Patrick Secker (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Recommendation 3 is also very important because it says:

The Committee recommends that the Australian Government, as part of its overall response to issues affecting agriculture and climate change, invest research funding in the following high priority areas:

Soil carbon sequestration—

Hello: coalition direct action policy; great stuff—

Soil stabilisation and pasture improvements using methods such as perennial pastures, pasture cropping, rotational grazing, biodynamic farming, minimum/no till cultivation and controlled traffic farming;

I can say from my own experience that we have been using those sorts of programs on our farm. Some of them are very successful, depending on the soil, the climate and what you are trying to achieve. Another recommendation referred to soil-water retention strategies and water-use efficiency. I think there is no doubt that that is very important: to get more crop per drop—in other words, to use our water more efficiently. South Australia, I think, have a proud record of being the most efficient irrigator in Australia. They have upgraded their infrastructure, which unfortunately seems to have stopped in the last couple of years under this federal government. Even though there is $6 billion set aside for it, it actually has had proven effects in South Australia—for example, the Loxton irrigation rehabilitation scheme in my electorate, where it saved huge amounts of water. I think it was something like 44 gigalitres annually just by using pipes rather than open channels, which seep and evaporate. Unfortunately, the state government at the time, who I might add was Labor, decided to sell those savings of 44 gigalitres rather than return it to the river. It would have had a much greater effect if that water had through its savings been returned to the health of the river rather than being sold off for a cash supply by the state government at the time. But you can do those sorts of things, and quite successfully.

The report then refers to energy on farms, and recommendation 6 states:

… the Australian Government, as part of its overall response to issues affecting agriculture and climate change, increase its investment and support for research into energy efficiency in the agriculture sector and the development of alternative energy and alternative fuels on-farm, particularly in regard to:

Biofuels;

Biomass from agricultural waste; and

Biochar.

Hello: coalition direct action policy. What a great committee this is! It is actually adopting the coalition’s direct action policy in just about every recommendation. What a fantastic committee!

Recommendation 7 recommends:

… the Australian Government increase funding for research into improving the consistency and accuracy of weather and climate forecasting, especially at a seasonal and regional level.

Well, can I tell you, as a farmer probably the most important knowledge you can have is about the upcoming weather, whether it is trying to avoid rain because you are spraying or making sure that you sow at the right time and you have got the right moisture. So it is very important that more money is spent on that research.

I found recommendation 8 quite interesting. The committee recommended:

… the Australian Government develop an education and training scheme for farmers in the understanding and use of weather and climate information.

In my experience I am not sure that is necessary. Every farmer I know knows a lot about the weather. That is what controls their lives, and they use every bit of the latest technology, going onto the Bureau of Meteorology website to get long-term and short-term forecasts or sometimes to find out what is happening in just the next couple of hours. If you go onto the website you can find very accurate forecasts by looking at the radar—some of us would have seen that on the cricket forecasts—which shows the weather patterns and where the weather is coming from.. So I am not convinced that that recommendation is going to be all that necessary. I am not saying that it is a bad recommendation; I am just not sure that we actually need to do a lot in that area.

Recommendation 10 is good because the committee recommended:

… the Australian Government, as part of its ongoing strategy development to issues affecting agriculture and climate change, develop a strategy to capture, evaluate and disseminate the range of farmer driven—

and that is the important thing, that they are farmer driven—

innovations that have a significant capacity to increase the resilience and productivity of farm enterprises.

Farmers in this country have got a really good record of inventions and innovations, going back as far as the stump-jump plough, for example, or the Sunshine harvester, the first motor driven harvester. Certainly by today’s standards you would think: ‘An eight-feet comb?’, but it was better than what they had with the horse and dray. Of course now we have 40-feet combs and huge headers for reaping. From that original innovation they have expanded and obviously moved on to something better. That original innovation happened in Australia and of course it progressed from there as time went on.

Recommendation 11 says:

The Committee recommends that the Australian Government ensures that there is an overall body to receive and analyse research and co-ordinate research across the nation in relation to climate change adaptation in agriculture—

that lovely word ‘adaptation’—

and that said body is given the necessary resources of staff and funds to carry out its role.

I think it is very sensible that we have some coordination of the information we are getting that can be disseminated to farmers—and the ability to take up the latest innovations and technology. Look at minimum till. When I grew up, 50 years ago, you had to plough the paddock at least four or five times to kill the weeds. Unfortunately, doing that you used up a lot of the moisture. You may have killed the weeds but you used a hell of a lot of diesel running the tractors to plough those paddocks and sometimes you just did not get it in time. Now with direct till you go straight in, you do not waste the moisture, you use a lot less fuel and, if you believe in problems with CO2, you are reducing the CO2. In fact, farming in Australia is the only industry that has actually reduced its CO2. Farmers have done it not because of climate change but because they want to save money and do their farming better. It is the only industry in Australia that has done it and they have done it without government help. So if we can help a bit that is good.

The last recommendation that I want to refer to is:

The Committee recommends that the Australian Government give further consideration to the analysis of government policy and outcomes in the submission to the current inquiry made by the Future Farm Industries CRC, with a view to ensuring the better coordination of research and extension efforts and the delivery of effective policy outcomes.

That might sound a bit like a ‘program specificity’, which we have all heard about, but if you actually bring it down to plain language it is saying that we need the coordination by the CRC in farming, and that is important because that coordination will help get that information disseminated to the farmers of Australia to make them even better farmers. So put it in plain language and get away from the program specificity, but if you look into it deeply it is actually a very good recommendation.

Can I congratulate the committee on their work. They have done a great job and it has been a pleasure to talk on this issue.

See this speech in context