Bob McMullan (Fraser, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Federal/State Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in the debate on the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research Amendment Bill 2007 first of all to make clear, on behalf of the opposition, that we support this bill. It is, in its immediate implication, an uncontroversial bill, although I will have some things to say about the underlying report that drives it. I mainly want to indicate my general view about the organisation whose administrative arrangements we are amending here. It is an organisation for which I have a very soft spot and of which I am a strong supporter.

Firstly, I go to the bill itself. The amendments are in response to what was officially known as the Review of the Corporate Governance of Statutory Authorities and Office Holders, but what is known in the vernacular as the Uhrig report. That report has led to a series of changes to many pieces of legislation and, in this particular instance, to change the administration of the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research, otherwise known as ACIAR. The bill does not alter the research program or the broader public policy outputs of ACIAR but is designed to improve the administration of ACIAR and to bring it in line with the manner in which other government entities are administered.

While supporting the bill I want to make it very clear that I have very profound reservations about the Uhrig report. I have expressed those here in the parliament before. I thought it led to a very unwise decision with regard to the board of Austrade and I think the general application of the Uhrig report has not been generally beneficial to public administration. But I support the bill for two reasons. Firstly, I support the bill because within reasonable limits governments should be able to put in place the administrative arrangements they choose for the bodies for which they are responsible. We expect ministers to be accountable to the parliament for government agencies; therefore they should be able to manage them in the manner that they see as appropriate from a legislative point of view. That is not a blank cheque—there can be circumstances in which that would not be appropriate—but even in the case of Austrade, where I strongly disagreed with the decision to abolish the board, flowing from the Uhrig report, I supported the legislation because the incumbent ought to be able to make such arrangements if it chooses. If an incoming government wants to create a board for Austrade, that is not going to be a difficulty. For that reason I would not oppose this bill.

Secondly, in this case the changes to the administrative arrangements for ACIAR are more apparent than real. It is an attempt to create the impression of implementing the Uhrig report by abolishing the board and creating a commission. The parliamentary secretary in his second reading speech said:

ACIAR will retain its capacity for collective decision making (through the new commission) while bringing its management under the CEO.

He really means, ‘We’ve made no effective change at all.’ I do not say that as a criticism, because I am not sure there needed to be a change. As I have said, I am not a big fan of Uhrig, but nevertheless ACIAR will continue to be an effectively administered body under this new legislation, and I support it.

The debate on the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research Amendment Bill 2007 gives me an opportunity to say something about the excellent work that ACIAR does. ACIAR was founded in 1982, and the original bill had within it a sunset clause because there was some doubt about whether it would prove, over the medium term, to be an effective instrument for enhancing Australia’s support for agricultural research in developing countries. Midway through that original sunset clause period the then management of ACIAR decided to conduct a preliminary review of its progress and achievements so that it could judge for itself whether it was on track for passing the hurdle that the sunset clause provided in the original legislation.

I had the opportunity to participate in that review as a then backbench senator in 1989. I found it extremely interesting. It was quite an insight for me. I knew something of the operations of ACIAR but had no particular expertise in the area, and I found it very insightful. Since that time I have been a very strong advocate for, and supporter of, ACIAR and its role. I have always found it to have strong bipartisan support in the parliament. As far as I know there has never been any effective criticism from either side of parliament about the ongoing role which it plays—most particularly, in its focus in assisting the agricultural development of developing countries by applying the capacity of Australia’s agricultural research institutions—or about the flow-on benefit to Australian agriculture from the quality and character of the research undertaken jointly by Australian research institutes and their partner organisations in developing countries.

In its final report, that external review which I participated in lauded the high standing that ACIAR had already achieved in six years in the field of international agricultural research. Other members of the panel were from many of the other international agricultural research organisations and they had already regarded ACIAR as a leading member of that international agricultural research community. With very few exceptions, this positive reaction was reflected in the views of all who had been associated with ACIAR, whether as participants in collaborative projects, members of sister institutions or Australian participants. A great deal of what ACIAR does was judged to be excellent, and that was the panel’s conclusion. I thought it was a proper and welcome sign of confidence in its structure and operations that ACIAR opened itself, on a continuing basis, to effective scrutiny. A number of recommendations were made at that time. There have been subsequent reviews of overseas aid programs, such as the Simons review and the recent white paper review. The director of ACIAR has also independently commissioned a number of reviews of particular aspects of ACIAR’s operations and programs.

From all the evidence that I have seen from 1989 to the present day—the scrutiny, the surveys, the reports and the international assessments—and from what I have seen when visiting other countries to look at the work that ACIAR has done in conjunction with research institutes in partner countries, there seems to be a high level of support and recognition of the quality of ACIAR’s work, and its research seems to have a high level of impact. It is very practical, very targeted and very much about achieving serious results and improving agricultural performance in developing countries. As I say, these projects have often had a useful spin-off for Australian agriculture as well. That is not ACIAR’s primary purpose, but it is a welcome secondary objective. It is because of the cooperative way the research institutions work together that that can flow.

