Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too congratulate you, Madam Deputy Speaker May, on your appointment to the Speaker’s Panel and wish you the very best in keeping members under control. It is interesting following the member for Barker. The member for Barker unfortunately did not follow the practice of the committee in its attempts to keep this pretty much a bipartisan issue. The member for Barker would have us believe that carbon in our atmosphere could be stabilised to below five per cent of our 2000 levels just by adopting the recommendations of the committee. It is an interesting concept because most of those recommendations are focused on research and development, in other words, bringing to a commercial stage many of the innovations we would all hope collectively to see in place in the future. So it is an interesting angle and approach that he chose to take on this occasion.

I am not a farmer, unlike the member for Barker, and, indeed, I am not a member of the committee. But I have represented farming communities for some 14 years in this place and on that basis it should not be a surprise to anyone to see me seeking an opportunity to provide some reflection and some comment on the committee’s work. The report entitled Farming the future: the role of government in assisting Australian farmers adapt to the impacts of climate change is a report of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Primary Industries and Resources. I agree with the member for Barker on one thing: this is a good report. It is a practical and pragmatic report, and I too congratulate the committee on its very good work.

As the member for Lyons indicated in his chairman’s foreword, the committee was less interested in arguing the toss over issues like climate change because, as he indicated, there is a diversity of views among committee members. Rather, the committee was much more interested in seeking practical solutions to some of the challenges that farmers face particularly as they relate to dramatic changes in our climatic conditions here in Australia. This approach underscores the great value of our parliamentary committee work. It is often underappreciated. It is an environment in which members can work in a bipartisan way towards the common good and, again, I congratulate the committee on doing so on this particular occasion.

Very much underappreciated in the Australian community also, I think, are the challenges that our farming communities face, for example drought, salinity, water allocation issues, declining commodity prices, rising input prices, and monopsony buyers, which is something close to my heart in terms of my own electorate. Then there are the difficulties in securing the services of skilled employees, and conflicting land use issues which are increasingly encroaching on some agricultural pursuits, and of course there is globalisation and industry rationalisation. In the wine industry, for example, oversupply is a big issue and of course for farming communities we also have isolation and all the social issues which go with that. I was particularly pleased to see the committee focusing more broadly on those social issues and not just looking at things which people would come to understand as issues pertaining directly to the challenges of tilling the soil and producing crops.

The committee took a year to make some 15 recommendations. During the year it considered 73 submissions and held 14 public inquiries. It also visited five states, looking at innovative farming practices in particular. The report very much focuses on the way in which climate change makes life more difficult for already challenged families. It highlights the need to provide greater counselling support and to listen more to what farmers are saying and to look more closely at their local innovation.

The report places great emphasis on the need for a greater investment in research and development, particularly in areas like soil carbon sequestration, something we have spoken about already; and soil water retention strategies and, of course, water efficiency. Carbon sequestration has the potential to both increase crop yields and, of course, reduce carbon in our atmosphere—really good news for food security and really good news for our environment, if we can get that technology to commercial use.

Those who produce our food are part of our most important economic sector. Yet they face all the challenges which I spoke about earlier in my contribution. I want very briefly to highlight one of those challenges, and that is land conflict. In my own electorate this is a big issue, particularly in the upper reaches of my electorate. While there is no lack of appreciation of the wealth that has been provided by the coal industry—and may it long continue to provide that wealth—there is also an increasing concern that unsustainable or limited-time industries like coal are increasingly starting to threaten sustainable industries in agricultural pursuits, particularly the wine industry and, in particular, horse breeding in the upper Hunter, which is an important economic driver in my electorate.

I believe, as the local member, those concerns are growing and those voices of concern are growing louder. Demand for our commodities—from China, for example—is driving, firstly, a greater investment. That, in many ways, is a good thing. But that demand is also driving further and further expansion of coalmining, particularly open-cut coalmining, in the upper Hunter. Our coalmines are getting closer to our horse-breeding studs, closer to our agriculture, to our farms, and also closer to those who produce the fruit for our very, very important wine industry. I think it is time for government to sit up and take a bit more notice of that and to work harder at getting the balance between these various pursuits right.

Interestingly, the New South Wales government recently took the very good decision to finally move forward with investment in new power generation in New South Wales. This is critical: if we do not get it, the lights will go out by 2015. One of those power stations will be in my electorate, around the Bayswater area in the upper Hunter. That is all good news.

What did surprise me was the decision by the New South Wales government to keep open the option of a new coal-fired power generator. I think that is a mistake. I think it is very important to put in place a gas-fired power generator in the upper Hunter. Not only would this be very good for the environment, it would provide the foundation for a new pipeline coming from South-East Queensland right through the Hunter and down into Sydney. This would provide, for the first time, competition in pipeline supply of gas in both of those areas. That would, in turn, provide greater opportunities for those seeking to invest in energy-intensive industries in the Hunter because they would then face the prospect of competitively priced gas—something industry in the Hunter has not had the opportunity to secure at any time up until this day.

I think also that the decision to pursue a gas-fired generator would send a good message to those people who have expressed those concerns I mentioned earlier—the growing concerns about land-use conflict and the impact of coalmining on those various agricultural pursuits in the valley. These issues are much broader than those covered by this report, but they are very important issues and issues appropriate to raise here in this debate.

Again, I congratulate the committee on its work. I see that Tony Windsor, the member for New England, is here. I know he is an active part of that committee and I know that these are issues in which he shows a great deal of interest. I commend the report both to the parliament and to the broader Australian community.

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