John Cobb (Calare, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It gives me pleasure to rise to speak on the Rural Research and Development Legislation Amendment Bill 2014. R&D has been huge for agriculture over the years and it is something we are committed to. We stand by that commitment with an extra $100 million, despite the state of the budget and what we inherited. It shows how important we all believe rural R&D is.

It is not so long ago that the previous government not only did not want to increase R&D, but actually wanted to cut it by some 50 per cent of government contribution. I always recall the words of the recently deceased Prime Minister of Great Britain, Margaret Thatcher: 'Socialism's quite a good thing until you run out of other people's money to spend.' When the previous government did realise they spent a little too much and were having to borrow so much, one of their first targets was agricultural R&D. Their way of doing that was to hold a Productivity Commission inquiry into the R&D that was run by the various corporations and contributed to on a dollar-for-dollar basis by Australian agriculture. The Productivity Commission, being an arm of Treasury and an arm of government in that particular case, was happy to suggest that they were spending too much. It was only because we warned them of what was going on that agriculture and the various industry bodies got up and embarrassed the government from cutting their matching funding of 50 per cent. I was rather proud of our industry and ourselves in that instance in achieving that. The current Manager of Opposition Business was the minister at the time; he and his successors backed off on that one, but they certainly had no intention of supporting or increasing the R&D budget, even though their own Productivity Commission acknowledged just how good agricultural R&D was and the benefit the taxpayer got from it.

Australian farmers are very innovative and very adaptable. I have always thought of agriculture as being in groups. There is corporate agriculture, which I am a fan of and I will come back to say why. There is what I call family corporate, which is a family big enough to have economies of scale, with a family farm where the family is totally focused on running that farm. Then there are those who have off-farm income and who go along quite happily because they are getting enough money off-farm and so they do not need to get every dollar out of that farm. The ones under most pressure are the ordinary family farmers who are not big enough to achieve economies of scale—both partners are full-time farmers.

I add the word 'innovation' to R&D. All four levels of R&D are extraordinarily important. Unfortunately since about 2000 the gains that R&D have historically made for Australian agriculture have levelled out, particularly in the decade since then. Having said that, R&D is not just about increased productivity; it has to be about profitability. There is absolutely no point in producing more if you are not making any more. I have always said: 'Everything we have to do for agriculture revolves around profitability. Agriculture is not a charity; it is here to ensure that Australia has the best quality food in the world, and by and large that is true, but if you can't make a quid you're not in the game.' The No. 1 job of R&D is to increase profitability. It goes without saying that that will also include productivity and quality production. As the member for Forrest said, our image around the world of how we produce and what we produce is probably the biggest selling point of trade for us that exists.

I also want to say that there is another side to this that R&D can help with too—and that is the health aspect of food. R&D needs to look very hard at things like grains without gluten. The health thing is very big these days, but I am not talking organic here. I am afraid that, if the whole world went organic, the whole world's population would shrink considerably. If people want to work in the niche market of organics, good luck to them. I am talking about the health aspects that R&D can look at to increase the profile of agriculture but, more than this, to increase the profitability and the reliability of Australian agriculture.

There is one thing that is so important here with R&D. The extra money demands cooperation amongst the various bodies. I mean cooperation in not just how this money is spent between an R&D corporation and manufacturers or processors, as indeed it must—and that is why I mentioned the word 'innovation' as well—between them and industry bodies, as indeed it must, or between them and other private R&D bodies, as indeed it must; I mean cooperation between the different R&D corporations themselves. I think that is incredibly important.

The Productivity Commission report that the member for Watson, as the minister, called for stated that our bodies do not cooperate enough. For example, the various plant R&D corporations and the various animal R&D corporations should be working much more closely whether they want to or not. It is a fact that the industry bodies and the growers are all for total cooperation between the various bodies. In fact, they can see nothing but gain with it, and common-sense says that there is nothing but gain with it. It is not always true to say that those corporations—

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