Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I seek leave to speak again without closing the debate.

Leave granted.

I thank the honourable member for Grey for his contribution on the report of the committee which I chair. I think it was a very good report and I think we were able to pull together many good recommendations on the needs and the future for farming in Australia. As I mentioned in my tabling speech, this report set out to look at the current and respective adaptations to the impact of climate change on agriculture and the potential impacts on downstream processing. It also considered the role of government in augmenting the shift towards farming practices which promote resilience in the farm sector in the face of climate change, and promoting research, extension and training which assist the farm sector to better adapt to climate change. The report covered a pretty broad area of changes that are currently going on and also gave us an insight into the barriers to change for the future. For instance, one submission noted:

Rural research development and education will need to be greatly increased if Australian farmers are to remain profitable, sustainable and internationally competitive. Research and knowledge creation will not achieve the rates of change and adaptation required from Australian farmers without mechanisms to ensure its effective communication and adoption.

I think that sums up a lot, including what the honourable member for Grey, the previous speaker, was saying: we need to have a lot of research and development but also education and getting that out there into the farming sector. The barriers in this case were the lack of ways of getting innovative ideas out into the community. The CCRSPI submission states on page 16:

Over the past decades successive governments, both state and federal, have reduced funding to rural extension networks and shut rural research stations. This has greatly reduced the capacity of governments to assist farmers to adopt new R&D and to be able to demonstrate and commercialise new technologies and practices in the field.

Others raised the point that adoption of improved practices takes time. One of the best ways to foster and accelerate the adoption rate of improved practices is through incentives and investment which reduce the barriers and risks, often financial, of adoption. A triple-objective practice/improvement/incentive program would well position Australia’s agriculture for whatever mix of emissions, carbon trading and international agreements are to be implemented in Australia. Equally importantly, this would improve Australian agriculture’s overall resilience by improving productivity and sustainability. One could say the same applies to the forest industry that is going through some restructuring traumas at the moment, especially in Tasmania. So the message was that there were currently no good pathways by which the research organisations or innovative individuals could share their knowledge in a cooperative way. Most of those pathways have been privatised, so the spread of good news can only be gained if you have the funds to pay for it or if you know where to look.

Professor Frank Vanclay and Mrs Aysha Fleming identified a number of social and attitudinal barriers to climate change adaptation:

Resistance to change is not just about individual reactions, it is a broader social issue. This means that resistance does not occur within an individual’s head, or because of an individual’s personal characteristics—education level, personal motivations or situation, skills or beliefs. Resistance is created by common perceptions, norms and values held in society.

They also go on to say:

If climate change is perceived as being too big to influence, because climate is something intangible, invisible and seemingly out of human control, it can lead to rejection. Climate change is dismissed outright, and can lead to feeling overwhelmed or hopeless.

So, sold badly, it all becomes too hard and farmers, like many others, are not equipped to really find out how it will affect them.

Communicating a clear and consistent message on climate change is a prerequisite to successful adaptation. Governments at all levels need to undertake to deliver this message in a manner relevant to the experience of farmers, for whom managing climate variability is a long-term and everyday experience. Part of this is in understanding the decision-making processes of farmers. Another part is the creation of positive messages about how adaptation can improve business resilience, maintain or increase productivity and promote personal and social welfare. Then there are the social implications, which are highlighted only too vividly in the Rural Alive and Well submissions and discussions. There need to be options, ways forward and ways out without losing your life savings or your dignity. Remember that people have sometimes been on their land for many generations. They explained to the committee the importance of reaching out to vulnerable members of the rural community and providing support. A key role of the service was to make connections with the support services provided by government and help people access those services.

One problem the service faced was the silo mentality of governments and bureaucracies; another was the lack of secure funding for the service they provided. The essential ingredients of the service they provide are intervention and building personal connections, giving people a sense that they are not facing the trials and tribulations of life alone. The consequences of such an approach were highlighted at a meeting with departmental officials and farmer representatives in Geraldton in Western Australia. The creation of a strong social support network in the region involving strong peer support and pre-emptive strategy allowed the farming community there to get through a period of severe drought in 2006 and 2007 without one instance of suicide. The success of such services, which were highlighted in Tasmania and Western Australia, shows that we should be concentrating our assistance packages in difficult circumstances to smooth the exit routes and provide support and networks where change can be managed.

I believe in and support the extension of funding periods to allow stability for these services as well as ensuring that the methods of information sharing can be further investigated and maybe allow a return to state governments employing a new breed of extension officers to assist with opportunities through new ways and new thinking. We in Australia are more fortunate than many in the Western world in that we have the skills and resources to manage change as long as governments recognise the need to support and fund given the upheavals that come and go. The federal government has proved itself in successfully boosting the economy during the economic downturn. Now I believe it is the turn of the rural sector to be assisted in dealing with the changing circumstances which are bearing down on it. Climate change can be managed if understood. Its impact varies across the nation. We must be ready to ensure our rural industries are flexible and able to adapt to the changes from that as well as being able to minimise the risk of their impacts, such as through drought proofing and crop and stock variation.

I hope the report is found to be useful in this ongoing discussion and I look forward to the government’s response and assistance in putting the recommendations in place. It was a pleasure to do the report. It was about a year’s work for the committee, who worked hard through its visits and through its meetings with people in Canberra. There are several points that I would like to touch on. One concerns recommendation 3 of the report where we touch on soil stabilisation and pasture improvement using such methods as having annual pastures instead of open soil, pasture cropping, putting wheat straight into a pasture and rotation grazing, which has probably been around some time but is new in many areas whereby people only graze a paddock for a couple of days and move the stock on so that the grasses grow and are not eaten right down. That is a whole new concept coming into play there. There is biodynamic farming and minimum- or no-till cultivation and controlled traffic farming. Of course no-till or minimum-till agriculture farming as to moisture, as I think they call it, is on the Liverpool Plains. It is quite interesting to see the way that they have gone about that. I think they claim that they retain two per cent extra moisture in the soil by not turning the soil and keeping the old stubble on top of the soil, therefore the following crop grows straight into the soil. It has its issues which they are continuing to deal with as they move into that sort of new concept. Controlled traffic farming is where you take the tractor or the machinery along the same wheel lines down the paddock every time so that you do not compact the soil and therefore destroy many of the good things such as the micro-organisms et cetera in the soil. You would also be wasting fertiliser and seed if you were to put them in areas which got chopped up by wheels.

These are emerging opportunities for rural Australia. Getting the position right globally is important. Getting manufacturers to make wheel alignments so that contractors can buy the same wheel line-ups for that sort of work will take some time, but it is important for the future of agriculture in Australia. Soil water retention strategies are important, as I said, to reduce the cultivation of soils and to retain moisture in them.

Again I would like to thank my colleagues on both sides of the House, who worked so well with me, and also the member for Hume, my deputy, and the staff of the secretariat who bravely stepped at times where others feared to go.

See this speech in context