David Jochinke, a cropper from Murra Warra just north of Horsham, has taken over the reins of the Victorian Farmers Federation from outgoing president Peter Tuohey. 

Mr Jochinke resolved with VFF staff on Friday if they could not get a resolution it made more sense to dump the controversial tax.

North East fruit growers breathed a collective sigh of relief after the federal government moved to shelve the backpackers tax in May.

Under the proposed changes, backpackers would have been charged 32.5 cents for every dollar working on Border farms, fruit orchards and vineyards.

Former Assistant Treasurer Kelly O’Dwyer said a review on the tax headed by Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce would report in October for the government to decide what to do in November.

But Mr Jochinke said “they should just scrap the whole thing”.

“It has been disaster from go to woe,” he said.

“The fact they think backpackers don’t understand the taxation system and would still come here and pay those sort of rates is just crazy.

“They really need to understand what they’re doing to communities who rely on the backpackers.”

Michael Smith, owner of a fruit orchard near Glenrowan, supported Mr Jochinke’s call to dump the tax.

“If we don’t do it, half the people that we’ve got here would not be prepared to do the sort of work that they do,” he said.

Meanwhile, Mr Jochinke listed water allocations and connectivity issues as major priorities for Border farming families.

“How we can get the balance back from purely looking at water management as solely an environmentally driven process to make sure that triple bottom line has the same balance,” he said.

“I feel that’s one of the areas when the Murray-Darling Basin Plan was being developed – the bias was obviously towards the environment there – trying to bring that to a more level playing field.”

Just as in the North East, Mr Jochinke experienced mobile blackspots in the Wimmera.

He said it was imperative for farmers to have access to good data speeds and telecommunications to operate their business.

“It’s systemic throughout all of agriculture – as soon as you get away from major population bases, the more regional and rural areas have huge issues,” he said.