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

And you are so right, Mr Speaker! In beginning my contribution to this debate, I'm going to ask my colleagues to do something for me, and I warn them in advance that it is a big ask. I want them to imagine for a moment that they are the current Prime Minister's agriculture minister. I know that's a little bit confusing because, at the moment, they have two trying to clean up the mess. But imagine you are the member for Cook's agricultural minister, and you're lining up for an interview. The journalist asks you what should be a pretty basic question. She asks, first of all, 'What is the fairest way to measure how successful the government has been in agriculture over the course of the last six years? And how would you measure the performance of your government against those criteria?'

In those circumstances, you might think that the minister's hard drive is running over and thinking about productivity in the sector over the last six years. But as the minister, you're immediately saying to yourself, 'No, I can't go there because productivity has been flatlining in the agriculture sector for all of that period of time.' Then you think to yourself: maybe I can talk about farm profitability. But, no, then you remember reading the latest ABARES report, which tells you that net farm incomes are down 15 per cent this year, so you're not going to go to profitability. Maybe you can talk about grains production. No, you're not going to go there. Maybe you might want to talk about slaughter numbers—no. You might want to talk about the herd size in Australia, now the lowest in more than 20 years, but, no, you're not going to go there either—the value of production, the output of the industry.

The Prime Minister was in Dubbo last week. He said he supports the NFF and its ambitions to grow the sector to $100 billion annually. The problem is that in the last three years it's gone from $67 billion to $65 billion to $64 billion. The sector is going backwards not forwards. This government took it there and it has no plan to turn those numbers around.

In the absence of an opportunity to talk about how it's going, you might think that maybe we can talk about forecasts. Maybe you could argue that all the hard work is about to bear fruit, excuse the pun, and talk about where things are heading. But, of course, that becomes a bit problematic too, because all the forecasts are looking pretty much the same. Poor production is forecast for seven per cent. Slaughter numbers, as I mentioned, are forecast to fall nine per cent. ABARES is predicting that export earnings in the whole sector will fall five per cent over the next 12 months.

I'm a pretty fair person, and I accept that much of this can be attributed to drought. Our food and fibre producers are in the grip of probably the worst drought in the history of the nation, certainly the worst drought in some areas in this country. It's seven years in the making. It's dryer and hotter.

I will park that aside for a moment and return to that, because one of the ministers seems very interested in that subject. If you're the minister you may want to talk about the achievements of the government in the agricultural sector, some of the initiatives the government has taken in this space. Then, of course, you're asking yourself, 'Can I really talk about the centrepiece, the 2015 white paper?' I don't think so—

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