Natasha Griggs (Solomon, Country Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last week the very energetic and enthusiastic Minister for Resources, Energy and Northern Australia visited my electorate—perhaps an obvious place for him to come and visit, with the resourcefulness we have in north Australia. We like to say that we in Darwin or in the Top End are the capital of north Australia. It was a very eventful visit, and the minister was absolutely well received. Part of the itinerary was a visit to the Humpty Doo Barramundi farm, which is a world-class aquaculture business just outside Darwin. This company has increased its operations by 300 per cent over the past three years, which is just an enormous achievement. The farm is a second-generation family business. Bob Richards and his son Dan, who is my constituent, are working side by side to implement the world's best practices in commercial aquaculture. In fact Bob won a Churchill Fellowship in 2002 to study overseas and bring home those ideas to Australia to help the industry. His son Dan, who is now the general manager, has recently been awarded a Nuffield Australia 2016 scholarship, which is just awesome news.

At the farm there are a series of floating feeders in some of the ponds. They look pretty straightforward: a large, floating vat which distributes food into the water as required. This set-up has worked well elsewhere, but barra need a new approach. If too much food is put into the ponds it builds up at the bottom, causes pollution and impacts the growth of the barramundi. So the team devised a solution which saves money on wasted food and also stops the overfeeding and stops the spoiling of the water quality. These feeding machines are attached to microphones which monitor audio from the water using special software which detects the 'woof' sound that barramundi make when they are feeding. As long as the system can hear the woof of the barra, it will keep feeding them. When the barra stop eating, the machine stops feeding. It sounds pretty logical. That is just one of the hundreds of innovations that the farm employs. As I said, this is a family owned business which has, through organic growth, increased its yield 28-fold in the last decade alone. When we on this side of the House talk about developing north Australia, this is the sort of venture we want more of: people creating jobs and value through innovation and hard work. I congratulate the whole team at Humpty Doo Barramundi and thank them for their fabulous work. (Time expired)