Jim Turnour (Leichhardt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on this matter of public importance. It is always a wonderful privilege and pleasure to speak on the future of agriculture or agriculture in general. Members may not know but I was born on a property near Batchelor in the Northern Territory. In the 1960s, my parents grew bananas and sold them in Darwin. We grew Townsville stylo which was a newly developing technology back then, a legume that would help revolutionise the pastoral industry until it was wiped out by disease. There have been follow-ons with Seca, Verano and a range of other stylos that have had an impact on the Northern Australian beef industry. Agriculture is a very important part of this country and the fabric of this country. It is a great privilege to stand here today and talk about its future because, as somebody who comes from the bush, has an agricultural science degree, has worked for the department of primary industries as well as privately with farmers and graziers and shares many of the values of people representing country areas in this place, I believe that it is important that we do have debates and discussions about these issues.

Today I want to focus my comments on Northern Australia, the area where I was born and which I represent. Recently the report of the Northern Australia Land and Water Taskforce was brought down. There has been a lot of debate and discussion around that report and I think there were a lot of myths about dams and the future of the north as a food bowl effectively being ruled out. The reality is the report was a well-thought-out document which was not produced by government but produced by independent people like David Crombie. My father worked for GRM International for a period of time and Mr Crombie is the President of the National Farmers Federation. Another independent person involved in the production of that report was Mr Joe Ross, the chair of the committee and an Indigenous elder. He is a very well respected man in Northern Australia. We also had representatives from the mining industry and a range of other groups. Today they are in the parliament discussing the report and meeting with members from the Labor side and the opposition side.

I believe that the report provides a foundation for a good cross-party discussion and debate about Northern Australia. We can have simplistic debates about dams, development or no development, greenies or this and that in Northern Australia, but fundamentally if we are interested in the future of the area we need to sit down and work through the science and what sort of future is wanted with the communities concerned. That is what the Northern Australia Land and Water Taskforce did and what their report brought forward. As I said, the report was not written by government; it was written by them and they are very proud of that. Joe Ross has put out a paper entitled ‘A new era for northern Australia: avoiding past mistakes and building a shared future’. It is very much worth a read. He goes through the report in an overall sense. One of the things he points out is that there are more myths about the north than perhaps any other part of the nation. Much of the criticism directed at the task force report is that it is ill conceived and ill informed. Critics are encouraged to read the report in depth and understand the full significance of the recommendations.

The media have suggested that the report basically rules out agriculture. Let us look at a few issues that the report identifies in the further development of agriculture in Northern Australia. The report identified that at the moment there are about 20,000 hectares of intensive agriculture in Northern Australia. As I said, my parents grew bananas there in the 1960s. Members opposite from rural areas would know that 20,000 hectares is not a large area. The report identifies that mosaic agriculture has the potential to increase that by another 40,000 hectares to a total of 60,000 hectares. That is a significant contribution. The report also identifies that most of those opportunities relate to being able to take up groundwater. Coming from the north and understanding the north, the reason it has not been developed is not only the limitations of some of the water resources and opportunities but also the lack of infrastructure and the lack of markets available in that part of the world. We need to continue to build roads and broadband networks. That is something that this government is doing.

The report also identifies that we can almost double the grazing industry through the intensification of the agricultural area in the north. There are great opportunities to develop agriculture in the north, but we need to look at the science, we need to work with the community and we need to make sure the business community and the private sector drive the economic opportunities.

See this speech in context