Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Speaker has received letters from the honourable member for New England and the honourable member for Dunkley proposing that definite matters of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion today. As required by standing order 46(d) the Speaker has selected the matter which, in his opinion, is the most urgent and important; that is, that proposed by the honourable member for New England, namely:

The need for the Government to recognise the role that agriculture can play in addressing the issue of climate change.

I call upon those members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

May I first thank members from both sides of this chamber. This is one of the first MPIs I have seen where both sides have supported the issue, and I hope that this will be reflected in the broader nature of the issue of climate change. I have the view that agriculture can make a contribution in terms of some of the difficulties we may face in the future but that an emissions-trading scheme will need bipartisan support for it to be successful. I do not mean that as criticism of the opposition or of the government; I think there is an onus on all of us to give way where we can to try to reach a consensus. If we end up with a politicised debate on an emissions-trading scheme, where short-term advantage is taken and we lose sight of the longer term advantages that could be achieved, we will do the Australian public a great disservice. I am encouraged that all members have risen today to support a matter of public importance discussion on climate change and the role that agriculture can play. Hopefully, the government, in particular, will pick up on some of the issues.

The issues I would like to raise, if I could, relate particularly to the current debate that is encapsulated by climate change but also to agriculture, drought—and I was pleased to listen to the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and the shadow minister talking about drought policy and some of the initiatives being taken there—the production of food, the potential production of fuel, where we are going to gain our energy sources from in the future and what sort of carbon footprint or other footprint will be incurred by some of those activities. Overlying that is the whole debate on climate change, which a lot of people encapsulate in terms of carbon emissions. But it is not only about carbon emissions; it is also about nitrous oxide, methane and other greenhouse warming impacts.

I would like to use an example of what is happening with agriculture at the moment. I use the Walgett wheat grower as an example—and some members may have heard part of this story before. Currently, the Walgett wheat grower and other wheat growers—and the minister has seen some of these people—have made a massive adaptation to climate change in some of their cropping systems. The existence of no-till farming in some of the better farming areas, for instance, has effectively produced about 150 to 200 millimetres of moisture available for the cropping cycle. In my own area—and, I know, in the Darling Downs, where the member for Groom comes from—there have been record sorghum crops this year, essentially based on that technology, in what has been a very dry time.

The capacity for farmers to adapt to some of the climate change characteristics is enormous and has been shown in the past, but there is a need for government to participate in the future in encouraging those people, whether through drought policy or other policies such as emissions-trading schemes or land stewardship payments. There are a whole range of initiatives that are potentially out there to assist in driving agriculture in a more positive direction. The minister would have seen some of the perennial pasture techniques that are out there now, where there have been quite massive gains in humus and organic matter in the soil and the impact those techniques have on the moisture infiltration and productivity of those pastures. The  no-till cropping system that I mentioned a moment ago also has an impact—the potential to drought-proof those particular farms. There are also advantages that accrue in the build-up of soil carbon. As I am sure most members know, humus and organic matter in the soil profile is stored carbon; it is sequestered carbon. There is some debate about measurement and whether you can enter carbon trades based on the current measurement systems, but there is no debate that humus and organic matter can be accumulated in soils. That is the major issue that I would like to talk to today.

The Walgett wheat grower has a no-till farming system that has come in in the last 20 years, so his potential, the non-disturbance of his soil, the capacity to reduce wind and water erosion, the capacity to get more moisture into the soil when it does rain and the capacity to store that soil moisture have all been massive adaptations to climate change and should be shown as examples, particularly in other dryland farming areas of the world, particularly Africa. The Walgett wheat grower will have a carbon footprint on his property, reduced because he does not cultivate his land anymore, and by not cultivating he is not releasing some of the available soil carbon into the atmosphere. He is making a positive contribution in that sense. He will have another carbon footprint from getting his wheat from the Walgett silo, via a train hopefully—there has been some discussion about that into the future—to the port of Newcastle, which is a distance of about 500 kilometres. The grain will have another carbon footprint when it leaves our shores and heads for, say, the Middle East. On board that ship will be another carbon footprint, based on the carbon held in the starch of the grain.

We send it over there only because we produce 80 per cent too much. Some would suggest that we have a moral obligation to feed the world. I would just like to assure people that Australia in a good year produces 1.75 per cent of the world’s grain. We do not have the capacity to feed the world. We are a small player when it comes to grain. That is in a good year. The Sudan, on the other hand—100 million acres of Walgett style country with Walgett style rainfall, at war and with a starving population—has the capacity to produce six times that which Australia produces in a good year. It could produce 10 per cent of the world’s grain. We are doing essentially nothing, or very little, to assist those people to provide their own food stock. One of the arguments that I put to those people who raise this ‘food versus fuel’ argument is: have a look at how we can help these people feed themselves rather than sending boatloads of carbon all over the world and then expecting the First World to pay for those carbon footprints.