The centre encourages Australia’s agricultural scientists to use their skills for the benefit of developing countries and Australia. ACIAR funds research projects that are developed within a framework reflecting the priorities of Australia’s aid program and national research strengths together with the agricultural research and development priorities of partner countries. The ACIAR mandate directs activities to developing countries in five regions: Papua New Guinea and the Pacific Islands, South-East Asia, North Asia, South Asia and southern Africa. Research is also allocated across regions through funding to the international agricultural research centres.

ACIAR’s functions continue to be to commission research into improving sustainable agricultural production in developing countries; to fund project related training; importantly, to communicate the results of that funded research; to conduct and fund development activities related to research programs; and to administer the Australian government’s contribution to the international agricultural research centres around the world. The goal of sustainable agricultural production is particularly important to Australia’s aid program. I have been concerned that broadly the Australian aid program has lost its focus. The appropriate focus for Australia’s aid program, which should be poverty reduction, has been lost as too many other objectives have been pursued. But I think ACIAR is one of those agencies that remain focused on providing practical assistance to improve the living standards of people in developing countries. According to Francois Bourguignon, the Senior Vice-President and Chief Economist at the World Bank:

Growth in agriculture makes a disproportionately positive contribution to reducing poverty. More than half of the population in developing countries lives in rural areas, where poverty is most extreme.

So the focus that ACIAR has on improving agricultural production is very much a part of an intelligent, poverty focused research program.

Across the board in Australia’s aid program, funding for rural development has fallen. We are seeing a belated but welcome increase in Australia’s aid program, but it is still only 0.3 per cent of GNI—way below internationally accepted targets and below the performance of most comparable countries. Even with that, funding for rural development in Australia’s aid program has fallen and, on the face of it, based on the budget papers, funding for ACIAR has fallen.

I support the bill. I am confident the House will support the bill because it is in many ways simply an administrative tidy-up against the government’s management priorities to bring ACIAR into line with changes that have been made to a large number of government agencies. To conclude as I began, I am not a great fan of the Uhrig report—I am not a great fan of the things that it has done for public administration across the board—but for two reasons I support the bill: firstly, because the government is entitled to have the administrative structures it seeks to put in place to run agencies for which it is accountable and, secondly, because, as they relate to ACIAR, the changes are more apparent than real. The commission will continue to be able to provide the advice and collective decision making that the board has done in the past. I do not think that these structural changes will in any way enhance the performance of ACIAR, but they will in no way impede its capacity to continue to provide to the people of Australia and the people of developing countries in our broader region the sort of valuable support in agricultural research that has been the hallmark of 25 years of good work by ACIAR. I have over the years had many friends who have worked in this organisation, and I have many friends who, having worked there, are now putting in substantial and important work around the world to enhance agricultural production in developing countries. As a credit to the work of those people and all the others who have worked and continue to work in ACIAR, I am pleased to have the opportunity to support this bill.

Patrick Secker (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I note that the member for Fraser was largely supportive of the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research Amendment Bill 2007. It is significant that the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research was set up under the Howard-Fraser coalition government. In fact, the member for O’Connor, who will follow me, would have been around at that time—not many of us were, so he has a greater corporate knowledge of the history of how the centre was set up.

Bob McMullan (Fraser, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Federal/State Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Some members of the House were not born.

Patrick Secker (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That could very well be the case. I rise tonight to speak in support of this bill. The Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research was established in 1982 to assist and encourage agricultural scientists in Australia to use their skills for the benefit of developing countries, whilst also working to solve Australia’s own agricultural problems. As the previous speaker, the member for Fraser, said, the centre is very much focused in providing overseas help to other nations, but we also benefit from that in our own country. Some of the scientists have come back and work in other areas of Australian society—in private enterprise or in a public institution such as the well-respected CSIRO. Some of the benefits that derive from that research will always benefit agriculture, whether it be here in Australia or anywhere else in the world.

The ACIAR is a statutory authority that works within the Foreign Affairs and Trade portfolio. It supports projects in six regions—Papua New Guinea, the South Pacific, South-East Asia, South Asia, North Asia and southern Africa. Whilst ACIAR will no longer be a legal entity separate from the Commonwealth under the amendment bill, it will continue to have authority to design and commission research with Australian and overseas partners. The ACIAR Amendment Bill was put in place to make changes to the government’s arrangements of the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research. The bill implemented the government’s response to the Review of the Corporate Governance of Statutory Authorities and Office Holders conducted by John Uhrig. Unlike the previous speaker, the member for Fraser, I very much support the arrangements that are being put in place in many of our institutions as a result of this review. Certainly, those that have already occurred have proven to be quite successful. I think that the proof of the pudding is in the outcomes and certainly the outcomes of the institutional changes that we have made as a result of the John Uhrig report have been very successful and, I believe, will continue to be very successful in the future.

