Bruce Scott (Maranoa, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2015-2016 and related bills, which relate to the budget that was brought down by the honourable Treasurer on budget night. I have got to say that we often in this place talk about the budget following the announcement by the Treasurer of the day, the budget and what it means. What this budget really means is that it is a setting for the future. I think too often we look at 12-month periods. We have got to look beyond the next 12 months when we are looking at a budget. I believe that this budget does exactly that. It looks beyond the next 12 months, it looks into the future and it puts financial structures within the budget settings that are about the future. It looks at how we get the budget trajectory back into balance to deal with the massive debt that we inherited from the outside the House and the deficit budgets, which are just not sustainable.

This budget is a very positive budget. It is a very positive budget for small business. It is a very positive budget in relation to agriculture in my electorate. The announcements made by the Prime Minister in Longreach, four days before the budget was brought down by the Treasurer, certainly were ones that I had worked on for a long time. I know that the agriculture minister and the Deputy Prime Minister, who were both there for the announcement, were involved in that process. The announcement in Longreach was very well received.

I would not be doing my job as the federal member for Maranoa if I did not touch on the ongoing impact of the drought in the central-west and the northwest Queensland parts of my electorate. In the last two to three years and particularly leading up to this year with the failure of yet another wet season, we have seen the impact this drought is having not only on the landholders but also on the towns and the communities and the business sectors of those communities. This pastoral zone is going to take a long time to recover from the impact of the drought when the rains do come, because the pastoral sector relies firstly on getting the rain to grow the grass, secondly on being able to restock and thirdly on getting production going with the reproductive side of things, whether they are sheep or whether they are cattle. It always takes time before you start to get the first cash flow emerging, once you are able to restock properties—unlike the grain enterprise. Once the rains come, grains can be planted and within six months you can see a cash flow return to those farmers. We received the news only a few weeks ago that we are perhaps on the edge of another El Nino event, which means we are going to go into a drier than average period, rather than the prospect of a La Nina event, which means wetter weather than average. That news was certainly devastating in many ways to those people out there and to me as the federal member.

Whilst we have a package that is going to do some immediate good—it was announced in the budget and by the Prime Minister four days before the budget—the longer we go without rain the more we have to be prepared to make sure that we look after the business community of our towns, the very fabric and fibre of our communities. I will be reporting to the Prime Minister on this as we go through this year. When there is no money out of town—and there is no money out of town—properties are destocked and put into mothballs. It is like mothballing a factory; it is not generating any income. There are no jobs so there is no money circulating in the town. I will certainly be wanting to make sure that the money that has been made available by us through local government is spent wisely, that it employs local people and that where materials are required they are bought locally. That is what we have to do. We have to make sure it happens so that we can start to get some economic activity back into the towns.

One element of the package that was particularly important to me was the Roads to Recovery money being doubled for local government across Australia. Once again it goes into our local councils and they spend it on roads of their choosing. It is a local roads package. It is not designed or administered by state governments or by the federal government. All the federal government have done is double the Roads to Recovery money available to local government. I know that the local governments in the electorate of Maranoa will be getting something like $150 million in the forthcoming 12-month period just for roads—that is quite separate from the financial assistance grants that they use for measures other than for roads. That was terrific news in the budget.

The other element of the budget that I was very interested in was the changes to the Youth Allowance. When it comes to completing year 12, many students from rural Australia who want to go on to post-secondary education have to leave home, whether it is from the town or whether it is from out of town. Whether those students live in the business sector of western Queensland towns or on the land, they have to leave home. If those students are able to get Youth Allowance, it will certainly be of great benefit to them because it will take financial pressure off their parents. The changes will mean that they will not be income or asset tested. I better not quote the numbers as I do not have them accurately in my head, but more students will now be able to access Youth Allowance, providing the bill is passed by the Senate. I put the challenge out to the other side of the House and to the crossbenchers in the Senate to support the changes to the Youth Allowance, because it is going to be of enormous benefit to those students who have to leave home to get access to further education.

