Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This week regional Australia has been at the centre of a lot of the discussions around emissions reduction. But tonight I want to talk about the fact that some of the commentators and journalists have shown a clear lack of understanding of the sophisticated nature of what's happening in regional Australia. Indeed, one sneering journalist on the weekend referred to my constituents as yokels.

This year, agriculture looks likes it's going to be worth about $67 billion in exports. So it is a large part of our economy. Indeed, agriculture and mining have keep this country afloat over the very difficult time that we have had over the last 18 months to two years with the pandemic. At the moment in the Parkes electorate harvesting is about to begin on what's possibly one of the biggest grain harvests that this area has ever seen. Sure, we have had an improvement in the weather and farmers have been coming out of drought. But one of the reasons that this crop is so good is because of the way the farmers managed their soils through the drought and subsequently. It is also due to the varieties that are grown. Not many people realise that the Sydney university has had a plant breeding facility in Narrabri for over 50 years, breeding varieties of grain that have high protein and are suitable for the difficult climate of western New South Wales. We have got record prices for livestock, cattle and sheep. Sure, there's supply and demand, but one of the reasons is the quality of the product. Breeders are undertaking selective breeding, getting the best genetics from all over the globe and undertaking embryo transplants. There's a lot of work going on, and the quality and size of the livestock that is coming through onto the market are much improved.

But, away from agriculture, there is talk of the mining sector. I've got a proposals for rare earths—lithium and cobalt—but also the established lead, zinc and copper mines across the western part of my patch and the coal on the eastern side. Even as the globe transitions away from coal, there will be a place for the high-quality low-sulphur and low-ash coal from the Gunnedah Basin for years to come. Even as our customers like Korea and Japan might transition on to hydrogen and other things, they will still have a mixture of the high-quality product that comes from my electorate.

There are also companies like Furney's, which was just announced as company of the year for western New South Wales. I was able to help them with a grant from the Commonwealth government last year to help modernise their business. There are highly sophisticated businesses. At the moment right across my electorate, there are thousands of jobs available—not just labouring jobs but also sophisticated jobs for engineers, for medical professionals, for educators, for lawyers and the list goes on. You could name any of the professions and there are opportunities in western New South Wales at the moment. There's been a lot of negativity coming out during the pandemic about some of our western towns and the Indigenous communities, but you don't hear the stories of Brewarrina where the local council has 80 per cent Indigenous employment and of the men and women of Goodooga who are now working on building very high quality roads into their area and the upgrade they have done with the help of the federal government for their bore baths, where they've seen up to 80 people camping at the border town that's largely Aboriginal population. There is so much positivity at the moment, and the last thing we need is journalists who don't look beyond the surrounds of this capital referring to the people of western NSW and my electorate as yokels. They're far from yokels. It's a sophisticated, go-ahead area, and, with the help of some more people migrating to that area, it has a very, very bright future.