Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Yesterday, Monday the 29th, an icon of the Australian sugar industry passed away. Joseph, or Joe, Toft died in Bundaberg at the age of 95 from complications after suffering a heart attack over the weekend. Joe was a local cane farmer with a huge talent for engineering, which shone through despite his lack of formal schooling. He was a key figure in the success of the sugar industry, particularly in the Bundaberg region, because of his landmark achievement in designing and building the first mechanical cane harvester.

It was Joe’s natural engineering ability and ingenuity which spawned one of Australia’s most successful home-grown engineering enterprises to date, the Austoft cane harvester business, originally known as Toft Bros or colloquially as Tofts. Joe actually designed and built the first machine, a loader, from scrap parts of metal. He did this in the late thirties and, although Austoft was established by his brothers Harold and Colin, it was Joe’s vision that led to the company’s creation.

Since 1947, the Austoft enterprise, in its various manifestations, generated wealth for Bundaberg and led the way in the global cane harvest sector. At one stage, 85 per cent of the world’s cane harvesters were made in Bundaberg. Austoft did not restrict itself to manufacturing just cane harvesters even though that remained its core business.

The company expanded into manufacturing other machinery by the 1990s and it was Australia’s largest agricultural machinery manufacturer. I recall Joe’s dismay when Austoft closed its doors in 2003 due to difficulties in the sugar industry and the fact that cane harvester manufacturing had moved from the Australian-Asia sector to Latin America. His words at the time were:

Well, that doesn’t make me very happy at all. After all, it was the Toft’s work that put the cane harvester in the field, and the company was known worldwide everywhere where sugar was grown, and I still would have liked it to have stayed in Bundaberg.

I was touched to receive a personal message from the Toft family to inform me of his passing. I would like to relay to his family that Joe’s respect for me as an MP is doubled in my respect for him as a pioneer, a fine citizen and a man who gave so much to the local community. I offer my condolences to his children, Cal and Desley; to his grandchildren, Lyn Andreassen, Ken Toft, Judy Green, Paul Gear, Wendy Bugden and Jeff Gear; and to his 10 great-grandchildren. He was a truly fine Australian and I pay tribute to him.

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