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

Agriculture pretty much lives and succeeds or otherwise on the basis of a lot of the R&D and innovation which is done on its behalf and which it does on the nation's behalf. I rise to support the Primary Industries Levies and Charges Collection Amendment Bill 2016. I think that what is unique to Australia—from my experience in comparable countries around the world—is the way in which rural R&D is performed in Australia. The industries themselves vote on the amount and level at which the collection of levies should be raised. The Commonwealth government matches that funding up to the level of one-half of one per cent of production. Obviously, it works better for some than for others, because of the sizes and scales of particular industries. But it certainly works very well for broadacre farming, and it is more and more being embraced by various different agricultural activities.

This bill is incredibly important if Australia wants to continue to be recognised as a world leader in agriculture. I think the manner in which we present our agricultural production for inspection and sale around the world is a case in point. China has its issues, though we will not go into those today, but it pretty much prefers our produce to anyone else's in the world in certain aspects. That bears out the fact that we are tough on exports and what can be sold within Australia. But we should be tough, because the greatest thing that Australian agriculture has going for it is its reputation for clean, green, expertly produced and expertly presented commodities.

Rural research and development corporations need to be able to connect directly with the people on the ground—primary producers, who, through various levies and charges, directly fund this R&D in conjunction with the Commonwealth. This bill makes it possible for the rural research and development corporations to connect with the producer, who—ostensibly and along with the nation—R&D is there to assist. The people on the ground are the best qualified to inform those bodies of what will make their life easier—whether it is about innovation, where we want to go, or the actual plant or animal.

The producers—and I include myself and the member for Grey among them—are not only the ones paying the levies; we are also the ones who benefit directly from research in the sector. The research supports this—including a Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee inquiry into levies in the agricultural sector, which identified improved consultation with levy payers as important to ensuring the ongoing strength of the nation's R&D system. Currently, levy payers' information is able to be distributed to only a limited number of RDCs—those in the wool and dairy industries. The Australian agriculture sector is far more diverse than just the dairy and wool industries. All primary producers should be on an equal footing, as they are all paying levies and do deserve to have a say in the way in which those are directed. In fact, currently legislation limits primary producers' ability to have an input into how their levies are spent. The bill will remedy this by making it possible to provide this information to the other 13 RDCs. This bill will free the hands of the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources to distribute information on levy payers to the rural RDCs.

As stated earlier, research and inquiries into this have suggested the establishment of registers. The federal government are supportive of this as we understand the huge impact primary producers could have on directing research in their sector. The registers would include the name, address, contact details and ABN of any person who has paid or is liable to pay a levy or charge. This information would also be provided to the Australian Bureau of Statistics and used for the performance of its functions.

The federal government are committed to ensuring we are leading the pack when it comes to agriculture. For this to continue, we must improve the current system. We must ensure policy development and decision making is informed, and this bill is designed to do just that. Engagement with industry is vital, no matter what sector we are talking about. We do not make decisions about education without talking to those in the classroom, and we do not make decisions about health without talking to doctors and nurses. The agriculture sector should be no different.

We must create communication channels to ensure RDCs can align their research investments with industry priorities. That is the issue, because priorities change—just as markets change, as machinery changes and certainly as the weather changes—and this has huge flow-on effects. It will improve returns to the farm gate and ensure a sustainable, more profitable and stronger agriculture sector. The government will continue in its commitment to uphold the highest standard of security and privacy both for individuals and for commercial organisations. This confidentiality will not be compromised. The use of the information, and it will be subject to all relevant privacy considerations.

The bill limits the purposes for which levy payer information can be used to the following: to maintain levy payer registers; to maintain a register of eligible voters for polls conducted by an RDC in order to publish statistical, de-identified information; to fulfil an RDC's functions under its funding agreement with the Commonwealth; or to fulfil the functions of the Australian Bureau of Statistics. This government has a focus on innovation and science, with the release of the National Innovation and Science Agenda. This bill builds on that agenda. There is no part of Australian production where R&D is more relevant and more necessary than agriculture.