The Uhrig Review of the Corporate Governance of Statutory Authorities and Office Holders was completed in June 2003. The report recommended two templates designed to ensure good governance. You hear more these days about good governance in federal, state or local government or in private companies. It is one of those catchphrases that have been widely accepted. I had the ability and good fortune to be part of a Commonwealth Parliamentary Association meeting last year that was entirely about good governance. It is being accepted all around the world.

As I said, the report recommended two templates designed to ensure good governance. The first outlined that governments can be best provided by executive management. The second stated that it is best delivered by a board. ACIAR was reviewed in the second and third quarters of 2006 and, in the case of ACIAR, it was agreed by ministers that there is an inconsistency between some of the provisions of the Financial Management and Accountability Act 1997, the FMA act, and the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research Act 1982. The government assessed the existing governance of ACIAR against the recommendations of the Uhrig review together with authorities from the Foreign Affairs and Trade portfolio, the purpose being to have the most effective accountability and governance structures across the whole of government.

The purpose of the amendments to this bill is to change the governance arrangements of ACIAR from a board of management to an executive management structure involving a chief executive officer and a seven-member commission. This is quite common across our nation, as I have said, in government or in private enterprise boards. There are also several other key amendments within the bill. The first outlines the responsibility for the administrative and financial management of ACIAR to be changed from where it currently resides with the board of management to the CEO. The CEO will report directly to the minister, which is in line with the provisions of the Financial Management and Accountability Act 1997. The revocation of ACIAR’s body corporate status follows.

The establishment of a commission comprising a chair and six other commissioners would include the CEO, who could also be named as the chair. This commission would provide collective decision making and expert advice to the minister in relation to program formulation, priority setting and funding. It does not matter who you are or how brilliant you may be, you can always use the advice of other people. In the end, democracy works, but it also brings greater ability and greater knowledge that can spread throughout the organisation. The commission will also offer advice on other matters as requested under the legislation by the minister.

The current Policy Advisory Council, the PAC, which includes key overseas stakeholders, will be retained—and I think it is important that we recognise that. This bill, however, introduces amendments to ensure there will be no duplication of membership between the commission and the PAC. The current functions of the PAC will not change under the commission structure—again, that is another important thing to note. The PAC will continue to advise on the agricultural problems of developing countries and suitable agricultural research options to address these problems. The main change will be the shift in responsibility for the administration and management of ACIAR to the CEO in line with the executive management model, which is the template recommended by the Uhrig report. The only refinement to the current PAC arrangements is that key overseas stakeholders will retain membership but will not overlap with the commission. This refinement will allow for more specialised input with high-level partner country participation in the PAC. The act will also be amended so that the appointed commissioners hold office on a part-time basis for a period of up to three years. The act will also be amended so that the minister can provide directions to the CEO concerning the performance of his or her functions under the legislation, which includes the strategic direction of ACIAR.

In conclusion, I do not think the outcomes and operation will change greatly, but I think it will be a more efficient model. Perhaps that will lead to quicker and fuller decisions, if I can put it that way, and it is certainly something I believe this House should support. As I understand it, those opposite will be supporting the amendments in the bill as we have put them.

Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak on and support the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research Amendment Bill 2007. The Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research is currently a statutory authority that operates as part of the Australian government’s development cooperation programs. The centre encourages Australia’s agricultural scientists to use their skills for the benefit of developing countries and also for the benefit of Australia. The Centre for International Agricultural Research funds research projects that are developed within a framework that reflects the priorities of Australia’s aid program and national research strengths together with the agricultural research and development priorities of partner countries. Its mandate directs activities to developing countries in five regions: Papua New Guinea and the Pacific Islands, South-East Asia, North Asia, South Asia and southern Africa. Research is also allocated across regions through funding to the international agricultural research centres. ACIAR’s key functions are to commission research into improving sustainable agricultural production in developing countries—a very important objective. Also, it funds project related training; it communicates the results of funded research; it conducts and funds development activities related to research programs; and it administers the Australian government’s contribution to the international agricultural research centres.

