Gary Gray (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I acknowledge the value of this debate in both setting parameters for public policy and helping the community to understand the importance of the issue of climate change and agriculture. My family in Western Australia, on my wife’s side, are predominantly wheat farmers. Just from reading the last few seasons we know that 2006 and 2007 were difficult seasons. 2008 opened with great promise. We had buoyant world grain prices and in Western Australia in the wheat belt we had fantastic rains through February, March and early April. Indeed, by Easter it was being predicted that we would have another bumper grain crop—15 million tonnes was speculated on as the Western Australian grain crop for this year.

Since that time rainfall has largely been limited to the coastal plains. Two-thirds of WA’s wheat belt—the grain belt—is now in need of rain. In some areas communities are facing their third consecutive dry year. The central wheat belt around the Merredin district—the core of WA’s grain production—is doing it hard again, and it is just getting harder. Morawa and Perenjori are now in their fifth or sixth year of difficult seasons. That is what they call it—just ‘difficult seasons’.

We are now looking at a projected WA harvest for this year of between eight and 12 million tonnes, which is significantly down on that earlier optimistic 15-million tonne projection, and of course prices have also come off since the first quarter of this year, although they are still high in historic terms. But they are high for a number of reasons, not least of which is the weather conditions in the United States where storms, floods and extreme weather events are affecting agricultural production across a range of sectors.

In this place over the course of the last year we have heard much about working families—and from my family’s experience in Western Australia, they like to occasionally hear about farming families too. The farming families of Western Australia have a strong history of making great achievements in challenging conditions. From the original settlement of Western Australia in 1829 to the planting of the first crops and the famine that followed those crops at Champion Bay, we are now an export state. The sandy soils of the grain belt met science, trace elements and the investment of massive capital, and the farmers of Western Australia, with the support and insight of science, have been able to build magnificent businesses and secure family enterprises. Many members of my own family work on those sandy soils. They farm them, they raise their families and build good livings. Through Kellerberrin and Doodlakine in the central wheat belt the Walsh family worked the land and in Corrow in the northern wheat belt my brother-in-law and sister-in-law Rod and Shelley work up there.

This year Rod and Shelley will plant around 9,000 acres—about 5,000 hectares. Theirs is at the larger end of the family farms, the sort of farm you can support literally with a husband and wife team. They get on with it. They plant canola, lupins and wheat in a combination of early and late crops. The good rains early in March led them to believe that the year was going to be a good one. Thanks to their early sowing, they are pretty well prepared in their business plan for dealing with what has now become a harder year as autumn has come and the rain has dropped off. There has been very little rain—mainly on the coastal plains of Western Australia through Geraldton and Albany—to keep the crops in that country good. But on the family farm, even the pasture for looking after the family pets—the horses—is not there. In fact Shelley describes what one may previously have thought of as being a pasture as being like a bitumen road. It is a bit hard right now for them.

But the seeding, the harvesting and the running of the farm require working through very narrow windows of time. It requires working with great skill. It requires the application of significant capital. It required operating in a world of escalating input costs—not just diesel but also where you have to hire in labour to run trucks. The gas explosion in Western Australia has impacted on fertiliser production, and we see circumstances in the wheat belt in Western Australia getting harder and harder. We see it happening not for the first time and not for the second time. We see it happening to areas that have been reliable for the better part of 20 or 30 years. My father-in-law would often make the comment that since opening up their land around Doodlakine in the early 1930s, they have really had only a couple of bad seasons since 1932—and he means that. His daughter is now looking at potentially the third hard season in a row. Areas around the central wheat belt are now looking at perhaps their fifth or sixth hard year in a row.

Western Australian agriculture prides itself on being science based. Indeed there probably is not a better example of science based agriculture in Australia. Combined with improved farm practices, the advent of wheat varieties that are better adapted to the Western Australian environment has meant that yields have improved consistently through the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. We also know that the Western Australian wheat belt contains some of the driest consistently farmed land in the world. Growing season rainfalls are commonly less than 200 millimetres per annum—eight inches in the old scale—in the important period from May to September. Soils in the region are generally old, shallow and naturally infertile. Taken together, those factors alone make farming a challenging business in Western Australia. But with research, with a great system that has an emphasis on plant breeding, and with a lot of work being done on genetic improvements in agriculture, there is serious hope for the future. By national standards Western Australia is a leader. By international standards we set the pace in the application of science to agriculture.

Western Australia also has significant advantages in logistics. Grain points are established at four key locations around the coast—at Esperance, Albany, Kwinana and Geraldton. The long and successful establishment of the farmer-owned monopoly grain-handler, CBH, has made a significant contribution to the ability of Western Australian growers to grow and sell their product competitively and in a timely manner.

Western Australia has some pretty good infrastructure. It has good science infrastructure. It has farmers who are serious about doing their business. It has wonderful opportunities. At this time, we have a parliament and a government prepared to contemplate the impact of climate change on agriculture. Last week I was fortunate to have dinner as a guest of the National Farmers Federation. The President of the National Farmers Federation in his address on that occasion made a substantial set of references to climate change. If we look at the Farmers Federation’s strategic plan for 2006 to 2009, it is clearly stated that they have as one of their goals more efficient delivery of government environmental programs on the farm. They want to manage the impacts of climate change and greenhouse gas emissions on agricultural production.

They make the point very clearly that the NFF pushed the government very hard for a new vision to deal with drought in Australia and want a commitment to assist farmers to adapt to climate change through a $130 million package. The government has responded to that by announcing its climate change package, the Australia’s Farming Future initiative. The $130 million Australia’s Farming Future initiative will help build adaptable and resilient producers and industries to strengthen their ability to manage climate change into the future.

One of the very early conversations that I had when I came into this place was with the member for New England. At that time he made a point of discussing the impact of climate change but also the substantial science to do with carbon, soils and agriculture. Since that time I have taken it upon myself to ensure that I am better educated and better informed on the science and the practical measures that farmers are taking in Western Australia to manage climate change as well as they can and to grow their businesses in difficult circumstances. (Time expired)

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