Cathy McGowan (Indi, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

In continuing my speech there are just two more points I would like to make before I finish up. They are the importance of coordinating cross-sector research and the impact that this legislation will have on the ability of RDCs to work together.

It seems to be a minor point, but it is one that has really come up through the agricultural competitiveness green paper. That is that the community, and particularly the agricultural industry sector, is very keen that there be more cooperation between the RDCs. At page 91, there is the call for establishing a new body, or particularly tasking existing research bodies to coordinate cross-sector research. They talk of a new or existing body that could be tasked with promoting agricultural research; ensuring research was focused on RD&E priorities; encouraging R&D activities across disciplines; and identifying the next big potential transformational research areas to encourage investment, collaboration and uptake. I note that in the legislation mechanisms to bring people together are being done away with. I think this is such a pity because it is a time when we actually need to come together more often and share the intellectual capital we have if we are actually going to make the transformations we need in agriculture.

A few years ago I was on a committee tasked with establishing a national strategic investment plan for rural research and development in Australia. One of the really important things that came out of that national rural investment plan was the need for high-level collaborative brains coming together to look at how we could actually bring our scarce resources and deliver for the country on what we knew needed to be done. I have to say that there was one important part of the election campaign—the allocation of $100 million to agricultural research and development—that did bring the RDCs together, but a whole lot more needs to be done. It is such an opportunity where we can bring people together.

If I could just give you one example of how it happens in a very practical way. As you might know, I am a farmer and I grow sheep. In my learning days, I benefited from the ability of Australian Wool Innovation and MLA—Meat & Livestock Australia—to come together. On the ground they had community based learning activities, otherwise known as extension, for farmers to learn how to work together. In my community that particular program was called BESTWOOL/BESTLAMB and it brought sheep producers, pasture growers and meat producers together. We were able to actively collaborate in our communities about the best way of taking research, implementing it on our farms and then producing the result, which was much higher returns on our investment. This came about because Meat & Livestock Australia and Australian Wool Innovation worked together. Previous to that, they worked with the other very important research group called Land and Water Australia that brought everybody together.

What I am saying in terms of this legislation is that there is an opportunity in the years ahead of us, particularly if we can pick up the recommendations in this report, to bring the RDCs together and to actually look for efficiencies where our research, our development and our extension can deliver much better results for farmers. Because the reality is most of us farmers actually work at that cooperative level. I think the legislation is taking us away from that opportunity to work together.

If I could just bring my comments to a close, what I would like to do in summarising is say that it is great that we have ways and we have people working on how we can save money; $7 million is $7 million, and it is really important to save $7 million when we can see it. But not at the cost of losing the trust of the industry; not at the cost of losing the trust of the National Farmers' Federation. How often is it that the NFF comes into this House and says to my colleagues opposite, 'This is not good legislation; this needs changes'?

So I am really happy to be able to stand in this parliament as a friend of the NFF and speak on their behalf and encourage them to work with my colleagues in the Senate to get the amendments that we need to make this ability to collaborate stronger, to make the ability for us to work internationally stronger, but most importantly to not put things in concrete forever—to put a sunset clause into this legislation so after five years, when, hopefully, the economy is a much better position, we can revert to how things used to be.

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