Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this report titled Farming the future: the role of government in assisting Australian farmers to adapt to the impacts of climate change and begin by commending the Standing Committee on Primary Industries and Resources, the committee’s chair—the member for Lyons—and the secretariat for its work on this very important national issue.

Since European settlement of Australia, our farming sector has been crucial to Australia’s prosperity and the wellbeing of the Australian people. Animal farming, cereal crops, horticulture, wine growing and vegetable growing are major industry sectors that underpin the economy of communities around Australia. I understand that, on the latest figures available to me, which were the figures for the year 2008-09, agricultural exports alone were worth $32 billion to our nation.

The income generated from these farming communities in turn has a flow-on effect on numerous other industry sectors as well as being of critical importance to Australia’s balance of trade net position. Furthermore, the production of quality agricultural products has been and will continue to be critical to the good health and health costs of the nation.

Since World War II, employment in the agricultural sector has been in decline, primarily because of automation. If you travel around Australia—and certainly in my own state of South Australia—there are many country towns that 40, 50 and 60 years ago were fairly prosperous small communities. Many of them today are very much in decline and some of them have effectively closed down altogether because we need fewer people to carry out the farming operations that, years ago, were carried out by entire families, and certainly many more people were directly involved in the industry.

What we have been seeing in recent times, however, is not only a threat to employment in the agricultural sector but also a threat to the productive capacity of the sector. There have been several factors which have contributed to these threats. Climate change is undoubtedly the most significant of these factors, with the last decade being clear evidence of the impact to Australia’s farming sector of climate change. Rising temperatures, heatwaves, droughts, floods, tornadoes, cyclones, fires, disease and pests are all associated with climatic changes and all can have devastating effects on farming.

On the issue of pests, only yesterday the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry outlined a government response to the locust plague that farmers around Australia are facing right now. It is a plague which is seeing the eggs being laid right now and which will break out into a full-blown plague perhaps in spring, right at the worst possible time for farmers. Having recently travelled through the Riverland areas of South Australia and Victoria, I saw for myself what that locust plague is doing and the number of locusts already affecting farms in those areas. It is truly frightening for those people whose livelihood depends on producing a product which can literally, in one or two days, be entirely wiped out.

All of those kinds of risks have been faced by the farming community for years and years, but there is no doubt at all that those risks, as a result of climate change, are now more unpredictable and likely to be more frequent. We saw only last year in Northern Queensland the effects of the floods. We heard stories from members of this House who represent constituencies in those areas about the devastation to farming communities as a result of those floods. We are told by the scientific community that those floods are likely to occur more often and be more unpredictable. It is that kind of unpredictability that makes farming even more risky than ever before. In that respect, the farming community of Australia and the farmers themselves understand weather as well as anyone. They understand the risks they are taking and in the past have been able to adapt to them and cope with them. But I believe it is going to get tougher and tougher for them as our climate continues to change in a way that we have never seen before.

The severe impacts of climate change on the Australian farming sector were recognised by former Deputy Prime Minister Tim Fischer as far back as 2001. He noted at the time that the impacts would increase in the future. How right he was. That was a decade ago. It was a decade before we saw effectively one of the worst decades in our history in respect of drought in this country and a decade where the farming sector was truly put under severe strain as a result of that.

Of course, there has been much more research on and a better understanding of climate change over the last decade. The evidence continues to mount that we will face more extreme weather events in the future, that global temperatures will continue to rise and that rainfall patterns will change. We have seen in the last century alone an increase in temperature here in Australia of 0.7 degrees, most of which occurred in the last 50 years. The trends suggest that by the end of this century temperatures will have increased by another one degree. In fact, although I do not have it with me, I noticed a report in one of the newspapers—it was yesterday, I believe—which talked about temperature rises over the next 200 years that will make some parts of this earth almost uninhabitable. Those are certainly long-term predictions and things may well turn out to be different to that, but they are certainly warning signs and ringing alarm bells that we should be taking note of. If we do, we may be in a much better position at the right time to respond to those changes because we might have adapted to them or in some cases we might have been able to prevent them. All of these changes have impacted and will continue to impact on the farming sector, as I said a moment ago. I am sure that farmers will be at the forefront of providing the appropriate adaptive mechanisms.

In my own state of South Australia those effects have been most noticeable in the Riverland region, which is the region I mentioned a few moments ago. The combination of drought, record low Murray River inflows and international market competition has been disastrous to the region. I note that the committee was unable to come to South Australia but, if in the future there is an opportunity for a similar committee to do so, the Riverland region of South Australia is certainly worth visiting in terms of understanding other aspects of the effects of climate change on the community.