Tomorrow I will be meeting with the executive and members of the Isolated Children's Parents' Association, who come to Canberra every year. They come well equipped, they never ask for anything that is unreasonable, they have done their homework and their submissions are always good. I had the opportunity last Friday to meet with one or two members of the Isolated Children's Parents' Association in my own electorate and they reiterated what I have just said: they think the changes to the Youth Allowance will be of enormous benefit. It is something they have been fighting for and that we on this side of the House have been fighting for for many, many years. We want to get some greater fairness here. We want to get some recognition of the fact that, when you have to leave home from a rural area, when you have to leave your town to gain access to post-secondary education, it is important that we support those families, that we take the financial pressure off parents' capacity to pay and that we give those students an opportunity to go on to post-secondary education.

If you live in a city—if you live in this great city of Canberra—you do not have to leave home to gain access to post-secondary education. You can live at home and go to university, you can do further education such as technical training or whatever. You also might have a part-time job and still live at home. That is why the Youth Allowance change is going to be so beneficial and so important to the people I represent. I am certainly looking forward to being with the Isolated Children's Parents' Association people, who I know will be here for question time tomorrow as well.

I want to talk about the future of agriculture. We all talk about the great opportunities for agriculture, and there are those opportunities. In my own electorate of Maranoa, when it does rain they will be out there investing again in agriculture. Our agricultural sector produces food and fibre that is not only for our own domestic consumption and wellbeing but that also drives export dollars and earnings for this great country of ours. I was with the Queensland Murray-Darling Committee in Millmerran last Friday, and we announced some $6.96 million for Landcare projects—initiatives that have been driven by local farmers doing something about the environment in their own area. Whether the projects involve weeds or erosion, they are driven by the farmers themselves. Landcare is in its 26th year in Australia—it is a great movement that we now recognise as an integral part of most of our communities. It is important that we care for our land so that we pass it on to the next generations better than it is today. There is a Landcare symbol—the two hands and 'Landcare'. It is very well recognised. I said it would be great if we could have that Landcare symbol attached to the work that these people do on their land—in other words, their properties could be certified as being involved in Landcare and dealing with land care issues. Unfortunately the Landcare symbol is available to those who sponsor Landcare. We need to look at this.

Consuming countries overseas demand clean and green produce. They want to know a little more about the product they are buying. I was recently at Beef 2015 in Rockhampton. There were over 1,000 delegates from many parts of the world, including international chefs from the Middle East and Indonesia. There were even delegates from Cuba, in the Caribbean, who came to look at our genetics and our food. Whether they are consumers of food or breeders or involved in agriculture in some other way, they all have iPhones—they all have mobile information technology. This will be increasingly important into the future. It was said at Beef 2015 that 300 million Chinese consumers have an iPhone and buy online. Maybe they want to look at a product on their iPhone, maybe at home or at a coffee shop, and then order online. They want to know more than just whether our food is clean and green—they want to know whether it is organic and they want to see certification. They want to know about land care or animal welfare—all those things are going to be increasingly important to the way we are able to deliver a message, whether it is through the producers or through Australia as the exporter. We are going to have to deliver more and more information about our products, and our farmers and food producers are going to be called on through consumer demand to provide that information.

I said to the Queensland Murray-Darling Committee and the farmers at Millmerran on Friday that it is important that we move to this next step—after 26 years of Landcare, they need to sell the message that they are involved in responsible land care. Rather than just accepting what they have done and what we as a Commonwealth have invested in through taxpayer dollars, we need to sell the message with a symbol that certifies that the land care they are involved in is responsible and benefiting the land, increasing its sustainability into the future.

I also want to touch quickly on organic food. We need to make the most of our clean and green and organic status, which is growing year by year as shown by demand from overseas—that was very evident at Beef 2015, as it has been in the work I have witnessed over time. We have various symbols and various accreditations for organics. If you want to export organic food to the United States of America, you have to have USDA organic certification. It is time that we in Australia looked at how we can not only describe our product but also give it a certification that has an Australia wide-standard. There may be different brands that go with it, whether it is King Island or Margaret River in Western Australia or wherever it might be, but we need to have an international 14001 standard. Consumers are going to demand it in future, and it is one of the things that I will be working on in the weeks and months ahead, talking with producers on how we can make the most of our clean, green image and sell more information on these products to our consumers overseas. (Time expired)

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