So the boat arrives in Egypt and we take the money from that, and then we move down to another part of the Middle East and we buy another boatload of oil and we bring it back. It will have a carbon footprint across the ocean. It will get to Newcastle without another one. It will not go by train because that does not happen anymore, so the biggest carbon footprint will occur as it goes out by truck. It will have another carbon footprint on a whole range of activities along the way. The Walgett wheat grower will go around again and produce surplus grain, and the cycle repeats itself.

What is all that going to mean in an emissions-trading system? I do not know the answer to that, but I think it is important that the role of agriculture in that sense is incorporated in any emissions-trading system. Even though it may not be brought in in the first blush, it really has to be factored at some stage into the negative and positive contributions that it would make. There are a number of things that could happen to the Walgett wheat grower. He may decide to grow fuel instead of food, to convert starch in his grain into biofuel—the member for Kennedy has been very involved in some of these initiatives as well—where the by-product is distillers grain, which is a high-protein residue that can be used as a food stock, mainly fed to livestock in feedlots. He may use another process, called anaerobic digestion, which produces biogas, electricity and nitrogen. So, with the anaerobic digestion process, in a sense—and this is happening in Canada and other parts of the world—you can have a semiclosed system. As part of that process—and in Canada they are doing this at this very moment—the carbon dioxide that is emitted from those plants is being reinjected into a hothouse environment to grow vegetables at a quicker rate. So this argument that it is just food versus fuel is a nonsense. There can be a whole range of positives.

The other positive that accrues from the things that I have discussed is the fact that there is a positive carbon impact not only in removing some of the transport shifts—and transport and fuel will have to be in it—but also through the production of a renewable fuel, such as ethanol and biodiesel, which should have a positive impact, particularly under those techniques of no-tillage farming. But the other policy initiative that has to be considered is that there may well be a further step—it relates to land-use policy, it relates to drought again and it relates to nitrogen use and a whole range of other things. If the Walgett farmer decides to change his land use to growing a perennial crop rather than an annual crop—they are starting to do this in the United States through the use of switchgrass, which was the original prairie grass across the United States before they ploughed it up to grow corn—then a number of things will happen. The potential to grow more fuel from that particular plant is much greater than from grain, the carbon footprint is much less because it is a perennial—it is there to be harvested every year; it does not have to be planted, harvested, carted, put on boats and shifted around—and you can produce cellulosic ethanol from that sort of plant. But the other benefit, other than those above-soil carbon advantages, is the capacity of a deep-rooted plant such as that to sequester carbon at depth, as well as all of the erosion and other environmental impacts that people may like to talk about.

I thank all of the speakers for participating in this; I really want this to be an honest debate about a real issue rather than a political debate about who’s who in the zoo. The point I would really like to leave the House with today, and the point I raised with the Prime Minister about three weeks or a month ago now when I met with him on this and other issues, is that there are people out there across Australia—in Emerald, in Western Australia, in New South Wales, in Victoria and in South Australia—who are doing their own carbon-monitoring work to look at this measurement problem. I challenged the Prime Minister, and I do it again to the House now, to fund these people, the innovators in agriculture, and provide measurement campaigns with those people, so if they are getting the numbers wrong, if what they are saying is not correct, it can be easily proven. What is happening is that CSIRO and other institutions are basing their measurements and the capacity to measure on old-style farming techniques, not the newer cropping techniques and some of the newer pasture system techniques. I encourage the government, and I am pleased the minister is here, to look at this issue. I know there is funding particularly for cellulosic ethanol in the budget, but look at this issue of measurement. If we go into an emissions-trading system and we do not know what contribution agriculture can potentially make—not just through sequestration in trees but sequestration in our soils—we really will not know what charges to lay off against the major emitters if there is a more natural way of looking at the problem.