The Riverland community of South Australia has a population of around 35,000. Fifty per cent of South Australia’s grapes are grown in that region. It is also a prime area for the growing of citrus, cherries and olives. Because I have a lot of friends and acquaintances who are property owners in the Riverland region, I am aware of the impact the last 10 years have had on their region. Firstly, it began with competition from overseas, when the price for what they were producing was being undercut by overseas competitors—both affecting their export trade and impacting directly on their local markets. That in itself was difficult enough to contend with. They then had the wine industry also under intense pressure from overseas suppliers and growers. We saw wine prices begin to decline.

On top of that they were then hit with the drought and low water levels in the Murray River which, in turn, meant that their water allocations were insufficient to enable many of them to produce their full quantum of crops. As a result, if you drive through the Riverland you will see long-term plantings ripped out and lying there waiting to be destroyed and you will see whole fruit blocks abandoned. You will also see that a lot of the farmers from that region have put their properties on the market for sale. All of these are clear signs of the difficulties that they have had to contend with. They have certainly done it tough. Individual farm production has dropped and we have seen families at both health and financial crisis points. In that respect I commend the committee on its very first recommendation, which talks about supporting groups such as Rural Alive and Well. I have spoken with people who act as counsellors and advisers in the Riverland region of South Australia and have heard directly from them some of the stories about the difficulties being faced by people from their region—the financial difficulties and the health impacts on families, particularly on the mental health of some of the farmers from that area. Most of those people are very proud people—they will not ask for help. They will do what they can to ensure that they survive, but at times the pressure just gets too much for them.

If farming production continues to decline in Australia it will affect not only the farming communities but all Australians. Reliance on countries that do not implement food production standards similar to the standards that are applied in Australia is a real concern to me, as it is to most Australians I talk to. I know that most Australian farmers are well informed and responsible in their use of chemicals, pesticides and fertilisers in food production. I do not have the same confidence about imported foods. What is just as concerning is that most consumers do not know the origin of the food they consume, which highlights the need to have clear labelling laws in place in Australia.

I have spoken with farmers here in Australia and I have confidence that they do understand the impacts of the chemicals they use. Sometimes those chemicals are absolutely necessary to prevent disease or pests, but farmers understand the effects of chemicals on humans who consume their food, so they take the right precautionary approaches when they use those chemicals. Regrettably, that is not necessarily the case with food grown overseas. While we have import standards in place, the reality is that we simply cannot check all the food that is imported into this country to the degree that we would like to ensure that it has not been grown using, for example, pesticides that have been banned in this country or other fertilisers or chemical treatments that we would never use. Those chemicals were banned in this country because of their effects on health, so when we consume food from overseas countries we cannot have the same level of certainty about the possible health outcomes. That, in turn, impacts on the nation’s health budget because there is no question that good food gives you good health outcomes and bad food does the opposite. If we have poorer health outcomes because of the food that we are eating, there is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that our health costs will continue to spiral and add another layer of burden onto governments trying to manage Australia’s health budgets.

If we had clearer labelling laws, at least consumers would have a greater opportunity to choose the foods that they purchase when they go into supermarkets. I suspect that, if they could choose, we would find that more of them would choose the Australian grown product. And that would in turn—getting back to an earlier argument I put—support the growers here in Australia because I suspect that most Australians would like to think that they are supporting Australian growers when they do buy their food.

There is another element to the purchase of products from overseas: because they are grown the way they are, they are grown generally much cheaper than locally produced products. We live in a society where we have two major supermarket chains that in turn dictate the price at the farm gate for all products. That is also putting intense pressure on growers. I am well aware that many growers, in order to secure big contracts with those two major supermarket chains, agree to prices that make it absolutely borderline as to whether they can make their farms viable and continue to survive. They have no option because, if they do not provide products at those prices, they do not provide products at all because the two major supermarkets are the outlets for most of the food grown in this country. So it becomes very difficult.

The combination of international competition, market domination by the supermarket chains and now climate change means that the future of Australia’s agriculture and farming sectors will be fraught with uncertainty. For those reasons, the work of the committee—in acknowledging the risks to farmers associated with climate change, outlining a series of strategies aimed at mitigating the impacts of climate change and putting in measures to assist affected communities—is in the national interest.

I particularly acknowledge the emphasis placed by the committee on the need for more research across a range of areas and the important role government has in that research. There is no question that the research carried out by CSIRO and others is of vital importance to the future survival of agricultural and farming industries in this country. I also note the section of the report that talks about farmers being involved in that research. I emphasise that point because I think there is a great deal of merit in it. Farmers understand their land and their products. They understand changing climatic conditions, and I think they understand the science behind the production of their products. Therefore, it is absolutely important that we include them in research. I commend the report to the House.

See this speech in context