The purpose of the bill before the House, as others before me have indicated, is to implement changes to the corporate governance of the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research, to enact revised governance arrangements in its enabling legislation, as part of the government’s response to the 2003 Review of the Corporate Governance of Statutory Authorities and Office Holders, known as the Uhrig review. The bill also replaces existing governance arrangements within the centre to reflect the executive management model recommended in the Uhrig review. Key changes involve the abolition of the board of management of the centre, along with the office of the director, and the creation of a Commission for International Agricultural Research and a new position of chief executive officer. The commission will be established to provide collective decision making and expert advice to the minister on specific aspects of the centre’s operations, including program formulation, priority setting and funding. Consistent with the executive management model in the Uhrig review, responsibility for the administrative and financial management of the centre will be conferred on the new position of CEO, which will be directly accountable to the minister. These changes, it is said, are aimed at clarifying and segregating the administrative and advisory functions of the centre to ensure best practice in corporate governance.

The bill also revokes the centre’s body corporate status, as the retention of the centre as a legal personality separate from the Commonwealth has been assessed as unnecessary given that the centre is budget funded, is a prescribed agency under the Financial Management and Accountability Act 1997 and does not need to own any assets in its own right.

The bill does not—and the parliamentary secretary pointed this out in his second reading speech—change the functions or objectives of the Policy Advisory Council established under the act. The only changes in this regard include amendments to the council’s constitution to reflect the new governance arrangements, and provisions to ensure that there is no duplication in membership between the council and the commission—and the bill does not change the functions of the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research. The bill includes transitional arrangements to ensure that the governance changes do not disrupt the performance of the centre’s function.

The bill gives me an opportunity to say something about the present state of international agricultural research and pass on to the House some conversations which I recently had with experts in this area from two bodies—Bioversity International and the Food and Agriculture Organisation. In the conversations I had with a number of representatives from those organisations, the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research came up on a number of occasions. I am pleased to report that the view of these international experts on the work done by our centre was overwhelmingly positive.

The context in which I had these discussions was very much about the impacts of global warming, climate change, on agriculture. Indeed, those impacts are prospectively quite serious. I met with the director of Bioversity International, Dr Emile Frison. He discussed the role of plants in climate change adaptation. For example, forests are a long-term investment, and we need to be able to predict what climate changes will occur and which species will prevail. Bioversity International is developing models to achieve this.

To date, many species in tropical forests are inadequately studied. Bioversity has an office in Kuala Lumpur which is doing work on this in the Asia-Pacific region. Small island countries—for example, those in the Pacific—need to work on a regional basis. In addition, there is a need for diversity—planting numbers of different crops as a climate change adaptation safeguard. Bioversity is collecting and studying plant genetic material for projects such as an Indonesian project on banana wilt diseases. That is being carried out under the auspices of the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research. It is also carrying out projects on, for example, coconut genetic resources in the Pacific to examine the potential of coconut oil as a biofuel.

One of the points that Dr Frison made was that these sorts of crops and biodiversity should be used to improve the livelihood of poor people. When we talk about things like bioenergy, we need to understand what its impact on our poorer people will be. For example, Bioversity is concerning itself with the quality of nutrition. The Millennium Development Goals have led to significant efforts to increase the food supply of poor people, but there has not been enough attention paid to the quality of the food. More calories are available per capita, but the displacement of traditional diets by poorer diets has had some negative health impacts, including the emergence of so-called diseases of affluence such as cancer and obesity. Television is promoting a desire for junk food in rural villagers.

Bioversity is seeking to rehabilitate the image of some traditional foods, such as leafy vegetables, which have suffered by being seen as backward or not modern. For example, there is the Kenyan project which led to the introduction of these leafy vegetables to the parliamentary canteen menu. In some Pacific islands, where more than 50 per cent of the population is overweight, work has been done on identifying and promoting varieties of bananas which are rich in vitamin A. Dr Frison expressed some concern at the recent drying up of funds for this kind of work from the United Nations Global Environment Facility. He said that no money had been forthcoming from this source for the past 12 months, which has slowed Bioversity’s work considerably.

I also spoke with Annie Lane from Bioversity. She has been working in the area of climate change mitigation, researching crop diversity and capacity to deal with extreme weather events, including drought. She coordinated Bioversity’s crop wild relatives work. She says that more funding coming from the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research would help both Australia and developing countries. For example, she is working with various botanical gardens, which can act as refuges for vulnerable species at risk of being pushed over the edge by climate change. She is modelling the impact of global warming on various crops and their wild relatives. I will give you a couple of examples of the impacts. In 50 years most wild peanut species will have no climatically suitable habitat in Latin America. They cannot move up the slopes of the mountains, as it were; that habitat is not suitable. In any event, most plants cannot move quickly and cannot move at all if their habitat fragmented and there are no corridors. The example from Australia I was provided comes from Western Australia. It is a bioclimatic analysis of the distribution of 819 eucalypt species which was carried out back in 1996 by the ecologist Lesley Hughes and colleagues. It showed that about 200 species of Australia’s 819 eucalypts had a climatic range of less than one degree Celsius mean annual temperature, so obviously temperature variations will greatly affect the ability of these species to survive. The research studies predict serious effects over the course of the next 60 years in a biodiversity hot spot for eucalypts in Western Australia.