I am sure the minister is aware that, outside of the ocean, most of our carbon is held in our soils—not in our atmosphere; in our soils. We have let a little bit go by burning coal et cetera. Eighty-two per cent of the terrestrial biosphere is in our soils. Most of the work that has been done in carbon trade and carbon management has been about vegetation, has been about trees. Essentially, our scientists have not been focusing on one of the major contributors due to natural sequestration. As soon as they have come to a difficulty in the measurement, they have walked away from it. This is an issue about soil health. A healthy soil is a more productive soil; it is one that holds more moisture. If we are talking about drought policy, Minister, irrespective of whether this whole emissions-trading debate went away tomorrow, which it may do if we are going to get some consensus in this place, we should be looking at sequestering carbon in our soils much more thoroughly. (Time expired)

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to thank the member for New England for bringing this matter before parliament today, and also for making very clear the tone that the debate should take in this discussion and future discussions on this matter in the House. I will first of all take issue with the member for New England. I do feel more than a bit ripped off. Within a couple of weeks of getting the portfolio, I spent three days in his electorate. I heard his entire speech today and realised I went to Tamworth, to Inverell, to Glen Innes and finished up at Armidale and never went to Walgett—not once!

Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It’s not in my electorate.

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is not in your electorate? Well that makes sense. We have heard about the Walgett wheat grower. That explains why I did not get taken there, so I withdraw that. I should mention, as a matter of interest to the House given what was raised—I will not emphasise this, but I will refer to it at the start—the global concerns at the moment about how we can make sure the population of the world is able to feed itself. These are very real, very deep issues, and the member for New England is right: we should not overstate or understate the role that Australia can play. We are part of the answer for some countries, and some countries do rely on us for their food security. But certainly the long-term response to trying to make sure that the population of the world is able to sustain itself with food goes very much to assisting with capacity building in poor countries.

This morning I had the opportunity to meet with my counterpart minister from Eritrea. We were having a discussion in my office only today about how Australia might be able to assist Eritrea with the development of no-till farming. Those discussions, and the issues that the member for New England has brought to the attention of the House today, are very much within the frame of the government for how we can assist some of the poorer nations in the world in adapting to the very real challenges they face. As a simple example: for a port nation like Eritrea, the figures are often put out—I know some people will dispute the figures as to whether you go to the first stage of the production process or further down. Some will quote that 60 per cent of Australian agriculture is being exported. For Eritrea, 60 per cent of their agriculture is provided domestically and 40 per cent of what they need to feed their population is imported.

The issues in this matter of public importance go to, firstly, the adaptation that farmers have to undertake simply because of what is coming at them with climate change and, secondly, how the people working the land are part of the solution in reducing greenhouse emissions. I will deal with each of those two matters in turn. On the first issue of adapting to climate change, when we talk about the impact of climate change on the agricultural sector we usually go to four key areas: dealing with less water through more frequent and deeper droughts; higher temperatures; more major weather events—if anyone knows about those, it is the member for Kennedy, with what has been experienced in his part of the country; and, finally, increased proliferation in pests, disease and weeds. I will go through some of the issues of each of those in turn.

I think we have covered the impacts of longer and deeper droughts in the ministerial statement and the response from the Leader of the Nationals earlier in the debate, and I will not go into that further now. The issue of higher temperatures is real. It is one of the many issues faced by some of the intensive livestock industries. More regular and more intense heatwaves were certainly faced by people involved in horticulture earlier this year, when we had that heatwave in South Australia, which was completely off the scale. If you actually tried to put it on the scale—if you tried to compare it with other heatwaves—you ended up with a one-in-3,000-year weather event. More major weather events are very much of concern for the people in the north of the country. Cyclones have always been devastating. The cyclone that devastated the banana industry in the electorate of Kennedy and in the electorates to the north and the south was an example of what we do expect to see more intensively and more regularly than in the past.

The final issue with climate change, which I do not think is spoken enough about, is the increased proliferation in pests, disease and weeds. Our biosecurity authorities have never been of greater importance to the future of agriculture than they are now. If there was ever a time we needed to make sure that our quarantine and biosecurity services were sufficiently robust, it is in the situation that we now face where pests, diseases and weeds are going to be covering a greater part of our country’s territory than they ever have previously.

Those issues go to the essential aspects of adapting to climate change. As honourable members are well aware, in the Australia’s Farming Future program, $130 million over four years is going to both climate change and productivity research. The Climate Change Adaptation Program will assist farmers adapt and make sure that the best on-farm methods for dealing with what the climate is bringing forward actually make it from the lab to the farm. All too often we have fantastic research, where the research and development is done well, but the demonstration and extension is done poorly. The investment of those agencies involved in developing some great practices which could be adopted on-farm all too often do not make it to the farmer. There will be some people, as they face the reality of the climate, who will reach the point where they simply believe that they need to pursue a life away from agriculture. The Climate Change Adjustment Program will have mechanisms in place to assist in the decision and that adjustment. Ultimately, if the decision is taken, the Rural Financial Counselling Service will assist with the adjustment itself.

