Damian Drum (Nicholls, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Agriculture, Drought and Emergency Management. Will the minister outline to the House how the Morrison-McCormack government is backing regional communities by expanding trade opportunities through its Ag2030 plan which is key to helping agriculture become a $100 billion industry by 2030? Is the minister aware of any alternative approaches?

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

In this year's budget we released our Ag2030 plan to support agriculture's ambitious goal of $100 billion by 2030. It is a seven-pillar plan, and one of the key pillars is trade. To put it simply, we are a nation of 25 million people. We produce enough food for 75 million. If we don't engage with the world, if we don't trade with the world, then we don't need the farmers and the regional communities that are there to support them. We have 14 free trade agreements presently in place, and this government has been at the fore of putting them there—China, Japan and Korea. There's also the TPP-11, the $13.2 trillion marketplace of which those opposite said, 'Don't bother about it; it's all too hard.' We stuck the course and we got it done. We've also just put in place a free trade agreement with Indonesia—260 million-plus people on our doorstep are prepared to trade with us—and we're working through with the EU and the UK.

We put cold, hard cash into this in this budget. Over $300 million is going to streamline our trade platforms to make it simpler and easier for our exporters to trade with the world to make a quid. That's an important investment in them and regional communities. We're complementing that now by taking agricultural counsellors from 16 to 22. These are men and women that are in our high commissions and embassies working at the government-to-government level, making sure they get rid of the technical barriers, making it easier for us to trade with other nations.

We have also made a significant investment in protecting brand Australia, with $873 million announced in this budget for biosecurity, protecting us from the pests and weeds that can come in and cost billions of dollars worth of impacts to the agricultural sector . We're also supporting and making sure that we have got the regulatory framework and protecting brand Australia about what's going out. When we see that there's a problem, we address it. We address it and we back Australia. A perfect example of that is the live export industry. In 2018 there was a problem. We didn't undertake a kneejerk, reckless reaction like those opposite did in 2011 and shut the industry down; we backed ourselves and we reformed it. In fact, it didn't cause diplomatic tensions with our neighbours and it didn't cost the Australian taxpayer hundreds of millions of dollars that they are now up for because of the reckless action of the agriculture minister in 2011. A Federal Court found that.

Australian taxpayers are paying for the reckless actions taken by those opposite without an understanding of agriculture. Those opposite want to phase out the live export of sheep. But we've got a bigger problem, now, with the new shadow agriculture minister: he doesn't want to do just sheep; he wants to do the lot: he wants to get rid of it all. Live export trade is beyond exemption indeed. That says to us that he wants to shut down a $2 billion industry—10,000 regional jobs. That is going to destroy regional communities. Live export will continue. It is a global commodity worth $12 billion. We should do it better than anybody—and we do. We should back ourselves, but they are turning their back on regional Australians.