Crop wild relatives include crop ancestors as well as other species more or less closely related to crops. They are a critical source of genes for resistance to diseases, pests and stresses such as drought and extreme temperatures. The use of wild relatives has led to improved resistance to wheat curl mite, late blight in potato and grassy stunt disease in rice. They have been used to improve tolerance to drought in wheat and acid sulphate soils in rice. Wild relatives have also been used to raise the nutritional value of some crops. Protecting crop wild relatives helps to ensure that adequate genetic diversity exists in a particular crop’s gene pool. Increasing genetic uniformity makes crops more vulnerable to stress. Devastating losses in the American maize crop caused by a corn blight outbreak in the USA highlighted the risk of relying on just a few high-yielding varieties. Natural populations of wild relatives are unfortunately increasingly at risk due to overexploitation and the loss of habitat. There was a global project funded by the United Nations Environment Program’s Global Environment Facility back in 2004 which examined these risks. It is clear that rising global temperatures are threatening crop wild relatives with extinction at the very time they are most needed. The adverse impacts of global warming on agricultural systems can be mitigated by using crop wild relatives, which can help adapt cultivated crops to changing climate conditions.

There was a study conducted by Bioversity International and the International Rice Research Institute which estimated the current and future geographical distribution of the wild relatives of three of the world’s major food crops—potato, peanut and cowpea—based on 19 climate variables. The study predicts that, by 2055, something like 18 per cent to 25 per cent of all of these potato, peanut and cowpea species could become extinct, and that most species could lose over 50 per cent of the land area that is currently suited to them. As many as 31 of the 51 wild peanuts studied are likely to become extinct and the distribution area of the remainder will be reduced by more than 90 per cent.

I also met recently with representatives of the Food and Agriculture Organisation. The Food and Agriculture Organisation is examining the role of agriculture and of forestry in mitigating global warming. Its key personnel see opportunities for developing countries to benefit from bioenergy. Forestry can play a role in capturing CO and in a carbon neutral cycle involving wood energy. I met with Dr Gustavo Best, who is the Senior Energy Coordinator of the Sustainable Development Department. Dr Best said that issues which need to be resolved are issues of land tenure, the role of local populations and who benefits from forestry and agriculture projects. It is clearly not helpful for high-tech projects to take small farmers off the land. The impact of bioenergy on food prices and the impact of monocultures on biodiversity also need to be assessed. If a crop is grown for energy rather than food, does its price go up and will food become unaffordable? Dr Best said there had been little systematic work done on the impact of bioenergy on food prices and food availability.

The Netherlands has introduced requirements that bioenergy contracts must be sustainable in the ecosystem where the crop is grown. This followed an outcry from non-government organisations over a palm oil contract in Malaysia which ended up being cancelled due to concerns about adverse social and environmental impacts. Biomass needs to be sustainable in its use of water and in its energy balance. Dr Best said, for example, that maize grown in the United States has more energy put into it than it actually produces, so it is only economic due to domestic subsidies. Brazilian sugar, on the other hand, is a net energy producer. He sees considerable potential in sugar cane, soya, castor oil, sunflower oil and from research now being carried out on the conversion of cellulose.

Biofuels are receiving a shot in the arm from the European Union directive increasing the target percentage for biofuels in the fuel mix for European vehicles from 5.7 per cent in 2008 to 10 per cent by 2010. Principal sources of supply are likely to be eastern European—Poland, Ukraine and Belarus. Oilseeds are now an attractive investment to produce biodiesel. This is good news for producers, who get a higher return, but not such good news for consumers because the cost of food goes up. A number of crops are showing bioenergy potential—soya, rapeseed, palm oil and sweet sorghum, which is doing well in semiarid areas and may have potential in Australia. The cost of ethanol in Brazil has fallen from 1970 to 2000 due to research breakthroughs, but it still requires a lot of water. There is a need to create synergies between bioenergy production and food production through means such as annual cropping, changing the crop, injecting nitrogen and assisting biodiversity.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation are looking closely at climate change adaptation. Their knowledge of agricultural practices, water management and soil management is being put to use in climate change adaptation. Countries like Bangladesh—which are not the cause of global warming, and this raises some serious moral issues—have to work on farm practices and health issues raised by more frequent and severe flooding. The Food and Agriculture Organisation indicated to me that they would like more contact with Australia. There was more contact some years ago on other issues. They also indicated that there is a need to protect corridors of vegetation for biodiversity and to guard against insect pests and diseases.