The challenge then comes in how we reduce greenhouse gas emissions themselves. I know both the member for New England and the member for Kennedy have often referred to biofuels as being part of the equation for how we may be able to reduce greenhouse gas emissions overall. Using the simple example that a fossil fuel if not used remains in the ground, a biofuel if not used will very often deteriorate anyway. There may well be, particularly through the use of cellulose, some methods available, and part of the answer in reducing greenhouse gas emissions is very likely to be found down a biofuels path.

The other issue in reducing greenhouse gas emissions that the member for New England referred to is soil carbon. It goes to no-till farming, to the use of perennial pasture and to best practice farming. This is where we have, in so many ways, the circle completed in the good outcome happening at every step of the equation. No-till farming methods preserve soil moisture, they preserve soil carbon and they lead to a capacity for increased harvest. They go completely against what traditionally had been the belief. For so many centuries the concept of farming was: to prove that the soil was really good quality you had to rip it to shreds. Part of the productivity improvement in areas which have been highly productive, whether it be New England or the WA wheat belt, has been the development and use of these no-till or minimum till methods.

I will disappoint the member for New England in not using his MPI as an opportunity to discuss at length cabinet processes with respect to an emissions-trading scheme, but I certainly can say that the difficulty with soil carbon is precisely as the member for New England described it: we know carbon is being sequestered in the soil, that this is best practice and that the accounting of it is extraordinarily difficult. There is a general public policy principle that, if you are going to count something, you want to be able to count it accurately. That is why, at the ABARE Outlook conference earlier this year, the Prime Minister commissioned me to use some of the money from Australia’s Farming Future—some of that research and development productivity fund—to involve some detailed science in how we can improve the storage of soil carbon and, importantly, how we can improve the accounting mechanisms for soil carbon.

In any trading scheme, if you are going to be able to trade you need to be able to account and measure. The fact that the science of what is going on has not caught up with the measurement of the extent to which it is going on certainly does not preclude the government from investing seriously in trying to get the measurement issues up to speed as quickly as we possibly can.

There is a further, similar concern with respect to livestock emissions. Livestock emissions are easily the largest area of emissions within the area of agriculture, and we have a similar problem here with counting. The accounting mechanisms and the methods that might be available to farmers in order to reduce livestock emissions are not well advanced. Some of the answers may go to methods of feeding, some may go to microbes in the stomach and some may go to breeding, whether it be to breeding stock that have a lower level of emissions or, as may well happen, to breeding animals that simply grow more quickly. If you end up being able to bring an animal to slaughter earlier, you have therefore had an overall reduction in the emissions over the life of that animal. There are a whole lot of possibilities that science is chasing down, and it is important for there to be a serious government contribution to help to leverage further funding in that area. Australia’s Farming Future will do that. As I have previously said publicly but have not had an opportunity to say to the House, the way we will structure the final break-up of that $130 million will leave a good deal more than $15 million for research and development.

Some of this work is also advanced by Caring for our Country. The landcare movement have for years been doing work which is only now being recognised as being of great assistance in reducing the emissions profile of Australian agriculture. It is worth remembering as well—when you see the figures that our emissions are about 108 per cent of 2000 levels—that, were it not for the work done by agriculture in land clearing and natural resource management, we would be looking at 120 per cent, not 108 per cent. It is all too often forgotten and neglected that we have been within our Kyoto targets very much because of the good work done by people working the land, whether through land-clearing specifically or through the landcare movement more generally.

Against all of these difficulties, we need to get back to what we are trying to achieve. The challenge for farmers throughout Australia, at one level, is as it has always been—that is, to deal with an incredibly harsh climate and landscape. We know that climate change is going to make those challenges far more difficult and make that climb much steeper. If we do the work now, then in the years to come the long-term benefits to Australian agriculture will be extraordinary. A heavy burden rests on our shoulders. I think that the nature of the discussion happening in the House today, thanks to the member for New England, is testament to the fact that this parliament and this government are taking that challenge seriously.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In saying how we measure the livestock emissions, I cannot begin to tell you just how bad, when you go into these things deeply, the flow of information has been. A lot of it has been emotive hyperbole rather than scientific reasoning. I was sick while on the ethanol tour to Canada and I was watching the television. A science program on Canadian television showed the latest figure of an eightfold reduction for emissions that were originally contemplated. The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry said, ‘How can you get accurate figures?’ What they did was to completely enclose a shed and measure the CO2 content of the air going into the shed with—I do not know—20 or 40 head of cattle in it and then measure the content coming out of the shed. They found out that there was an eightfold reduction in the original figures—I think it was 53 motor cars for one beast and it reduced to eight. That is a sixfold reduction. I think those were the figures—I have them somewhere—but I would urge the minister to question the figures.

