David Littleproud (Maranoa, National Party, Minister for Agriculture, Drought and Emergency Management) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Mallee for her question. In fact some months ago I sat in her electorate with the Milawa farmers and heard directly about some of the ideas they had around our $8 billion drought response. One of those we put into action, around the Regional Investment Corporation not only allowing farmers to refinance $2 million of their debt away from commercial banks but also allowing them to use that for restocking and replanting. It is important that this government is not just looking to support farmers in the here and now but is putting the environment around them for the future.

That comes with understanding the importance that trade plays in our agricultural sector. We are a nation of 25 million people. We produce enough food and fibre for 75 million people, so, unless we engage and trade with the world, our primary production sector isn't needed to the level it is now, and that tears away at regional and rural Australia. Today's announcement, with the President of Indonesia being here, and building on the IA-CEPA, builds on the Chinese, Korean and Japanese free trade agreements. Those opposite said about the TPP-11, 'Don't bother, it's all too hard.' That $13.1 trillion marketplace has opened up to Australian farmers, as has the Peru market and now also Hong Kong. But now there is the opportunity for Australian farmers to have access to a new marketplace, with a free trade agreement that will remove up to 99 per cent of those tariffs as we move forward when it's ratified in the next 60 days.

This is important also to those farmers in the Mallee, particularly those in the citrus industry, who will now have access to a marketplace in Indonesia, as well as a 500,000 tonne grains quota that will increase five per cent every year, giving those farmers opportunity to have access to a new market, spreading their risk and giving them opportunity. This is a $2½ billion market that we can now build on for our Australian farmers, building diversity and spreading their market risk across a number of different international markets.

This is an opportunity to also build on the over-billion-dollar beef industry, whether it be through the live or the processed meat industry. This is an opportunity, particularly in the northern part of our country, where our production systems align with those in Indonesia, for them to trade with Indonesia even further than what they have done already. We have done that also with the two agricultural counsellors in the embassy in Indonesia, but in the 2019 budget we put on an additional six agricultural counsellors to take advantage of these free trade agreements, because what free trade will do is open up the opportunity for our primary producers to not only survive this drought but thrive after it. That is the responsibility of the federal government: to put the infrastructure and environment around its people to grow.

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