There are great opportunities for Australia in South-East Asia through emissions trading. So far emissions trading has not helped forestry projects much. Japan is an exception, having invested in forestry projects to get carbon reduction certificates. The Clean Development Mechanism has had little impact on agriculture; it has had more impact on landfill and biogas.

We need policies and knowledge to answer questions like: is there enough land? Are we threatening the environment? Are we threatening small farmers? The circumstances, and therefore the answers to these questions, will vary from region to region, country to country, and locality to locality. Some major non-government organisations have been presenting bioenergy as a threat to sustainable development because of the problems with increasing intensity of land use and threats to biodiversity. Certainly it is Dr Best’s view that the message for politicians about bioenergy needs to be scientifically based, objective and the product of long-term research, and that bioenergy cannot and should not be treated in isolation from the environment, rural development or the energy sector. Bioenergy has to be further integrated into energy policies in many countries.

The Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research appears to me to be well regarded abroad, but the goodwill which this body generates for our agricultural sector has, of course, been completely undermined by the scandal surrounding Australia’s wheat marketing arrangements in the wake of the AWB scandal. The payment by AWB of $300 million in bribes to Saddam Hussein is a matter of national shame. Unfortunately, there is no sign this week that the government has learnt anything from this debacle. I am pleased to support the legislation, wish it a speedy passage through the House and hope that it enables the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research to continue its good work.

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Previous speakers have quite adequately covered the technical factors relevant to the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research Amendment Bill 2007. I thought a couple of quotes from the explanatory memorandum and the second reading speech were of relevance also. The bill brings into effect recommendations of the Uhrig report. I spoke at some length this morning on the effect in the agricultural and veterinary chemicals area of these particular matters. I had some concerns with regard to management and the role of the minister. As this is an advisory body to the minister, those comments are not relevant, and it would seem that this particular body can operate quite successfully as a government bureaucracy. In fact, as we are advised in the explanatory memorandum:

The Bill also revokes the Centre’s body corporate status as retention of the Centre as a legal personality separate from the Commonwealth has been assessed as unnecessary given the Centre is budget funded, is a prescribed agency under the Financial Management and Accountability Act 1997 and does not have any need to own assets in its own right.

We are talking, of course, about an instrument, as described by the parliamentary secretary in his second reading speech. He said:

ACIAR is a statutory authority within the Foreign Affairs and Trade portfolio, and its activities are part of Australia’s aid program. ACIAR was established in 1982 to assist and encourage agricultural researchers in Australia to use their skills for the benefit of developing countries, while at the same time working to solve Australia’s own agricultural problems.

I wish to take as much time as I am allowed to speak about those particular issues.

It is the responsibility of developed countries, or those countries that are as fortunate as Australia—might I add under the economic management of this government—to try to lift people out of poverty. I do not care where you look in the world, and I believe there is a statistic to prove it, but most wars and uprisings—even world wars I and II—involve a significant statistic of huge numbers of unemployed young males. As such, there is a responsibility on the developed world to relieve poverty wherever possible, and of course that commences with giving people the opportunity to grow adequate quantities of food for their own purposes.

Government aid programs are a great means of achieving that. I am most committed to the argument that it is better to give aid in the form of assistance with agricultural research, where we send researchers to do that work or deliver the benefits of research conducted for that purpose. During the Pakistani earthquakes, I tried to convince my side of politics that we would be better sending those people aid in the form of tunnel shelters that are manufactured and commonplace in my electorate. They are low cost; they are a high-quality, strong, plastic coated form of the Nissen huts of history. They can be easily erected, they pack down to a very small load and I think they would be highly resistant to future earthquakes. They would have created large and durable protection for those people. I might add that the departmental people had no interest in that whatsoever. All they wanted to do was send the cheque. Of course, the problem with sending cheques is that, as we know, in many countries the benefits do not materialise within that country and sometimes they materialise in very fat Swiss bank accounts.

I make those comments but say that this is a good program. It is the properly applicable way to deliver foreign aid. If we provide people with food, it should be grain or whatever that is grown within Australia and delivered in that form—or, as I have said, it could be buildings or other items. We are looking to lift living standards, and a great revolution of 20 or 30 years ago was called the green revolution. This was when technology and the application of fertilisers and things of that nature revolutionised crop production, particularly in the Asian region. It was one of those breakthroughs in technology that lifted many people up from poverty, and no doubt contributed in some way to Asia’s redevelopment and the fact that there is now, for many, a higher standard of living.

