claims they made, there was also a lot of confusion about the eligibility, varying opinions coming from Rural Finance; one person would call up and get one response, then their neighbour might call up and get a totally different response on the same question,” she said.

The State Government did not respond to Star’s requests for comment prior to deadline.

Ms Clements said 51 per cent of a person’s income must be generated from their farm for the person and their property to be eligible for assistance.

Because of the long-term drought, Ms Clements said, many farmers who wished to remain on the land had been forced to seek external incomes to prop up their ailing farms. “This is where people are falling through the cracks,” she said.

“I understand the need for this funding to support genuine farmers but there are plenty of landowners in this predicament who are genuine farmers but are not accepted for these one-off grants because they can’t comply with the 51 per cent rule.

“We are seeing a continuing erosion of incomes in the farming sector - which no other sector of the community would accept.

“We want farmers to keep doing what they are doing because they provide obvious benefits in food and fibre production but they are being discriminated against when applying for these grants, in relation to their incomes.

“This is an argument against bureaucracy and I am sure that a stroke of the pen could fix this.”

The Government’s latest announcement of $5000 on Thursday, is targeted at farmers and small business owners who earn less than $100,000 from other income sources and have not already received other financial bushfire assistance.