Ken O'Dowd (Flynn, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to rise in the House today to speak on the Rural Research and Development Legislation Amendment Bill 2014. The bill implements the 2014 budget measure and reduces unnecessary regulation imposed on the rural, research and development corporations and on the Commonwealth combined. The bill directly affects only those relevant RDCs. The budget measure allows the government to deduct the cost of membership fees to the international amounts paid by the Commonwealth to the relevant RDCs. Australia will continue to be a member of the organisations for which it currently holds membership and the Commonwealth will continue to be responsible for membership and for the payment of the membership fees.

The bill only changes the way that the cost of membership fees are paid by the Commonwealth. Additional measures remove the requirement for the Minister for Agriculture to organise an annual coordination meeting for the chairs of the statutory RDCs and remove the requirement for some RDCs to table documents to parliament such as funding an agreement, the annual reports and other compliance reports. The RDCs will still be required to produce those documents where required but they will still have to make them publicly available. The essence of the bill is to cut down red tape and to pump more money into R&D for our rural people.

As in my and all other rural electorates, the farmers of our nation do deserve backup and it is our government that is prepared to give them that backup. They play important roles in the whole real economy. There is an old saying: if the rural guys are not doing any good, you can rest assured that the rural towns are not doing any good either. Our farmers are some of the most productive in the world. They have a very good image and the products they produce are clean and green. That is recognised by the Asian markets and it is a credit to what our farmers do. But they do need support, they do need to be profitable and they do need to be competitive. It is a changing world that we live in and there are changes in our agricultural world. I can see that with our government initiative here, pooled with private investment and farming investment, we can go forward at the right pace that will take us into the years ahead.

The retailers and distributors of some of our farm products do seem to skim some of the lion's share of the profit. For instance, if you buy a kilogram of rump steak in a butcher's shop on the Gold Coast, you might pay something between $20 and $25 a kilogram. I know, and you know, that the beef producer may get $1.25 or $2.25 at the most; it depends whether you are talking live or dead weight.

Government supports research and development. It is essential that the industry, the farmers and the universities work together on this. That is why the government maintains its membership of the international commodity and regional fisheries management organisations. We still have to keep our leg in the industry and have skin in the game as a partnership with our fishermen, forestry workers and agricultural people in general. Whether it is in relation to grain, sugar, cotton or macadamia nuts, we all need to be up-to-date with the modern technology. I believe this $100 million that we are pumping into the industry will go a long way in keeping us on top of the market.

The International Cotton Advisory Committee sponsors research into cotton production methods and directly benefits farmers in the Central Highlands and Dawson and Callide valleys in my electorate. This will not stop. This will continue, and we can only expect better crops in the future.

Some of the biggest drawbacks in rural and regional areas are the lack of NBN services, as the previous member mentioned, and the lack of phone services. Marketing one's product in rural and regional areas is getting harder and harder. I recall the 2PH farms in Emerald telling me that they use daylight hours to pick their product and prepare their product for market and they use the night-time hours to market their products all over the world. You need a very good NBN system to do that, to keep up-to-date with the rest of the world and to keep communicating and promoting your products. It will be a godsend when the NBN gets to our rural and regional areas; for them, 2018 will not come quick enough. That is the date when our minister has said that we will have good service to most of Australia—and we are talking in the high 90 per cents. That should be encouraging, but 2018 is a fair way away. It is good to see the minister is concentrating on the rural areas first—the sooner the better—to get people up-to-date with their communications.

Through our membership of these organisations we will ensure that our local fishing industry is fairly represented when decisions are made regarding management of their own fishing grounds. In Australia—and especially in Queensland, which I can speak about—the wild catch per square kilometre is nine kilograms. Why do we want to lock up more of the Coral Sea reef? I see it as foolish. There is no fish in Queensland waters that is endangered, but we keep on putting hurdles in front of our fishermen. The fact is that we import something like 80 per cent of our fish products and I think that is a shame. It is the same with our pig products—we import something like 80 per cent of our pig products.

A farmer said to me: 'Ken, you are talking about dams. I really applaud you for that. I think it is a great move. But don't forget there's a lot of farmers out there who could build their own dams, on their own properties, with their own money—and put them in the right place, so that they could benefit themselves on their own agricultural farms—but we are just burdened with regulations and red tape. Hopefully one day you can get rid of that so we can then go ahead and build our own dams without one cent of government money.'

There are some farmers out there who have done very well. Some have got into organic farming. These guys who have done that—and I know there is a cost to them to do it—benefit by about $400 to $500 a beast when they send the organic cows to market. These are the type of innovative people we have out there, and I think we should be using their skills as best we can. Hopefully, pumping this $100 million into the industry and cutting back on red tape will only benefit the real people who we need to develop our nation further and further into the future.

We have a population of nine billion planned for about 2050. These people will all have to be fed. I would like to see farm margins increased so we can get to a point where farmers and agricultural people can afford to employ people again. At the moment there is no outside help, no outside labour, because they cannot afford to pay the wages. The commodity prices are not good enough for these farmers to develop and improve their businesses. There is a lot of work to be done on the properties. They just need labour that they can afford. I do not believe in child labour or slave labour, but farmers need the right commodity prices without mark-ups in the retail industry. The price you pay for a kilogram of rump steak compared with what the farmer gets: there is the margin that you could use to afford to pay wages. That is not happening. That is something I hope to promote as long as I am in parliament. With that, I commend the bill to the House.

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