Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

In this matter of public importance we really have not heard any serious policy discussion from the Labor Party—not from the Leader of the Opposition and not from the member for Chifley, who has just delivered a 10-minute speech on shopping centres. The Leader of the Opposition has touched on a couple of issues, because he did mention a broadband policy for the bush. I think I can argue that you have to have activity, business and confidence in the bush before people are going to take a step that involves what he proposes.

Why is the Labor Party so afraid of the ‘A’ word—agriculture? Agriculture has not been mentioned today by either of the speakers from the opposition. The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and I certainly have mentioned it and will continue to. The Leader of the Opposition talks about opening a dialogue with rural and regional Australia. I, too, have the transcript from today’s Country Hour where he said he met with the NFF last night. He said:

We had a very good chat with the NFF. They came to Canberra—

in fact they do not come to Canberra; they are here already—

to talk to us about issues that were important to them, and we discovered very high levels of commonality, very high levels of commonality on regional policy, on things like nationbuilding issues—

et cetera. I will give some advice to the Leader of the Opposition on talking to the NFF—and I do not propose to speak for that particular group: you as an opposition will have to tackle the hard issues if you are to win over the hearts and minds of rural and regional Australia, not one of whose votes we ever take for granted. Where do you stand on the hard issues facing agriculture and rural and regional Australia: live sheep exports to the Middle East; intensive factory farming; irrigated agriculture in the Murray Valley; plantation forestry; the very difficult issues farmers face with state governments on native vegetation laws that are driving them absolutely mad; Work Choices, which farmers support; and foreign workers, which farmers support? If you want to open a new dialogue with regional Australia then you will have to come out with some statements about these issues that can resonate with the people that I represent and the people that other coalition members in rural areas on this side of the House represent. That is a lot more difficult for you than simply mentioning nation building and talking about broadband connections in the bush—which I am keeping a close eye on and I think it is going very well. If the Labor Party takes to the next election the policies it took to the last election, it will be doing nothing for rural and regional Australia. It has to move a seismic shift away from where it was then to even get the attention of farmers and people in rural towns.

If I think back to the 2004 election, I was concerned—and I am sure the member for Mallee was equally concerned—about the Labor Party’s policy to put 1,500 gigalitres of water into the Murray River. The member for Kingsford Smith trotted down to the confluence of the Murray and the Darling with the then Leader of the Opposition—everybody was looking very uncomfortable because they were so far away from the big smoke—and announced, ‘We are here to save the river’—how many times have we heard that from them?—and, ‘We will put 1,500 gigalitres in the river.’ Every individual along both sides of the Murray River—and that adds up to a significant proportion of rural constituents—was horrified because they knew what the Labor Party did not know, which is that, if you chose a policy like that, you would decommission Hume Dam and you would close down irrigated agriculture in the Murray-Darling Basin. I am not sure about the figures for irrigated agriculture, but agriculture generally makes a contribution of about $13 billion to the national economy from the Murray-Darling Basin alone. So to come up with a policy like that, designed to provide some confidence to a city based constituency, was a very big mistake.

This is an example of how the Labor Party view agriculture issues: they simply do not understand. If you talk about water, they do not think of irrigation; they think of environmental flows. If you talk about things growing in the bush, they do not think of crops or produce; they think of native vegetation. As the minister said, we have an ongoing vision for rural and regional Australia about improving market opportunities, about tackling the difficult natural resource management issues, about having an industry policy that facilitates capacity building. In the bush we do not have large numbers, so we have to punch above our weight. We need the capacity there, and we are building it in our rural industries. We have a vision about structural adjustment, where and when needed, and about drought relief for exceptional circumstances. This government has been criticised most unfairly for its record on exceptional circumstances drought relief. I remind people that we have already paid out $1.02 billion in drought relief. To whatever extent we need to support farmers in drought, we have an open-ended commitment to do so.

We have a vision for research and development—an issue close to my own heart as the parliamentary secretary. The only way we can combat the decline in farmers’ terms of trade is by increasing productivity, and the main driver for increasing productivity is R&D. Our commitment of a $500 million research and development package and 14 statutory and industry based R&D bodies is really making it happen for the nation’s farmers—the best science, the best minds and the best people applying themselves to the task, with an extension network that means that in the paddock and on the tractor you can realise a benefit that puts you at the cutting edge of the world in leadership in agriculture, farming and productivity.

We have made significant contributions to protecting our flora and fauna from pest and disease incursions. I ask the four rural members opposite if they can name just three weeds on the national list of weeds of significance. There are 20 weeds on that list. Can they name three of them? I doubt it. To further emphasise our commitments, particularly in the last budget, we have a $2 billion Australian water fund, we have committed $44 million to defeating weeds—

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