Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Hansard source

Well, I will bet 20 cents I am right. I am not a gambler, so 20 cents will do the job. There is a much bigger issue at hand. The question becomes one of how we can produce twice as much food, or three times as much food, with the same water, land and human resources. How do you do that? Before I attempt to answer that, I will correct what I just asked, and add that it is also a question of how you do it with the same natural resources, when those resources are depleting. There is no doubt that we do face very large challenges in terms of our natural resources, whether it be in relation to salinity, land degradation, or a rapidly changing climate.

This is where it gets very interesting for me, because when I read all of the literature climate change is taken as a given. There does not seem to be any contest out there. There might be arguments about what causes climate change and there might be arguments about what we do about it—whether we should use mitigation or adaptation. But there is no argument that the climate is changing. I told a little story in this place recently about Bruce Tyrrell. I will not repeat it at length, but he pointed out to me that the bees are on his vines much later than usual, and he attributes that to climate change.

So, let us put to one side the debate about whether climate change is induced by human activity, or what we should do to mitigate it. The climate is changing and it is going to continue to change. The science on that is settled, and it is going to be bad news for our agriculture sector. Things are going to get tougher and drier, droughts are going to be more prolonged and will hit us more often. On the other side of the equation we are going to have rain events, and other cyclonic events, that are also going to make life difficult for those who live on our land and produce from it.

This is a serious issue. You cannot run around the country promoting the Asian food bowl concept if you are not serious about action on land resource sustainability. That is why it shocks me that the current government is progressing an agricultural white paper, whose terms of reference make no mention of natural resource sustainability or climate change. They did not have to call it climate change; they could have found another name. I know they do not like admitting that climate change is a problem in this country, but you cannot plan for the countries agricultural future without having a look at the impact of climate change in the future. You cannot plan our output and you cannot even plan infrastructure investment until you know what are the other impacts from changing weather patterns in this country. As I said at the NFF last night—and I know it is not music to the ears of every farmer in this country or every farming representative body—having not been the most enthusiastic supporter of mitigation on this side of the House over my 18 years here, and having not been the most enthusiastic supporter of every initiative taken in the area of climate change, I have always been a signatory to the precautionary principle—that is, if you are in doubt do something about it. Do not wait until it is too late. But that is on the economy more generally.

In this sector it is even more important. It is so clear to me that we will not double output by volume. We will not, certainly, triple output by volume with depleting natural resources—and depleting they are. Again, I have not seen any literature anywhere that contests that idea, and I look forward to hearing members in the other place make a contribution on this bill, because they might like to respond to that and share their thoughts with me.

I am inviting a bipartisan approach to this. Climate change, however you want to interpret it, is a challenge for all of us. I think it is time, like I suggest with the drought policy, we put the weapons down and work out as a parliament how we are going to deal with these challenges. I remind you, Mr Deputy Speaker, that those who sit opposite have the same greenhouse gas emissions reduction target as the Labor Party, the official opposition. It seems that we only have an argument about how we get there on the mitigation front—but, again, mitigation will only be one issue. Adaptation is going to be of critical importance. There were so many adaptation programs, broadly speaking, that were attached to the former, Labor government's response to climate change which now no longer have a funding source. I challenge, in the friendliest of ways, those sitting opposite to tell me how we are going to take up those opportunities that increasing global food demand is presenting for our country, without dealing with some of those climate issues and some of those adaptation issues that will be necessary.

Likewise, I challenge those opposite to tell me and to tell the House how we are going to get additional wheat to market without a significant initiative taken on the supply chain to our export markets. People talk about our proximity to Asia, and we certainly do have an advantage in terms of our proximity to Asia. But in transport cost terms it is an advantage that can be very quickly eroded and, indeed, is being eroded by our inability to compete on the supply chain to the port rather than after our goods leave port. These are issues that will have to be tackled, not just by this government but, again, by people who are looking for some bipartisanship on these issues by this parliament more generally. We will not agree all of the time and, I am sure, we will often disagree, but Australia has a wonderful opportunity here and we should be grabbing hold of it and doing something about it. An agricultural white paper without any reference to climate change will not get us there; a lack of references to sustaining natural resources will not get us there; and a lazy, myopic approach to what we need in terms of infrastructure in this country will not get us there either.

We have the worst of both worlds here on that front—the government is not going to spend any money on infrastructure and it is not going to let foreign investors in to spend their money on infrastructure. That is very disappointing from my perspective, and I am sure it is disappointing from the perspective of many who live off the land and supply us and our export markets with food.

I want to go back to where I began, and that is on the specifics of drought policy. This is a very important safety net again borne out of the intergovernmental agreement when the Labor Party was in government. But I note it was supported by those who sit opposite and, of course, supported by all states of the day. It was a big thing to get rid of the old exceptional circumstances policies. So many farmers had come to rely on them for such a long time. They were very popular amongst many farmers, but all the literature said they should go. All the states agreed that they should go. But we should not, and cannot, stop here. The safety net is important, but we need to find new and innovative ways, not so much to respond during drought but to ensure all those who run farm businesses have access to incentives that ensure that they are better prepared for drought. The alternative to that, of course, will be to say, 'If you are on marginal land, just get off.' Again, going back to our ambitions in Asia, we cannot afford for anyone to get off. We need all the farmers we can get. We need to do all the farming that we can do. But we will need investment. We will need more policies on adaptation in addition to mitigation. Of course, we will also need more on research and development. No matter what we do on adaptation—and they are the one and the same, really—and no matter what we do on infrastructure investment, it just will not be possible to very substantially increase output without more innovation.

Australia farmers and the RDCs and others who support them—our universities and our learning institutions—have been at world's best in these initiatives. But we will have to do much better. We have kept our productivity up in the past and we have increased output in the past through both the use of new fertilisers and the use of additional land, but that is plateauing and we need a new phase, a new round, of innovation. There will not be more land; there might be less land. We will rely very, very heavily on innovation. I welcome the government's commitment on that front to its pre-election promise for an additional $100 million in research and development. I understand that promise will be kept. I will be disappointed and the farming community will be disappointed if it is not, but I am confident it will be. I understand it is to be split amongst the RDCs; so, instead of a dollar-for-dollar basis, the government might pay $1.05 or $1.10 to the RDCs. That is a good thing. Dare I say, at the risk of making a commitment in addition to that—I am certainly not doing that this stage of the political cycle—we will, sadly, need more to produce the sort of innovation we will need to make the most of those opportunities.

Of course, along the way we will have a debate about genetically modified crops. It is a debate we have to have because, I suspect, we will not realise our ambitions without proper management and taking up of opportunities GM crops present for many reasons, whether it be crop protection, our capacity to lift our output et cetera.

Finally, on that point, the dining boom will come best for us if we do not just chase volumes but, more importantly, chase value. Our limited resources will need to be concentrated on those commodities and agricultural interests which produce the greatest possible return for our country. Our farmers do not need that lecture from me; they know that, as do their peak bodies. In working together in this place I believe that, while not building a capacity to substantially feed Asia, we can position ourselves as a country which produces a lot more food than we do now and which sees a much greater return on our produce than we do now.

But we will have to be very smart about it. We are going to have to be more open to foreign investment. We are going to have to be more willing to invest in infrastructure. We are going to have to be more willing to invest in R&D. And of course we are going to have to be more willing to ensure that those who are on marginal land—those people we want to stay in the sector—have the protection they need when severe drought comes, and that in my view means making sure the appropriate incentives are in place that give them the opportunity to do what so many in the industry are doing: preparing themselves as best they can for future drought events. The opposition supports this bill.

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