Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Hansard source

In my initial contribution I asked the minister some specific questions about drought funding and he made no attempt to answer them. Maybe he is waiting for the mathematicians up the back to help him out there. I understand that and appreciate it, so I trust those answers will still be forthcoming. I am going to help the minister answer the question by the member for Grey. Yes, the mining department regulates the mining industry and it might make some sense for it to be nearby, and fisheries regulate the fisheries industry and it might make some sense. But research and development corporations make decisions about where research dollars should be spent and the priorities. They do not do research. It makes no sense for them necessarily to be close to where the crop is growing. If it did make sense, the minister would not be sending the Grains RDC to Wagga Wagga; he would probably be sending it to Western Australia. But, of course, grains are grains and even if there were some merit in having it close to one grain, it does not necessarily provide merit because it does not put it close to the grains industry in Western Australia. Decentralisation is a wonderful thing and, unfortunately, it is a great challenge. It fails more often than it works. It works when someone has a strategic plan with long lead times and proper consultation has been undertaken.

The minister has just issued an edict that these RDCs move. There is great resistance. I was intrigued to hear the minister say that people are now on board. What that means is that there is partial backdown here. The minister has now realised this is not going to work. It is going to cost $40 million—money that could have gone to research—staff are going to leave en masse and now he is having a hybrid system where he is keeping probably the majority of people in Canberra. He will put two people in Wagga and say, 'I did it. I achieved my decentralisation plan.' We will see how wrong I am, Minister.

I welcome the backdown because this is just a silly idea—$40 million that should be going into research being wasted on redundancies and relocations. Of course, all the expertise we have in these RDCs will go out the window because people, for obvious reasons—they have got a husband or father in Canberra or kids in the local school—do not want to go to Wagga or Hobart or wherever the minister might have in mind. The bad news for the member for Grey is that I have never heard the minister make any reference to South Australia. I do not think there is any plan to send anyone to South Australia. There is another important point. The minister really does not seem to understand that, or he really is being mischievous and wants to mislead people. Remember that the minister has been cutting money out of the CRCs in CSIRO and the Rural Industries RDC. He promised more money, but he is cutting money. He has got his $100 million, but he has taken that much at least out of the bucket elsewhere.

But research and development money is precious, and we have got to have a competitive environment. So when the RDCs put money out on offer to researchers, there is competition. So this university might be interested and this university over here might also be interested, and there is a competitive tension.

The minister's insistence is that the RDC go an extra university, a regional university, suggesting to all and sundry that that university is going to be doing all the research—this great synergy between the RDC and the university. But where is the competitive tension?

You will have too much collaboration: you will have a nudge and a wink. The university will become the researcher of choice for the minister's new model of RDC. This is not a good thing for our RDC dollars—not by any stretch of the imagination. So I am glad you are climbing down, Minister. I know that will be greatly welcomed by those who work and manage our RDCs. Don't smile and suggest that people in our RDCs think this is a good idea. They are in rebellion, and you know they are in rebellion. In fact, they know you cannot make them move. You have got a problem now and you are backing down, and I welcome the back down.

Foreign Investment Review Board—changes; no, I will not go there, because I will not have time. I will save that for my next contribution. I simply again ask the minister to give me those drought answers I was looking for.

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