Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to continue my remarks on the International Fund for Agricultural Development and to refer to the comments of Labor members who spoke previously in this debate. They made some significant comments about Australian farmers in particular and the contribution that they make and will continue to make to international food security. I find this really quite contradictory. When you look at the Labor government's record with agriculture, there was no agricultural policy at the last election. You would have thought that, for Australian farmers to be able to continue to provide expertise and knowledge to the international community, at least the Labor government would have had a comprehensive agricultural policy at the last election.

But the Labor government, in its lack of wisdom, has cut funding to agriculture to the tune of at least $1.7 billion, from $3.8 billion, since 2007. One of the things I referred to when I first started speaking on this bill was the fact that Labor abolished Land and Water Australia, one of the key agencies that was in place to manage and research issues in relation to the simple aspects of land and water management. Of course, that is where part of the research comes from, and where the work comes from, to pass on to international communities in relation to food security. Yet $63 million was cut out of this CSIRO research, as well as $12 million from rural research and development corporations.

So it is simply contradictory to hear Labor speakers talking about the wonderful contribution that Australian farmers can and will make to international food security efforts. Where is the government on this issue? These are contradictory statements. In fact, the 2011-12 budget cut $32.8 million from the department's already strained resources, with a further $33.4 million cut from cooperative research centres, or CRCs. That simply means that fewer agricultural CRCs are funded each year. Where is the research for the future going to come from that the previous speakers have said is so important to the international community, to entities like IFAD and others, to assist with managing the challenge of global food security issues?

I challenge the members who have already spoken on this, and the members to come, on the Labor side to actually detail the ongoing support for research and development in Australian agriculture and the farmers' efforts. They are among the best in the world; there is no question. Our farmers are widely respected, but, again, this requires continuing research and development funding that is matched by industry, particularly, to enable this to happen. But we have seen nothing but cuts. So I was really confounded when I read and listened to the comments made by members on the opposite side. When we look at biosecurity, another key area, we see that millions of dollars have been cut from biosecurity.

I am a member of the Standing Committee on Climate Change, Environment and the Arts, which has been conducting an inquiry into biodiversity. I say to the government that, frequently, those who submitted to the inquiry said, 'What a massive loss that Land and Water Australia has been.' In any efforts to assist Australian farmers in managing the challenges that this country presents—and our farmers are still some of the most efficient and most productive in the world—and in our efforts through this bill, our contribution is our expertise to agencies and other countries in dealing with global food security, a problem that will get worse. We are expecting our farmers to produce more efficiently from less water, less land and less fertiliser. These are the sorts of demands that are made, and yet the Labor government is cutting the budget for these particular research efforts. So the comments that have been made by others to this debate are contradictory. I say in relation to this bill: it certainly does not provide the assurance that the Australian public demands for the expenditure of $126 million.

Stephen Jones (Throsby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The purpose of this bill is to enable Australia to accede to the international agreement establishing an International Fund for Agricultural Development. You could be forgiven for thinking its purpose was something else after hearing the last part of the member for Forrest's contribution. It is an important piece of legislation because it enables Australia once again to participate in this important international body for agricultural development.

Since it was created in 1977, IFAD has focused exclusively on rural poverty eradication and working with poor rural populations in developing countries to eliminate poverty, hunger and malnutrition; to raise productivity and income; and to improve the quality of their lives. There have been some problems with the fund; there is no doubt about that. It is why Australia has in the past withdrawn from the fund. But those issues have been the subject of a review, and I am pleased to see that the issues that have been identified by Australia and other countries are being dealt with. IFAD itself has recently undertaken some major internal reform, making it now a highly regarded development partner by donor countries around the world and by developing countries in which it works. It is now timely that Australia renews its membership of IFAD, and the legislation before the House will give effect to that.

In 2001, AusAID was commissioned to conduct a review of IFAD, finding that IFAD had implemented significant reforms and was now considered by donors in developing countries to be an increasingly effective and results focused value-for-money partner. The review recognised IFAD's clear mandate to reduce rural poverty and hunger through working with smallhold farmers, who are disproportionately represented amongst the poor, vulnerable and food insecure.

IFAD projects currently work with around 36 million poor men and women, supporting them to become more food secure through increasing productivity and access to markets, including through microfinance and business development. Renewing our membership of IFAD is clearly in Australia's national interest. It will allow Australia to expand existing support for food security and help the world's most vulnerable to fight hunger.

IFAD's senior management values Australia's unique technical expertise in tropical and dryland farming—a point that was made by previous speakers in this debate—and in fisheries, biosecurity and quarantine management. We are considered to have attractive policy and expertise in these areas, which is something that we can share with developing countries, particularly developing countries within our region. Membership of IFAD will also allow Australia to draw on that organisation's considerable experience to strengthen Australia's own approach to food security and rural development in our aid program.

Our priorities for engaging with IFAD are: improving food security, raising incomes and strengthening the resilience of smallholder producers in priority countries for Australia, particularly countries within our region; continued commitment to reform to improve governance and management of the organisation; and ensuring disability inclusiveness and gender equality across all of IFAD's programs. Investment in IFAD, importantly, will not detract from existing support for food security programs. Financial contributions to IFAD will be decided through the Australian government's annual budget process.

Any discussion about foreign aid draws conjecture. It always draws, as any member in this place would be able to testify, people who would say, 'Why not deal with problems in our own backyard first?' It is true that we have problems in this country to confront—problems with poverty; problems with homelessness; and problems with improving our education and health systems, particularly in rural and remote Australia. These are all priorities of this Labor government.