Primary producers in my electorate of Calare and just west and north of me in the electorate of Parkes are doing some incredible things, and they need to be able to get their thoughts through to the relevant RDC. I should say at this point in time that, over the period of the decade from 2000, it is a fact that productivity increases did somewhat stall, not just because it was the longest drought of the lifetime of anyone in this parliament but because I do not think that much was going into research. I do not think innovation was coming forward. It is a fact that, over that decade, we stalled and we need to go ahead once again.

Over the last 50 years, up until that decade, almost annually, we had around a two to three per cent increase in productivity in agriculture. In fact, if you look at the charts, the only reason agriculture survived financially was increasing productivity rather than the particular profitability of what they were doing. That is obviously not a good situation—I always said, prior to the election, that profitability has to be the byword of agriculture. There is no point in increasing productivity if you are not making any more money. I do not mind saying that farmers are not any different from anybody else—they need to make money as well as support the nation.

I think this bill is an opportunity for all involved in the agriculture sector. We, as farmers, need to regenerate our minds as well as what we do. I have always believed that, in my father's time, if you worked hard and had common sense, you probably did okay. These days it has moved far beyond that. It is so technical; the science changes so quickly. You only have to look at cotton, certainly up in the electorate of Parkes around Moree, and you will see just how scientific the growing of cotton has become. It is one of the most maligned industries in Australia, I might add. They use far less water than a lot of other industries and they use it very efficiently. It is quite incredible. People should see it, just to see how modern it is.

While I am on this issue of R&D, I want to briefly touch on a couple of things. I am not somebody who went to university, but I often think that, if I did, gene technology is what I would want to do. It is quite amazing. It is a fantastic study. To talk to those scientists at CSIRO and elsewhere about some of the things they can do, and have done, is a revelation in itself. I sometimes wonder whether people realise just how far we can go with this. If you look at the Northern Territory, for example, where not every breed of cattle can survive well, what they have been able to do—and they have not finalised it—is irradiate a bull's reproductive parts to mitigate its own characteristics. They can then supplant it with a bull of far superior quality. In other words, you can have a scrubber running around up in the north with the best Hereford's reproductive capacity—or whatever breed you like.

The bull is tough enough to survive up there, to find the cows and all the rest of it—because fertility is a very big issue up there—but not only would he be doing that; he would not be reproducing himself but the finest bull in Australia, or the world for that matter. The problem, at this point in time, is that they cannot make it last—it dies back and his own reproductive capability re-emerges. But the fact that they can actually do this is just mind-blowing. That is the sort of thing that CSIRO and others have started to do. To me, a farmer and a grazier who loves cattle and sheep, I find this the most incredible thing of all—that they can actually even get as far as they have with that.

The other part about R&D and innovation is that we need more researchers. The mining industry had this problem 20 or 30 years ago. In opposition, I remember we went to them to find out how they pretty much solved it. Money was a great one, but you do not actually have to have a farm boy who is a scientist to do it. You can pinch anyone who is at uni and who is interested in it. There is a capability employment-wise of something like 4,000 people a year, within government departments at state and federal level, within the big corporate entities in agriculture and in pesticides and insecticides, and within veterinary companies—they all need this kind of research. The ability for employment is fantastic, but we need to get to the parents and those people who have perhaps even started at university in various scientific fields. We need to get them in.

R&D and innovation is so important. Let's not forget innovation here, because it does not matter how groundbreaking or great a discovery might be; if you cannot then make it a practical reality, it is not worth much to you. Innovation, to me, is about turning a proven idea into a reality, which is something the family farm does better than anyone. The big guys at corporates have a huge place in Australian agriculture. They can afford to try this stuff. But it is what I call the family corporates, the big family businesses and the smaller family businesses, that perfect it. They make it affordable or not. They are the ones who will decide whether or not they can afford to do it and continue with that.

I commend the bill. Whatever makes those doing the research more aware of what we need, what we must have and where we want to go can only be good, because the world prefers our goods over anyone else's, given the choice.

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