Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I rise to speak again on this motion without closing the debate. In continuing with this motion, which calls for a national Australian day of recognition of the importance of farming, I want to talk about farmers and the environment. We so often have a situation in Australia where farmers are seen as the enemy of the environment—the opposition to those who call themselves environmentalists. In fact, the reality is that farmers are the environmentalists of Australia. They protect the biodiversity on their farms, particularly remnant vegetation, which they might re-fence, fence out or replant. They have to protect the air quality through looking after their soil erosion and any emissions from their livestock production. They look after water and soil protection.

In particular in northern Victoria farmers have managed the high-saline water tables—a natural phenomenon which has also come about from the clearing of the central highlands for the goldmining era and to pave the streets of Melbourne with red gum blocks. We had in the 1980s an enormous movement of soil salinity management, where the farmers, I am pleased to say, were able to succeed and to literally replant northern Victoria. Great plains like the Tragowel Plains, which were treeless when they were first seen by the first European, Major Mitchell, are now filled with trees in a landscape that resonates with bird calls, with returns of reptiles and native flowers that had not been seen for a very long time.

It is especially difficult in Australia for our farming population to manage the environment, which of course is essential for their own agribusiness success. That is because of the incredible concentration of buying power of the supermarkets. They compete on price, and they insist to the consumer that each of them is the cheapest and that they will remain the cheapest. They advertise on 'down, down, everyday low prices' or 'best price value' anywhere that you will find a place to buy food. The difficulty is that when a farmer invests, as they must, in their environmental services—in air and water quality and in protecting biodiversity, as I have mentioned—and in humane practices to make our Australian livestock industry one of the most humane and careful in the world, unfortunately they do not receive a cent extra on price when selling their produce to the supermarkets. In fact, the supermarkets insist on a code of environmental conduct—something that Australian farmers are happy to comply with—but not at a cent more for farmers when they take those extra yards to ensure our environment is protected.

This is extremely difficult for our Australian farmers, but they are willing participants in an environment where only the best will do for Australian consumers and where they know their clean, green reputation is one of the most important values they take into the global market environment.

I particularly want to acknowledge the farmers of Murray. I am a fifth-generation farmer from my electorate of Murray. I am pleased to say my son is a farmer and he expects his son to be a farmer and his daughters as well. I am also a fifth-generation irrigation farmer. Irrigation is under threat throughout Australia, particularly in northern Victoria, as the impacts of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan take effect. The mid-term review of the Goulburn-Murray Water Connections Project was published just on Friday, and we need to make sure that the problems and mistakes identified in that project with some billion dollars of federal funding are immediately dealt with. We need to make sure there is a resetting of the project so that irrigation is at the end of the day, after the expenditure of that $1 billion, in a better place. We need to make sure it is in fact world's best practice and is not in the situation it currently faces, where farmers are being driven out of business and are in despair.

We have got to see more focus on our farmers' investment in education. We know a lot of our farm families think that it is best for their children to move off their properties given the hard times they are experiencing. But our future farmers will be great. They need to have excellence in education, and that means investment in something like agricultural science or other farm-related training. We know that tertiary educated farmers are those who can best manage into their farm's future, which is high tech and high business but also requires them to have a heart and to be environmentally sustainable. All of that is a feature of Australian farming. I commend this motion to the House.

Debate adjourned.

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