Cameron Thompson (Blair, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

About a quarter of Australia’s 133,000 farming establishments derive their main income from beef cattle farming. The National Cattle Disease Eradication Account Amendment Bill 2006 will materially affect an important part of the process that supports a large slice of our rural industry—particularly our opportunity to export product from rural areas. Beef cattle farming is providing great opportunities and has traditionally provided great opportunities for Australia to export.

Last financial year, there was $13.5 million within the fund that we are talking about. It raises a considerable amount of money to be used to protect our rural industries and we need to ensure that there is sufficient flexibility within our system to arrange protection in ways that will be effective. We should not put it in straitjackets or implement guidelines that limit its effectiveness. We heard from the member for Corio opposite about some of the new threats that are appearing all the time that could potentially cause a danger to our very important beef cattle industries.

I would just remark a little bit on the evolution of the cattle industry in Australia. I do not know how many members know it, but cattle first arrived in Australia in 1788 on the First Fleet—there were six of them. By 1800, we had 1,044 head of cattle in Australia. By 1850, there were nearly 1.9 million head of cattle. In 1900, that had grown to 8.6 million. By 1950, we had 9.7 million and in 2002 we saw the peak in the cattle herd at 24.7 million head of cattle. The drought that we have been suffering that has been causing all the pain and anguish in rural areas has caused numbers to tail off a bit since then.

There are up to 24.7 million head of cattle in Australia, providing great support for communities in all kinds of different regional areas in our country and also providing export income. In 2003-04, for example, exports of beef earned Australia $3.9 billion, which is 3.5 per cent of the total of our merchandise exports. Live cattle exports earned an additional $460 million. We are among the top producers of beef, with the 10th largest herd in the world. We are also the world’s largest exporter of beef, with 25 per cent of the total of our beef production being traded. We had 36,200 beef cattle farms in 2002-03, accounting for 27 per cent of Australia’s agricultural establishments. It is important that we look at ways of providing additional support.

We have seen growth in the cattle herd over the years on the average farm. In 1979 the average cattle herd on a farm would have been 218. Two decades later it reached as high as 301. That does reflect the growth and the trend within our rural industries towards greater, bigger and more substantial enterprises, and also towards greater efficiency and a more competitive industry which builds very strongly for the future of our country.

The National Cattle Disease Eradication Account is used to fund initiatives in the eradication of brucellosis and tuberculosis. The original brucellosis and tuberculosis eradication campaign started back in the late eighties. It has been successful. Since then we have seen a number of programs, such as the Tuberculosis Freedom Assurance Plan and the Tuberculosis Freedom Assurance Plan 2, to monitor effectiveness. They ensure that the achievements of the eradication program for brucellosis and tuberculosis have been effective and long-lasting and that we do not see any resurgence of either of those two deadly diseases within our cattle herds.

I thought I should say just how effective that has been. The last case of TB was found in Tasmania in 1972, in Victoria in 1991, in New South Wales in 1995, in South Australia in 1996, in Western Australia in 1998, in Queensland in 2000, and in the Northern Territory in 1999 in cattle and in 2002 in buffalo. I remember they spent an awful lot of effort trying to completely wipe out the buffalo herd in the Northern Territory, but I think that, as the member for Lingiari will probably tell us, there are still some out there. It is still important that we continue to maintain a watch on what is going on.

I thought I might move from that discussion of the program to the importance now of providing greater flexibility. The purpose of this bill is to enable funds to be available for transfer—and I spoke before about $13.5 million in the last financial year being available in that fund—into a fund for a broader attack on cattle diseases through the Cattle Disease Contingency Fund. I think that, on the face of it, is quite clearly very much a desirable outcome. There are plenty of other threats out there for the cattle industries and it is very important that we enable that flexibility to exist. The scope of the Cattle Disease Contingency Fund is much wider and it will be used for the prevention, eradication and control of diseases as well as for research. I want to come to that in the short bit of time that remains to me.

I would like to inform the House that there are significant changes occurring in my electorate that will contribute manifestly to this program. In the electorate of Blair we have the University of Queensland Gatton campus. Recently the University of Queensland, a very strong and reputable university with a significant worldwide reputation in veterinary achievements, announced that they are going to be transferring their vet school from St Lucia, in the leafy suburbs in the western part of Brisbane, to Gatton. This will enable students to have much more direct exposure to the heavy animal industries and to the wide range of rural pursuits that are engaged in in Queensland, particularly in areas like beef cattle. This will give the students greater awareness of the risks of these diseases.

It is also significant that, once this revised school is established at the Gatton campus of the University of Queensland, we will have a much greater focus on those diseases and on those other diseases that threaten the future of our cattle herd. Students undertaking study there, as opposed to students who in the past studied at St Lucia, will be much more focused on those heavy animal industries and much more prepared and able to support our endeavours in the beef cattle industry than I think they could ever have been being trained within the built-up area of Brisbane. That is a good thing.

I want to point out the cost of transferring that incredibly difficult learning process. It is the most complex learning process. They say that doctors have to study only one type of organism, whereas vets have to study a huge number of different animals and all the complexities that go with them. So it is a very complex undertaking. That transfer is not going to be free. For example, funds from sources such as the one that we are discussing today should be brought into play to ensure that those students have the best facilities. About $80 million is required to re-establish the facility at Gatton. To be honest about it, the university has been pursuing the Commonwealth for something like a $25 million contribution towards that. It may be that the stakeholders within this fund, the Cattle Disease Contingency Fund, will find it a worthwhile investment to help with the establishment of that facility, because the more we can train vets with a focus on the rural industries as opposed to dogs and cats in the cities, the better off we will be, the greater the future will be for our nation and the greater strength there will be within our rural industries.

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