The member for New England mentioned the flawed science here. It is a very little known fact that CSIRO produced a report for the Australian Greenhouse Office which actually said that ethanol increased the CO2levels. They were all embarrassed by it—you will not find that report—but the Greenhouse Office blamed CSIRO and CSIRO blamed the Greenhouse Office. It really was very contemptible, and it also showed the lack of science. I rang up the person who did it and I said, ‘Did you ring up a sugarcane farmer because the CO2 goes up and the crop pulls it back down again?’ It goes up and down. If you just burn fossil fuel, it goes up and stays up. That is the fundamental difference. I asked, ‘How could you possibly say what you said?’ He said, ‘Oh, there are all sorts of inputs.’ I said, ‘Name them.’ He said, ‘Ploughing.’ I said, ‘Did you ring up a cane farmer?’ There was silence, and then he said no. I said: ‘How could you possibly have done this without speaking to a cane farmer? If you’d rung up a cane farmer, you would know we don’t plough.’ We plough once every six years. It is just a grass. It just keeps growing, and we keep mowing it; that is all. Once upon a time we did plough, when we burnt the cane, but we do not burn the cane anymore. So we do not touch the soil; we put a huge trash blanket on it. We do not have to put herbicides and all of those things on it now either. We have really revolutionised farming in the cane area.

He then said, ‘Yes, but there is the processing of it.’ I said, ‘What energy inputs in processing? Did you speak to a sugar mill?’ He said, ‘No, I didn’t.’ I said: ‘It is amazing that you could get this document out and tell the federal government that it is negative when the American document says it is 29 per cent positive. One of you is wrong.’ They are a country representing 400 million people; we are a country representing 20 million—I know where my money will be going.

Going back to the sugar mill, I said, ‘If you had rung a sugar mill, you would know that there is not a net taking of energy off the grid.’ We put energy into the grid. We burn the leftover, the bagasse—what you have left over after you take the sugar cane out—and we produce electricity from it. We are net contributors of energy to the grid, not net takers from the grid. So it was quite extraordinary.

I want to strongly endorse the remarks of the member for New England. I came into this matter entirely ignorant. The minister often says he is ignorant. Minister, I have had moo-cows since I was 19 and I was close to farmers all of my life in boarding schools in North Queensland. I had never ever realised the significance that carbon plays in the soil until about three months ago. I had reason to go into it and I was really quite amazed that Australian soil has only one-fifth the amount of carbon in it. Dr Joe Holtum from James Cook University did studies for BHP on putting CO₂ into plants. They put the CO₂ in the ground and they got a 36 per cent increase, which was not as good as the other countries where they had done trials, where they recorded a 44 per cent increase. Because of the increase in carbon in the soil, the moisture stays there for two or three months of the year longer, so you get two or three months extra growth out of the plant. That is one of the major factors contributing to this enormous increase in growth.

But it is true that the average Australian content is one-fifth of what it should be. I do not know whether that is from burning done by blackfellas—and I might add that whitefellas burnt; that is how we mustered cattle. You always see the traditional picture of the ringer with the box of matches. They would burn late in the year—about now actually, maybe a month or two later—and it would not be a conflagration, because the grass would still be a bit green. Then the cattle would come in on the green pick and they would pick them up—exactly the same. They undoubtedly learnt it from the First Australians.

We have a natural cycle in North Queensland which is enormously destructive. At the end of the year there is no ground cover. There has been no rainfall for nine months and the ground is bare to monsoonal depressions, which are invariably associated with cyclonic depressions. The sky falls on the ground that is completely unprotected and massive erosion takes place. The dig at Deaf Adder Gorge by Rhys Jones from the ANU was very interesting because they dug down 30 feet and there were Aboriginal artefacts all the way down to bedrock. The question is: why did the erosion start with the arrival of man? Of course, Rhys Jones’s answer to that question is the firestick farming.

Minister, there are two important points on this fuel for food debate. I had never been overseas when I went on an ethanol tour; that is all I did for the week. We were over there at a cattle station—they call them a ranch over there—and all of their cattle were fed throughout the dry season. It was very similar to my own homeland, the mid-west of North Queensland, except they have cold and we have heat. The land is baked during that period of time. They were feeding distillers grain, which they were buying at prices much, much cheaper than our grain prices. I checked up on the nutritional value, and it is much higher from the Dalby plant. The local graziers and lot feeders are paying more for dried distillers grain than they are paying for grain.