One of the interesting things upon which I want to comment, both in terms of the nations we seek to assist overseas and, as the second reading speech says, in terms of our own agricultural problems, is genetically modified organisms. It is a highly contentious issue. I have never been happy with state governments applying blanket bans. I saw them as purely a political exercise. The Australian government has taken the appropriate approach, which is to have a gene technology regulator. We do not approve of the human consumption of products that have not been tested and approved by that authority using the best science available. Furthermore, I have people I admire and support in my own electorate who have grave doubts about GMOs. One of their grave concerns is cross-pollination, where you create a food product that has resistance to certain herbicides and then later it cross-pollinates things like radish and other weeds that we usually deal with in this fashion. Of course, they become resistant. That is a challenge. I believe it is best resolved by practice and testing. But in the international context, the ability to put a vitamin-A gene into rice has had very significant benefits for young people in particular in many overseas countries where rice is the staple diet. As a consequence, a specific benefit that has arisen is the prevention of blindness. One cannot think of a more punishing affliction for anybody than blindness. So this has been the sort of evidence where the research that developed countries have been able to provide, and the use of GMOs, which is greatly and unfortunately restricted in Australia, has been very beneficial. It is also, of course, beneficial for productivity.

I would like to come back to the remarks of the member for Wills about biofuels, which I endorse. He alluded to the fact that it is all right to use this sort of agricultural production for fuel, but the downside, which is occurring now, is that there is a reduction in the availability of food for Third World countries. It appears that some of them—Brazil being a classic case—are now clearing land at a very rapid rate to grow more sugar, which is a good agricultural product for producing biofuel such as ethanol. There are some interesting statistics. The world population presently stands at about six billion people. By 2020 it will be eight billion people—a 30 per cent increase—and that is an awful lot of extra mouths to feed. I was advised by senior executives of the General Motors Corporation in Detroit that, of that six billion people, only about 12 per cent own a motor vehicle. It is predicted by General Motors’ tracking that that will increase to 16 per cent of eight billion by 2020. One can see that there will be a huge demand for additional fuel and, if it were to be provided through hydrocarbons, there will be a very significant increase in emissions and particulates. Therefore, research in the area of biofuels has merit but, as I said, we have to be careful that in producing those biofuels we do not so limit food that its price increases rapidly—although my wheat growers would be very pleased to have a rapid increase in price. Already the utilisation of American corn in ethanol production has caused hardship for Mexicans and others who rely on that staple in tortillas and other foods.

There is a round-robin in all of these things. As I frequently say, there is no such thing as a free lunch. I myself do not see a benefit from research to make biofuels in Australia unless we can, by some miracle, substantially increase our crop. The Labor representative at the table is quite astounded by that remark. As we are currently in drought, one might wonder where we would get the corn or grain to produce ethanol and keep open a very capital intensive factory. As reported in the media, the ethanol plant at Swan Hill will consume four megalitres of water per day. They propose that three-quarters—750,000 tonnes—of their input grain be raised by irrigation. I make the point that there are better solutions for Australian agriculture than growing our own biofuels. It is not that we should not have biofuels; it is that it is not the best outcome for the very limited amount of grain that is produced in Australia. We stick our chest out and argue about AWB, but Australia grows less wheat than the United Kingdom. We are not a big wheat producer. We have been a significant exporter, but that is declining very rapidly as our domestic consumption—deregulated and, I might add, highly profitable for those who have access to the market—continues to grow at a very rapid rate. This is not only in human consumption but in lot feeding to produce the type of beef that people in our society demand.

Research has to take a lot of things into account, and the member for Wills and I have some consistent views on those matters. In domestic research we must proceed with all sorts of things that will do great things for us. I come back to GMOs, which will provide the opportunity to produce both salt-tolerant and drought-tolerant plants. I am amazed at the opportunities that already exist in the crops themselves. I recently had the pleasure of writing a letter of congratulations to Mr Ian Broad, who resides in the Mingenew area and is a very progressive farmer. He also relies on large equipment. What delighted me, as much as it was a good-news bad-news story, was that he was reported as having grown a harvestable crop—it was not a star turn; it was not a magnificent crop—on 2½ old-fashioned inches of rainfall. He was able to achieve that because, for a start, he is a good farmer and, secondly, because he is using large equipment. The other letter of congratulations I wrote was to a father and son, Paul and Blake Smith of Mukinbudin, who have purchased a new tractor. It is 600 horsepower. They are dragging a machine—a bar, as they call it—behind it which is, firstly, tillage equipment and, secondly, seeding equipment. They are able to put in 760 acres of crop in a 15-hour working day. That is more than an acre a minute. The benefit of that—other than that you get to knock off early—is that you can take advantage of every drop of rain.

