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

I rise to speak on how the Liberal-National government is pushing further ahead in its ambitious task o agricultural production in Australia to $100 billion by 2030. Australian agricultural producers rely on exporting produce right across the world. Not only are we growing trade with our current trading partners; we are also developing new markets and opportunities for our producers. International trade agreements are a linchpin of this growth. This government has secured bilateral trade arrangements with Malaysia, Korea, Japan and China. There is the Trans-Pacific Partnership. It has built on trade agreements with New Zealand, the United States, Singapore and Thailand. The coalition government will continue to develop new markets for our producers, not only to grow the market but, more importantly, to mitigate the risk to us as a nation of being overreliant on specific markets.

I commend the Prime Minister and the Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment for the agreement that has been reached in the United Kingdom over the last few days. The United Kingdom is one of Australia's most important partners. Australia has a significant and quite unique relationship with the UK, underpinned by our shared heritage, common values, historic people-to-people links, and advanced, open and democratic economies. Our Australia-UK free trade agreement is going to be built on our existing strengths in two-way trade and investment, support our post-COVID economic recovery and signal our shared commitment to global trade liberalisation. The UK free trade agreement will give greater access to a range of high-quality products made in both countries as well as greater access for businesses and workers, all of which will drive economic growth and job creation in both countries.

The UK is already an important trading partner for Australia. In 2019-20 the two-way goods and services trade was valued at over $36 billion, making the UK Australia's fifth-largest trading partner. The UK is Australia's third-largest source of foreign direct investment, with foreign direct investment valued at over $123 billion in 2020. Through improved market access for goods and services, this free trade agreement will give Australian exporters a competitive edge when entering the UK market. Australian agricultural exports to the UK have been relatively low since the UK joined the European Union, and the high tariffs and other trade barriers that Britain imposed as a member of the European Union were certainly a bugbear to Australia actually doing that trade.

This trade agreement, however, will see beef tariffs eliminated after 10 years. During the transition period, Australia will have immediate access to a duty-free quota of 35,000 tonnes, rising in equal instalments to 110,000 tonnes in year 10. Sheep meat tariffs will be eliminated after 10 years. During the transition period, Australia will have immediate access to a duty-free quota of 25,000 tonnes, rising in equal instalments to 75,000 tonnes in year 10. Sugar tariffs will be eliminated over eight years. During the transition period, Australia will have immediate access to a duty-free quota of 80,000 tonnes, rising by 20,000 tonnes each year. Dairy tariffs will also be eliminated over five years. During the transition period, Australia will have immediate access to a duty-free quota of 24,000 tonnes of cheese, rising in equal instalments to 48,000 tonnes in year five.

Australia is going to phase out, by 2027, the requirement for British backpackers to work on farms to extend their working holiday visas, with the labour shortfall in the agricultural sector to be made up through the introduction of an agricultural visa by the end of 2021. British backpackers have provided the agricultural sector with up to 10,000 workers each season over the last 10 to 15 years. This does open the door to developing an ag-specific visa, which is going to be incredibly crucial to my electorate of Nicholls and will also be very crucial to large parts of Australia. The pandemic has put a magnifying glass over what was already evident in relation to our seasonal worker deficit. In Nicholls, it's glaringly obvious that, particularly in the horticultural industry, we really have a got a crisis on our hands with the labour force. This last season just gone, the very kind weather conditions provided an extended fruit picking harvest season. That certainly averted an absolutely horrible situation that was looming. Had we had extreme hot weather at picking time, it would have shortened the time frame that the farmers had available to get their fruit off the trees. In January the Victorian state Labor agriculture minister promised 1,500 seasonal workers would be on Victorian farms in the first half of 2021, but we're now in mid-June and there are fewer than 850, plus they were unable to get them for the fruit-picking season.

This government has streamlined the process to access workers through the Pacific Labour Scheme and the Seasonal Worker Programme, and we now have more labour options in place for our growers before next season. The seasonal agricultural worker visa will support Australian farmers both now and into the future, and certainly there are going to be many Asian countries that will be very keen to play a role in this new agricultural visa scheme. It will provide a wider pool of workers that are available to Australian agriculture and will certainly help to meet the ongoing seasonal workforce gaps that continued right through the pandemic. An agricultural visa could take in workers from up to 10 Asian countries—Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, The Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam—and work in conjunction with the Seasonal Worker Programme and the Pacific Labour Scheme. An agriculture-specific visa has been called for by the National Farmers' Federation and the Victorian Farmers Federation for many years now.

The deficit of workers in rural and regional areas goes beyond seasonal agricultural workers. There are skilled and semi-skilled worker shortages right across many industries including health, allied health, aged care, hospitality workers and food technicians as well as in agriculture and in many trades: mechanics, boilermakers. In my electorate of Nicholls, around the greatest city of Shepparton, the shire of Moira and the shire of Campaspe have been working together to introduce an initiative in relation to having their own DAMA, designated area migration agreement. This initiative has been put forward because of the incredible shortages that exist in some of those other food-processing areas as well as in horticulture, dairy and many other industries. They have been working for over 18 months now to get the DAMA through, and it's nearly at the stage of being approved. The DAMA will have a whole raft of economic benefits that are going to be available, and I want to applaud the Greater Shepparton City Council for being the driving council pushing for a DAMA, which is expected to see economic output increase by up to $144 million and value-added to increase to over $60 million. We're expecting to see over 430 positions created, many being high-skilled positions. We're also expecting this population to increase by over 750 people. The things that need to be done by our local government in conjunction with the federal government to provide this labour force certainly will put agriculture into a really, really strong position.

One of the other things that we haven't spoken about of course is the water debate. We need to be very, very mindful of just how critical and how crucial water is throughout the Murray-Darling Basin. We can't experience dry times and only then go running around trying to changes things to give our farmers more water. We need to make changes now, so that we give our farmers more water, more security, more flexibility, so that they can actually plan for their lives into the future. The Goulburn Valley is so rich in what it does, what it produces for Australia. The valley's food production from the productivity of its dairy, fruit, beef and sheep is just incredible. It is a food bowl of Australia. It has both food production and food processing, but there are two big risks: not being able to get the labour and not being able to get the water. It's great to see that we now have a government that's prepared to make big changes to try to give our farmers the two main things that they need.