Let me be very specific, Minister. In the first months of this year, the price for distillers grain in the United States was $174 a tonne, the price for sorghum was $240 a tonne and the price for wheat was $320 a tonne. Minister, you would be well aware that all cheese, eggs, butter, milk, chicken, pork and beef is just congealed grain. There is a high grass content, particularly in dairy products, but it is congealed grain. If the Americans can buy their grain for $174 a tonne and we Australians can buy it for $240 a tonne, we are going to be murdered out there! It puts up grain prices—there is no doubt about that. And that is a good thing—these blokes are going broke. Is there something wrong with some of the grain producers making a few quid more than they are making? They cannot stay alive the way they are.

Minister, please go to the cabinet and draw a graph of food imports and food exports; you will see that over the next 10 or 15 years this country will become a net importer of food. If you are worried about food shortages, please start here, because this is the country that will be short of food. What is happening in North Queensland, which has amazed me, is that nothing happens when the food producer leaves. Rich lifestylers buy the land—an American phenomenon too, I might add—and it gets covered in weeds. Minister, if you can afford the time on your next trip to North Queensland, I will take you to some of these places and you can see the whole ground covered by Singapore daisy and giant sensitive weed. So there is that aspect of it. But, Minister, it does not affect the food chain if it is sugar. If we take just one per cent of northern Australia’s landmass—just one per cent—and only seven per cent of our water, along with the sugar industry and a contribution from grain, we can produce all of your fuel forever, at no cost to the food chain whatsoever. There would be a great benefit because our cattle industry would dramatically increase their numbers in northern Australia because they would have access to biodunder and distillers grain. It will benefit the food chain. (Time expired)

Gary Gray (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Northern Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I acknowledge the value of this debate in both setting parameters for public policy and helping the community to understand the importance of the issue of climate change and agriculture. My family in Western Australia, on my wife’s side, are predominantly wheat farmers. Just from reading the last few seasons we know that 2006 and 2007 were difficult seasons. 2008 opened with great promise. We had buoyant world grain prices and in Western Australia in the wheat belt we had fantastic rains through February, March and early April. Indeed, by Easter it was being predicted that we would have another bumper grain crop—15 million tonnes was speculated on as the Western Australian grain crop for this year.

Since that time rainfall has largely been limited to the coastal plains. Two-thirds of WA’s wheat belt—the grain belt—is now in need of rain. In some areas communities are facing their third consecutive dry year. The central wheat belt around the Merredin district—the core of WA’s grain production—is doing it hard again, and it is just getting harder. Morawa and Perenjori are now in their fifth or sixth year of difficult seasons. That is what they call it—just ‘difficult seasons’.

We are now looking at a projected WA harvest for this year of between eight and 12 million tonnes, which is significantly down on that earlier optimistic 15-million tonne projection, and of course prices have also come off since the first quarter of this year, although they are still high in historic terms. But they are high for a number of reasons, not least of which is the weather conditions in the United States where storms, floods and extreme weather events are affecting agricultural production across a range of sectors.

In this place over the course of the last year we have heard much about working families—and from my family’s experience in Western Australia, they like to occasionally hear about farming families too. The farming families of Western Australia have a strong history of making great achievements in challenging conditions. From the original settlement of Western Australia in 1829 to the planting of the first crops and the famine that followed those crops at Champion Bay, we are now an export state. The sandy soils of the grain belt met science, trace elements and the investment of massive capital, and the farmers of Western Australia, with the support and insight of science, have been able to build magnificent businesses and secure family enterprises. Many members of my own family work on those sandy soils. They farm them, they raise their families and build good livings. Through Kellerberrin and Doodlakine in the central wheat belt the Walsh family worked the land and in Corrow in the northern wheat belt my brother-in-law and sister-in-law Rod and Shelley work up there.

This year Rod and Shelley will plant around 9,000 acres—about 5,000 hectares. Theirs is at the larger end of the family farms, the sort of farm you can support literally with a husband and wife team. They get on with it. They plant canola, lupins and wheat in a combination of early and late crops. The good rains early in March led them to believe that the year was going to be a good one. Thanks to their early sowing, they are pretty well prepared in their business plan for dealing with what has now become a harder year as autumn has come and the rain has dropped off. There has been very little rain—mainly on the coastal plains of Western Australia through Geraldton and Albany—to keep the crops in that country good. But on the family farm, even the pasture for looking after the family pets—the horses—is not there. In fact Shelley describes what one may previously have thought of as being a pasture as being like a bitumen road. It is a bit hard right now for them.

