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

I would like to think so. Last year we had the best crops on record. That was not due to any work that I did; it was actually due to the fact that the climate gave us a great season. In fact, if you were writing a script for a season, in 2009 we had it in my area. So you do adapt. I remember in 2006 suggesting to my son that I had a feeling we were not going to get much more rain. That was in about June. The predictions from the Bureau of Meteorology were that we might have a little bit below average rainfall for the rest of the year. In fact, it forgot to rain after June. Normally, May, June, July and August are our wettest months in our Mediterranean climate. I am glad we stopped sowing crops because it was the driest year in 117 years of recording. So the crops were a disaster and my area, which is generally drought free, found it had a year like no other. As a farming family we adapted to those circumstances.

If you go through the recommendations, there are some very good ones. For example, recommendation 2 states:

… the Australian Government, as part of its overall response to issues affecting agriculture and climate change, take more effective account of the needs and decision making processes of farmers—

I have just given you an example of that—

and ensure that the delivery of adaptation programs—

please listen, minister for the environment—

is flexible and responsive to the needs of farmers and rural communities.

I think that is a good recommendation. I note the member for New England has been a long-serving member on that same committee, and we worked together very strongly for the nine years that I was on it—and I think that was six years for you; you are now in your ninth year.

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