Ken O'Dowd (Flynn, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to support the motion by the member for Capricornia. I have listened to the member for Durack and also to the member for Lingiari, and I agree with a lot of their comments. But I am here to talk about central Queensland and my electorate of Flynn, which straddles the boundary of northern Australia.

It could be said that central Queensland is the epicentre of the Australian beef industry. We have nearly 2.2 million head of cattle, roughly 7.5 per cent of the total Australian herd and 17.5 per cent of the Queensland herd. Rockhampton, just to the north, has a beef capital expo every three years. We have visitors from all over the world. It is really world standard. We get a lot of people in the international cattle industry as well as people in the national cattle industry.

Throughout the financial year 2015-16 some 362,000 head, or 18.2 per cent of the state total, went through saleyards in Flynn. Major saleyards in Flynn include Gracemere, 200,000 head; Emerald, 117,000; Biggenden in the south, 35,000; and Biloela, 10,000. There are other, much smaller, saleyards, like Miriam Vale. Many of these cattle will travel to the four major abattoirs in Queensland—Biggenden, Biloela, Lakes Creek and Fitzroy in Rockhampton. These sometimes have to travel hundreds of miles to get to their final location. This all adds up to central Queensland's beef industry being worth over $950 million per annum—that is 20 per cent of Queensland's total beef industry value.

In order to keep the beef industry going, we need export markets, good season and a supply network—that means roads for the safe, efficient handling of these cattle. The work already done by the government—the FTAs et cetera—has been instrumental in seeing Australian cattlemen and cattlewomen being awarded record prices at saleyards in the last couple of years. The eastern young cattle index is currently at 639.5c per kilogram.

We have a good industry, a very viable industry, but the road network does not match the extra movements and the growth in the industry. Rail services now hardly exist for livestock. We are forced to see more and more decks of cattle on the roads. This in turn means more investment in our roads, something that I am very, very passionate about: we have to improve the standard of our roads. The government has committed real funding to our supply network, with $700 million committed to improving northern Australian roads, including $100 million under the northern Australia beef program. As the member for Lingiari has said, you do not get a lot for a million dollars or for $700 million. I think we need to improve that level of investment to help our farmers get those cattle to markets safely and securely, without bruising.

Two great projects in Flynn at the moment are the upgrade of the Capricorn Highway, $80 million to upgrade from the Gracemere saleyards to the Rockhampton abattoirs, so that road trains no longer have to uncouple and cross-load at Gracemere, a dangerous practice that has already cost the life of 28-year-old truck driver and father Bryson Mayne; $15 million for the overtaking lanes on the Capricorn Highway between Rockhampton and Emerald; and two uncoupling stations between Emerald and Clermont. That project is being done at the very moment.

While these investments are welcome and are very useful improvements to our network, more roads are in desperate need. The Dawson Developmental Road between Springsure and Tambo is one of these roads. It is Queensland's central link in the movement of livestock and grain to population centres on the eastern seaboard. Cattle numbers around the Salvator Rosa and Ka Ka Mundi sections of the Carnarvon Gorge national park including from big stations like Mantuan Downs, Castlevale, Tanderra— (Time expired)

See this speech in context