There has been magnificent research, for which I must congratulate the Scott brothers and people at Murdoch University. There is an inoculant required when one plant’s legume seeds—that is the little bud, if we can call it that, which connects the nodulation on the roots of legumes such as lupins and clovers. Lupins are a very significant transitional crop in my electorate, and a very healthy food. By the way, Mr Broad is now producing a new variety of lupins that has an even higher protein rate than previously, and he is marketing that in a very progressive way. But the interesting thing is that, when we look at lupins and nodulation, the practice has been to buy an inoculate, which is a black-looking powder, and, if you were seeding it, you sort of applied it in whatever fashion—usually by putting the grain and the inoculant through one of the loaders on the property—and some of the inoculant would stick to the seed. Then you would put the seed in the ground and, if the ground was damp and it germinated immediately, the inoculant worked. But so much cropping is done today with this large machinery, by which you dry-seed—you seed and wait for the rain. But you get the benefit of the first millimetre of rain, where previously you waited for the rain before you ploughed the paddock and so on. If you only got four inches of rain for the year, you did not get the benefit of the first two.

Some progressive farmers in my electorate, the Scott brothers, found that they had a bentonite deposit on their property. That is ‘drilling mud’. It is a very heavy and sticky clay that is pumped down oilwells to keep the oil at the bottom, because it has such a heavy weight. That is a well-established principle called drilling mud. But they did not have anyone who wanted to buy drilling mud. In conjunction with Murdoch University they found that, if they could incorporate the inoculant we speak of into a soup of this mud, and then dry it out and sort of pelletise it, the inoculant stayed happily in that state and did not die. So you could seed these pellets along with your seeds of lupins, or whatever else you wanted to benefit from nitrogen nodulation, and it would stay there until the rain came. I think they have called it Alosca. I am very proud to say that the Regional Partnerships Program gave them $300,000 for the development of this program, which can have a huge effect as a research product. These people now have a patent. They are to be congratulated. So there are all these opportunities there. And no doubt there will be a time when that inoculant is exported from Australia in that format, because it can be put into the ground and deliver these sorts of outcomes.

Research occurs in many ways. The member for Wills talked about carbon sequestration. Unfortunately, I have run out of time, but I did want to remind everybody that old-growth forests are a net emitter of carbon and it is young forests we might be growing. Also, Mayor Blumberg announced that all the taxis in New York within a few years have to run on biofuels or hydrogen, which I would think is the better choice. (Time expired)

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

in reply—In rising to sum up debate on the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research Amendment Bill 2007 I want to turn to the points raised by the honourable speakers. Firstly, I want to thank the members on the opposition benches for their support—the member for Fraser and the member for Wills—and in particular I want to thank the members on the government side: the member for Barker and the member for O’Connor, who set out very clearly what it is that the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research brings to Australia. It is engaged in a process that has ‘dual benefits’, which I understand is the term that the member for Barker used. That process is very simple: by fostering and encouraging global agricultural research in areas, whether it is rice, wheat, corn, dairy, beef or any of the other core staples of Australia’s and the international community’s agricultural base, it gives enormous developmental benefits to the underprivileged. It also brings extraordinary benefits back to Australian farmers.

Internationally, what ACIAR does is very simple: it helps promote and develop some of the most needed, highest quality and most effective agricultural research anywhere in the world. It does that through a coordinating process, whether it is at home in Australia or abroad, and then it helps bring those results back to Australian farmers. In particular, I know there is work that I have been doing with the executive of ACIAR in trying to calculate the volume of water saved annually by Australian farmers as a direct consequence of the work of ACIAR. I believe that, once we have those figures finally established, they will show an extraordinary windfall in water savings for Australian farmers on an annual basis.

Against that background, this bill helps to establish and put forward an administrative structure and future for ACIAR for the coming generation. Firstly, in terms of the background, the bill is a response to the Uhrig review, as it is known, or the Review of the Corporate Governance of Statutory Authorities and Office Holders, undertaken by Mr John Uhrig. The fundamental action that was recommended in that and the principal purpose of the amendments is to change the governance arrangements of ACIAR from a board of management to an executive management structure involving a chief executive officer and a seven-member commission. As has been set out in the second reading speech, there are a number of specifics that help implement that essential change. It is about administrative efficiency—the ability to make fast decisions and to work with the executive of the government to that effect.

I understand that that action has the support of industry, the bureaucracy and, in particular, both sides of this House. Its effect is very simple. It is non-controversial. It is unlikely to have any financial impact. The mandate and functions of ACIAR will not be affected, but it will allow for a form of collective decision making and expert policy advice suitable for an agency such as ACIAR.

All of the members of the House who spoke to this deserve to be thanked for their support. I particularly thank the executive of ACIAR, the board of management members, who have served so capably to date, and those who are likely to take up the positions on the seven-member commission. I also thank the officers involved at either a departmental or an institutional level. I am delighted to commend this bill to the House.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Message from the Governor-General recommending appropriation announced.