But the seeding, the harvesting and the running of the farm require working through very narrow windows of time. It requires working with great skill. It requires the application of significant capital. It required operating in a world of escalating input costs—not just diesel but also where you have to hire in labour to run trucks. The gas explosion in Western Australia has impacted on fertiliser production, and we see circumstances in the wheat belt in Western Australia getting harder and harder. We see it happening not for the first time and not for the second time. We see it happening to areas that have been reliable for the better part of 20 or 30 years. My father-in-law would often make the comment that since opening up their land around Doodlakine in the early 1930s, they have really had only a couple of bad seasons since 1932—and he means that. His daughter is now looking at potentially the third hard season in a row. Areas around the central wheat belt are now looking at perhaps their fifth or sixth hard year in a row.

Western Australian agriculture prides itself on being science based. Indeed there probably is not a better example of science based agriculture in Australia. Combined with improved farm practices, the advent of wheat varieties that are better adapted to the Western Australian environment has meant that yields have improved consistently through the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. We also know that the Western Australian wheat belt contains some of the driest consistently farmed land in the world. Growing season rainfalls are commonly less than 200 millimetres per annum—eight inches in the old scale—in the important period from May to September. Soils in the region are generally old, shallow and naturally infertile. Taken together, those factors alone make farming a challenging business in Western Australia. But with research, with a great system that has an emphasis on plant breeding, and with a lot of work being done on genetic improvements in agriculture, there is serious hope for the future. By national standards Western Australia is a leader. By international standards we set the pace in the application of science to agriculture.

Western Australia also has significant advantages in logistics. Grain points are established at four key locations around the coast—at Esperance, Albany, Kwinana and Geraldton. The long and successful establishment of the farmer-owned monopoly grain-handler, CBH, has made a significant contribution to the ability of Western Australian growers to grow and sell their product competitively and in a timely manner.

Western Australia has some pretty good infrastructure. It has good science infrastructure. It has farmers who are serious about doing their business. It has wonderful opportunities. At this time, we have a parliament and a government prepared to contemplate the impact of climate change on agriculture. Last week I was fortunate to have dinner as a guest of the National Farmers Federation. The President of the National Farmers Federation in his address on that occasion made a substantial set of references to climate change. If we look at the Farmers Federation’s strategic plan for 2006 to 2009, it is clearly stated that they have as one of their goals more efficient delivery of government environmental programs on the farm. They want to manage the impacts of climate change and greenhouse gas emissions on agricultural production.

They make the point very clearly that the NFF pushed the government very hard for a new vision to deal with drought in Australia and want a commitment to assist farmers to adapt to climate change through a $130 million package. The government has responded to that by announcing its climate change package, the Australia’s Farming Future initiative. The $130 million Australia’s Farming Future initiative will help build adaptable and resilient producers and industries to strengthen their ability to manage climate change into the future.

One of the very early conversations that I had when I came into this place was with the member for New England. At that time he made a point of discussing the impact of climate change but also the substantial science to do with carbon, soils and agriculture. Since that time I have taken it upon myself to ensure that I am better educated and better informed on the science and the practical measures that farmers are taking in Western Australia to manage climate change as well as they can and to grow their businesses in difficult circumstances. (Time expired)

John Forrest (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is refreshing to have this kind of discussion on climate change. From that point of view, I am grateful to the member for New England for bringing forward this matter of public importance. I am also grateful that the minister has allocated time to listen to the contributions. In trying to give leadership to my own constituency, which is agriculture and horticulture—75 per cent of the employment, and all of it through small mum and dad businesses, very nervous about this concept of an emissions-trading scheme and how the whole process will work—I note that there are two approaches to this which are significant. One is that it provides an enormous opportunity for agriculture across the board. I know that the discussion is related to what the rest of the world have done. Europe and New Zealand have included forestry, but Professor Garnaut has flagged that the inclusion of forestry in an emissions-trading scheme in Australia is subject to solving certain problems. The minister has made reference to the measuring difficulty and the monitoring. The member for New England has also made comment on the capacity for soil carbon sequestration.

My anxiety is that any scheme that it is resolved to implement should not be a one-size-fits-all scheme. It is fairly clear—the science says—that agriculture is the second-largest contributor behind the fixed electricity generators. But they are two entirely different sectors. Agriculture is made up of small, segregated, individual farm owned enterprises. I am pleased that the Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Northern Australia made reference to that. I have thousands of those in my electorate. The energy sector is more corporatised and made up of larger entities. What that means is that if we get this wrong the potential to do economic harm to much smaller entities could be significant. It is so vital that we get this right and do not rush it and consult across the board.

