Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the minister for his words. He would be well aware that the electorate of Grey, covering 92 per cent of South Australia, has many spokes to its wheels, including steelmaking, lead-zinc smelting and a large mining sector. We still—at least for a little while—generate quite a large proportion of the South Australian electricity grid through a coal-fired power station at Port Augusta, and a lot of renewable energy as well. But for all that, agriculture and fishing are still the backbone of our economy. I am very pleased with the energy that is in agricultural markets at the moment, and the minister covered off on some of those when he spoke. Some of those, and most especially the live exports trade, have been driven by good government and good policy, and I congratulate the minister and the government for those achievements.

I particularly appreciate the extra money the government is injecting into agricultural research. In my electorate specifically, of the $100 million that the government has put on the table for extra research in agriculture and the fisheries industry, there has been a grant going to the kingfish industry in Arno Bay. This is in the throes of re-establishing itself after running through a period of very tough times when they had very high mortalities and were struggling to understand what was wrong. They seem to have it all sorted out now, and the industry is starting to grow significant tonnages into good export markets. Of course that ties into some of the things that we saw today—the signing of the free trade agreement with China.

I have a very long background in agricultural research as a farmer representative on various bodies, and I know and appreciate just how important agricultural research is to the sector. In fact, I have said for many years that Australian farmers will grow more grain and more fibre every year—unfortunately with fewer people, but that is the reality of it—and we will grow it better. We will do that because we have the right tools provided to us, because we have always been at or very near the cutting edge of agriculture throughout the world, and it is so important that we keep there. So my first question to the minister is to ask him to tell me what he expects the extra research money for agricultural pursuits to do and just how different organisations can target that money and get the best outcome.

The minister has also expressed some views about shifting the last four, I think, registered research organisations out of Canberra into the regions. I have particular interest, of course, in two of those, one being the GRDC, the Grains Research and Development Corporation, and the other one being the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation, because of course we have that rather large industry at Port Lincoln. I am just wondering exactly how the minister sees this unfolding, how these organisations are likely to adapt to the minister's request, and whether he sees any role for South Australia in perhaps hosting any of these bodies.

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