You could be forgiven for thinking Australia's farmers are front and centre in the national debate this week.

Between drought tours and bush summits, the Basin plan and activists trespassing on farms, you can barely turn on the box without seeing a pair of boots kick the dirt.

Farmers don't just make for pretty pictures, they're solid fodder for party politics.

While the attention is often welcome, it doesn't always translate to meaningful action.

The Government, five minutes into the new parliament, fell over itself to introduce two new pieces of legislation it claims will help the man on the land.

One is designed to deter on-farm trespass and lends itself to plenty of rhetoric about protecting the Australian way of life.

Rural news in your inbox? Subscribe for the national headlines of the day.

(Unless you're the Greens leader who suggests the issue is potentially worthy of law-breaking civil disobedience).

The proposed farm trespass laws sound tough, but largely duplicate existing laws that criminalise using a carriage service to incite a crime. They also stray into the domain of states and territories.

The other, the Future Drought Fund, comes with a multi-billion-dollar kitty and scant detail about how it will be spent: a lot of sizzle and no sausage, yet.

Scott Morrison and Michael McCormack hope to create a $5 billion drought fund. ( ABC News: Nick Haggarty )

While both policies were welcomed by the National Farmers' Federation (NFF), it has left some in rural communities scratching their heads.

After an election campaign full of MPs in chinos spruiking bipartisan support to grow Australian agriculture to a $100 billion sector, and with the drought spreading like a cancer, the cynics wondered if these policies were more about packing a punch in the paddock, or the parliament.

Responding to the Drought Fund debate, Australian Custom Harvesters president Rod Gribble said "voters are pissed off with wedge politics and want real action" on what he described as an "extreme emergency now".

"Rural people have had a gutful of the bunfight on drought policy … for years governments of both persuasions haven't done a bloody thing," Mr Gribble said.

The Government and Opposition had been at each other's throats for days about how to proceed with the fund, which will come cheap and slow — a dormant infrastructure fund has been dusted off and recycled to draw down $100 million a year, from next year.

Keep in mind, there are 85,000 farms businesses across Australia and the funding is for future, not the current, drought.

Labor called on the Coalition not to "play politics with this, it is too important, just stop it" while the Coalition accused Labor of "politicising the misery of Australian farmers".

No-one wanted to be seen to say no to the farmers, but you could argue neither side of politics was actually saying yes.

Anthony Albanese said Labor would support the drought fund but wanted the Government to do more to help farmers. ( ABC News: Luke Stephenson )

The NFF list of federal election priorities makes little mention of future drought funding, but explicitly calls for a comprehensive national drought policy.

It's a bit wordy, but the policy request sounds like a broken record in rural circles and is about removing ad hoc, reactive and inconsistent drought support unfolding in different states.

"We need to have a plan where everybody understands, what happens … when things become dry, what happens when it goes to the next stage," NFF president Fiona Simson explained last week.

It didn't matter.

Still rural Australia waits.

The idea of helping farmers plays well, not just in the regions, but in metropolitan news bulletins as well.

Look at last week's Bush Summit in Dubbo, an event organised by the Daily Telegraph, which reported the following excerpts from the Prime Minister's speech.

"I will never allow those in our cities to tell those in our regions and rural areas what industries they can work in, how they should live or how they should seek to protect their way of life," Mr Morrison said.

It looked like the PM was leaning in when in fact he had nothing new to offer.

David Littleproud urged Labor to stop "playing politics" with drought and back the Government's drought fund. ( ABC News: Luke Stephenson )

Instead, Mr Morrison spoke about his grandmother who left her rural community when she married a man from the city.

"Mardie, as we knew her, told me that during the Depression, there were always people in the house, crowded around the piano, sharing a meal when they could … it was my first lesson on the bonds that tie regional and rural communities together."

A nice story, it left desperate farm and rural groups underwhelmed.

"We're tired," WoolProducers vice-president and Victorian farmer Steve Harrison said this week.

He is looking down the barrel of a third, consecutive failed spring.

"They're all talk, and no action," he said of the numerous politicians, state and federal, he'd shown through his drought-ravaged paddocks in recent times.

Like many others he has been an obliging host — posing for photos, shaking hands, speaking to the media — but he is yet to feel heard.

The goodwill in rural communities is wearing thin and this week's politics has done little to endear those beyond the city boundaries.

"I just don't think it is helpful," Country Women's Association of Australia president Tanya Cameron said.

"We're looking for a concrete way forward and it's wasted space, wasted airtime, wasted paper talking about what the other side has or hasn't done. I just think people are over it."

Ms Cameron says if farmers and rural communities are going to be put at the centre of the national debate, it would be nice if they could be heard.

"We're playing with lives and livelihoods and it [the politics] is not fair."