There are going to be opportunities. Contributors have also mentioned some of those. I have focused a lot on the livestock sector, which is a major contributor—and the minister made reference to it—because it is mostly emitting methane. In my view, methane is probably more of a contributor than carbon dioxide. And livestock emit it from both ends. There is an enormous contribution. I have been relying on experience out of Europe and particularly out of Ireland where work has been a little bit more precise than work on problems that might confront broadacre agriculture. I will mention the scientific figures: with proper diet and improved feed utilisation, methane production per kilo of meat or beef is confirmed to be reduced by 10 per cent to 20 per cent.

This is where the win-win situation occurs and where the opportunity is, because in addition to that, if somehow or other we put things in place to encourage agriculture to adopt better diet and feed procedures for livestock—and this is from data collected in Ireland, Britain and France—there are average feed efficiency improvements of up to 20 per cent. So there are productivity gains as well as gains for the environment. That is the sort of balance that I would like to see achieved. I would plead the minister to fight to the death in cabinet to get those research funds allocated, because it is absolutely vital that we get this right. Agriculture in Australia has been through a sabbatical of the worst precipitation outcomes in our history. We cannot make a mistake and make it any worse. I plead with the minister to get this one right. I want to be part of the discussion. I am not a sceptic. I have a scientific background, and I am willing to lead my own constituency and at the same time provide an opportunity for them to improve their economic outcomes—and also make it rain!

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I fear I am going to bust up a little gentlemen’s club and inject a bit of partisanship into this discussion! It is my first MPI debate.

Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Windsor interjecting

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Apologies to the member for New England! I think this is the right matter of public importance but it is at the wrong time and directed at the wrong government. It is a decade too late. We saw from the last government a failure to acknowledge climate change as a threat and a failure to take practical action against that threat.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Katter interjecting

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, no. The member for Kennedy talks about the significance that carbon plays in soils and he says he only discovered that in the last three months. If we had had this debate 10 years ago, he might have discovered it earlier. The coalition’s denial and inaction placed their core constituency at absolute risk, because farmers feel the impact of climate change before anybody else—that is a fact.

The possible consequences of climate change for people in the electorate of Wakefield are pretty stark. If you are a poultry farmer between Dublin and Balaklava, you will face potential heat stress of your stock, increased maintenance for animal health and a reduced supply of feed. If you are a sheep farmer at Kapunda, you will face reduced pasture productivity, increased soil erosion and reduced carrying capacity. If you are a wheat farmer at Balaklava, you will face increased variability and changes to seasonality of rainfall. We have just heard other members talking about that. A decade of inaction and irresponsibility by the opposition, particularly around the emissions-trading system, has placed the Liberal Party’s own constituency at risk. You cannot get away from that fact. Agriculture is a critical area of the Australian economy and of Australian society. Australian farmers manage 60 per cent of the land mass—they are the stewards of the land. The farm-gate value of the sector is worth three per cent of our GDP. There are exports worth $30 billion, some of which come from my electorate—from wineries in Clare or from hay exporters in Balaklava.

Because the farming sector is of critical importance to the economy and to our society, we need real leadership. We have had that leadership from the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and from this government. That leadership is demonstrated in our $130 million Australia’s Farming Future policy, which sets out the framework and resources to assist farmers to adapt to climate change and its effects on their businesses. That policy has three main parts. First of all, there is a $15 million allocation to fund a climate change productivity and research program, which will allocate funds to research bodies and coordinate climate change research.

The second part of the policy framework is the $60 million climate change adaptation partnerships program, which allows for on-farm demonstration pilots that contribute to reducing emissions. Such pilots could include things like carbon sequestration in soils. It will allow for targeted training for farmers and it will raise awareness in the sector. As we have just heard, awareness is a critical thing. What the member for Kennedy learnt three months ago and what I have learnt tonight thanks to his contribution to this debate is that soil is a critical part of climate change.

The third area of the policy is the $55 million Climate Change Adjustment Program, which provides training grants of up to $5,500 for both farmers and their partners and adjustment assistance of up to $150,000 to individuals who have made the difficult decision to leave farming. That is a difficult decision because they lose their job and often lose their home, which are two of the most distressing things that can happen to someone. The government has also signed Kyoto and, as I have said before, we are examining an emissions-trading system.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I know I have upset people with a little bit of partisanship but, as it is my first MPI debate, you could probably make some allowances. I think partisanship does serve the national interest in this case because, if we do not have some fire in this debate and some immediacy and responsibility, we will not get results.

Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time allotted for this discussion has expired.