James Bidgood (Dawson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is more than honey; it is the money, honey. More than honey: the future of the Australian honey bee and pollination industries is a great report. I congratulate all those of the previous government and previous committee who were involved in this. I note that four of the members of the 41st Parliament on this committee are now on the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Primary Industries and Resources in the 42nd Parliament. They are: Alby Schultz, who was the chair previously and is now the deputy chair; the Hon. Dick Adams, who has chaired this committee; John Forrest; and Tony Windsor. Their input has been an education to new members of parliament like me.

It is good work, and I must admit I have learned so much reading this report. It was good to go through it page by page and see that here is an opportunity. Business is all about finding opportunities, maximising opportunities and giving a helping hand to an industry which needs restructuring and which needs government support. The  Rudd Labor government is looking for new forms of investment. We are looking for new ways to increase productivity.

This report recommends that $50 million a year be spent. This will be invested in biosecurity, which I see as possibly the most important aspect of this, because our continent is unique in that we do have the security blessing of being surrounded by oceans. That has made our honey bee unique, and we have to protect that unique Australian honey bee. When we look overseas at export markets, we look at Europe and we look at the standards there. Indeed, we need to help the honey bee industry in this country compete in and export to the European market and to the United States. In order to do that we need higher standards and we need universal standards. We need to bring our industry up to the levels of the European market and the American market. This can only be done with the helping hand of government—a clear hand-up, a clear investment.

As has been said by previous speakers—and I do not wish to duplicate what has been said, but it must be noted—this Australian honey bee industry is worth $80 million a year. In Europe alone, taking in all the aspects of plant based industries, wool, meat and dairy and the way the honey bee interacts with all of those, it is somewhere between $4 billion and $6 billion worth of turnover in the economy. That is a big market and that is a big potential. We have a unique situation with our honey bee. We can offer the world a unique product.

Anyone in business knows that is called niche marketing, and we need to take full advantage of our niche in the global market. I commend the recommendations of this report to invest in building a universal standard which allows us to compete in the European market and in the American market and offer high-quality honey. We obviously need to protect our industry. As I said earlier, I think the most important thing is the biosecurity, because we really do have to protect that honey bee; the investment in increasing standards and increasing research will be wasted if we allow the varroa virus to get into our bees.

There is a five-year plan which has been put forward in this report. It clearly states that, over the next five years, the main aim—and I think it is quite a conservative aim actually, a very safe aim—is to increase the hive yield by 10 per cent and also to increase by 20 per cent the growth in package bees because that is a major export market. Also, through labelling our product correctly and to the standards in Europe and America, we can offer therapeutic honey, as there is great potential to exploit the therapeutic values of honey as well.

In closing, I just want to say it has been a great privilege to be on the committee, and I do say to the chair and the deputy chair that this has been a real education about the unique honey bee. It is about more than honey; it is about money, it is about exports and it is about productivity. The Rudd Labor government is committed to productivity and to giving a helping hand to industries and to agriculture. I know that the minister for agriculture, the Hon. Tony Burke, is also very broad minded and very open to looking at ideas from this report. I think there is great potential and there is a huge market overseas which we could export to.

I would also like to give credit to the committee secretariat. I would just like to name Ms Janet Holmes, Dr Bill Pender, Ms Sam Mannette and Ms Jazmine De Roza. They have had the task of compiling and putting together, under the guidance of the chair and the deputy chair, all that is in this report. I would just like to say that it is a good report. I am proud to have had a small input into it as we went through each page and looked at every recommendation. I commend it to this Committee and to the House.

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