But it is important to note that poverty in Australia, as important and as much of a priority as it must be, means something very different from poverty in poor and developing countries. Poverty in those countries means living on less than $1.20 a day, as 1.4 billion people around the world do. Poverty in those countries means dying of preventable diseases like diphtheria, diarrhoea, pneumonia and hepatitis, as around 22,000 children do each and every day. That is what poverty means in those countries.

Australians, I know, are not indifferent to the plight of people in crisis and in poverty around the world. When confronted with the stark reality of this poverty, Australians lean upon the better nature within them and want to do something to help. I know that in my own electorate over 14,000 people make an individual donation to a non-government charity organisation dealing with overseas aid each and every year. I represent an electorate which is not the big end of town, but 14,000 people, themselves earning modest incomes, take it upon themselves to make a regular contribution each year to help those who are less fortunate than themselves. These people would never consider themselves to be fortunate. In addition to that, close to 30 schools in my electorate have an organised charity program whereby the schools themselves run a regular fund-raising effort to make a contribution to assist in the eradication of poverty within our region.

As a country we are involved in important, unilateral and multilateral aid programs. I had the great benefit of being involved in a multiparty delegation to Myanmar towards the end of last year where we engaged in an inspection of GAVI, the Global Alliance for Vaccination and Immunisation. The work that they are doing in that country, and the program that Australia is a generous supporter of, has ensured that over half a million children are saved from death from preventable diseases such as measles, diphtheria, tetanus, hepatitis and polio—indeed, they have just about eradicated polio in that country, just as Australian aid and assistance has all but eradicated polio within our region.

There is conjecture and debate about the priority that Australia puts on overseas assistance. That is a good thing. There are limited funds and seemingly, in this area, unlimited demand. But MPs have a responsibility to lead that debate and to appeal to the better instincts of Australians, like those 14,000 Australians in my electorate who make voluntary contributions, to do the right thing. It is not a small step for anybody from a Christian faith to think about the parable of the good Samaritan who stopped by the side of the road to give assistance to a complete stranger who had been beaten and robbed and left for dead by the side of the road—to assist that person, even though that person was completely unknown to him and had been ignored by countless others.

It is not a parable about an individual; it is a parable about what we as good people have an obligation to do. Whether you share the Christian faith or not, it gives us an instruction that we have an obligation as people living in a relatively wealthy country to do our bit to ensure that we are assisting those people who are less fortunate than us. Whether or not you take—as I do—the view that we should be involved in foreign assistance because it is the right thing to do, you can certainly argue, and accept, that it is in our national interest.

Eighteen of our 20 closest neighbours are poor or developing countries. Those countries have some of the highest rates of poverty, malnutrition and illiteracy of any countries around the world. And we all know that poverty and ignorance breed instability. When there is instability in a country, it rarely confines itself to the borders of that one country. We are often called in to deal with issues in our region that have poverty and lack of education as their root causes. It would be far better if those issues were dealt with at their root causes—if we sent nurses and teachers rather than soldiers, police and tanks into those regions. It would be far better and far cheaper for us to be attacking those issues at their root causes.

It is not only in our interest in terms of security. If we are engaged in assisting these countries to develop, of course, it creates new markets for our goods. In our own lifetimes, we can think of countries which, in our own imaginations, we have moved from feeling sorry for to feeling envious of. As young children at school we were taught, once upon a time, how poor certain countries were and how we should feel sorry for them because they were not as lucky as us. In what has been dubbed this 'Asian century', we are now looking with some envy upon the quality of life that those countries have, or that they might look forward to. That is because they have developed. We now look upon these countries not as destinations for our foreign aid but as destinations for our goods and services, and as valuable trading partners. That is clearly an instance where it is in our national interest to ensure that we are doing our bit to lift those countries out of poverty and assist them with development.

I often receive correspondence in my electorate about the aid that we are providing to Indonesia for the building of schools and for assistance in teacher training. Around 2,000 schools are going to be built and teachers are going to be trained in Indonesia as a result of direct foreign aid to that country. I am asked—and it is quite right that constituents ask this of their elected MP—why we are sending money to Indonesia when we have difficulties in own schooling system. The answer is really quite simple: the alternative to schools in that region are run by radical Islamists—the same sorts of people who, when they fall into the wrong sort of instruction, create very real national security risks for us. So it is in our interest to provide alternative educational pathways for people in those countries as well. Of course it comes as a cost: around the equivalent of a cup of coffee per Australian per week. That is what it costs us. The benefit of the aid is enormous. A cup of coffee per week—in my electorate that is a little more than three dollars at the moment—is the cost of an immunisation which saves a life in a developing country. It costs about $3 for an immunisation and it costs about $2.50 for a birthing kit—and that $2.50 is the single source of the halving of maternal mortality rates in many developing countries within our region.

Often we are confronted with people saying: 'What does it matter? The problem is so enormous, our contributions are so small they hardly make a difference.' We know that they do make a difference. More than 14,000 lives are saved each day because of the efforts of Australians individually and collectively through their governments making a contribution through our foreign aid and assistance. We are making a difference over time. Between1990 and 2005, we have seen a reduction in the number of people who are living below the poverty line, despite the increase in world population. In 1990, 1.8 billion people were living below the poverty line; in 2005, 1.4 billion people were living below the poverty line. So we are making a difference, despite the enormity of the challenge. We as members in this place have a responsibility to lead the debate and to lead it in the right direction.

I repeat once again the comment that I have made to many constituents: it is a lot cheaper to send nurses, teachers, books and medicines than it is to send soldiers, guns and tanks. I commend the legislation to the House.