Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Once again we had the argument put that we should be thinking about going north, peddling false hope—at least that is the idea—to farmers of the south, that we will just gather the wagons together and head north. That is designed as a distraction from the fact that climate change is the biggest crisis facing our farmers, one that they urgently need to deal with. How can you expect farmers to deal with this crisis without the support from both our state and federal governments, without gathering together every bit of scientific research that this country can gather and focus on this issue? I find it quite distressing, in fact, that the government does not seem to understand the impact that this is going to have on our farmers, and the depth of work that is needed. They seem to have no understanding of the impacts of climate change on our farmers and what is needed to address this issue.

They did not address in their reply the actual terms of reference for this inquiry, looking at the long-term impacts on primary producers and rural communities. That quite clearly comes as an also-ran in the government’s thinking. They have only just acted, for example, to provide EC and drought assistance to small businesses in farming and rural communities—they were quite obviously forgetting that they are absolutely dependent on our farmers—and to look at the impacts on the environment.

There is one area they clearly want to ignore. Given the Prime Minister’s statements about draining wetlands and about people coming first, he quite clearly still does not get the fact that you cannot support people without having a sustainable environment. I bet you that he did not ask the farmers whether they thought that should happen—that is, whether the farmers agreed to draining wetlands. Do you know what? Not one farmer that I have spoken to supports draining wetlands. Maybe the Prime Minister should actually go and talk to farmers first before he starts bandying around ridiculous suggestions like that.

Obviously he also does not take into account that the government has spent and allocated lots of money—and I acknowledge this—to the environment through the Natural Heritage Trust. Billions of dollars have been spent in our farming communities on planting trees. What about the impact of climate change on those trees that have been planted, for example? What about the work that farming communities have done in protecting wetlands and the environment? What are the potential adaptation strategies? We are not just talking about—and I have been talking quite a bit about this—looking at research into developing more crops—we are also talking about adaptation strategies for rural communities and the environment. All of that needs to be looked at. There is nobody pulling that together. Nobody is putting that thought in.

As I touched on earlier, ABARE are not even thinking about it. The only instruction they have been given by government is to look at what the costs are to our economy of making cuts. They are not looking at what the impacts of climate change are on our agricultural systems, rural communities and the environment. None of that work has been done. So how can our farmers be making realistic decisions if they are not getting that information support?

My colleague Senator Brown touched earlier on the question of who is driving the action. What we heard before is: ‘No more inquiries—let’s have some action.’ Who is driving the action? The Prime Minister called a summit on three or four days notice, weeks and months after the warning signals for this season were that our storages would be drying up. He called it so late that farmers growing summer crops had already started getting ready and watering their fields to prepare to sow their summer crops. If action had been taken earlier, they would not have been wasting that water. The Prime Minister then, maybe, would not have come out and suggested that we had to drain our wetlands to support our towns. Just when is this action happening and just who is doing it? I have seen none of it so far, that is for sure.

If you look at what farmers are saying about action for climate change, I actually think that the government has not been listening to them. Let me just read to you a bit of what the National Farmers Federation have said to the Commonwealth government. Their agriculture and land management working group said:

Australia’s agriculture, forestry and land management interests are exposed to the impacts of climate change. Compounding our risk exposure, the agriculture sector is not equipped, at present, with sufficient detailed information about the impact of climate change on different regions and different types of farming activity. Given the extent of this vulnerability, there is an urgent need to enhance understanding of the likely impacts of climate change at a scale relevant to sectors and regions ...

They also said that there is an urgent need to understand the social, economic and biophysical implications of climate change on this sector and to develop adaptive responses accordingly. The Queensland Farmers Federation this year, in their 2006-07 election issues paper, said:

Adaptation to climate change is the biggest challenge facing Australian agriculture in the next 20 to 30 years ... Like all changes, a changing climate brings both risks and opportunities. Those who better understand the nature and implications of the change can adapt more effectively to avoid the risks and seize the opportunities ...

They go on to say:

Agriculture is arguably the most seriously affected sector of the State economy in terms of climate change effects. Yet there has been little investment by the State in identifying the impacts of climate change for farmers, or in preparing farmers for adaptation or mitigation strategies.

And they call for the following:

• a research program to develop regional and industry scenarios for climate change in industry and likely threats and opportunities for industry;
• follow research to identify new plant varieties and farming practices that might be better suited to climate change ...
• raising awareness about and voluntary on-farm adoption of measures to address issues of climate adaptation, greenhouse gas abatement and the identification of new opportunities for rural industries;
• research in terms of mitigation effects and adaptation techniques.

So our farming organisations are saying that there is not enough being done and they need help to identify and address the impacts and to look at adaptation strategies.

There has been other work recently released that I think also impacts in this area. For example, the Productivity Commission last week released a report on research and development in this country and raised some concerns about the focus being on commercialisation and not enough on public benefit. I think part of this inquiry looking at adaptation strategies would also look at how we are handling research development in this country and whether we are putting enough emphasis on the development of, for example, adaptation strategies and the appropriate crops that are needed.

There is work being done in this country. For example, the salinity CRC, based in my home state but operating across Australia, has done a great deal of work in this area. Do we need to upscale that work? Do we need to invest more money? I would argue that we do—but we certainly need to look into that.

As I said earlier, we have no framework. We have no overall view in Australia of what research is being done and where it is being done—and what research is not being done. We certainly do not have an understanding of the land use capability in this country and have not overlaid that on our climate change models to help farmers—for example, those in the eastern wheat belt of Western Australia—to identify just what their future options are. They are facing decreased rainfall and increasing temperatures. How do we help them to make decisions about staying on farm? Is it appropriate that we as a community offer them financial support for ecosystem services?

I for one do not want to see farmers walking off the land. I want to ensure that they can stay there if possible. Perhaps we can provide them with ecosystem services and look at what else they can do to stay there. We need to ask what areas are marginal because, in the future, we might need to consider, for example, phasing out farming in some areas, but we want that to happen in an orderly fashion. We do not want people to suffer. We do not want to provide false hope that farmers can pack up and move north.

As I articulated in this place last night, there are many problems with the so-called ‘developing the north’ option, as if the north is some empty, final frontier that we can develop. It is not appropriate to offer false hope to the farmers of the south by saying: ‘It’s okay, you can move north. We don’t need to worry about you.’ If we truly care about our farmers and the future of our rural communities, we will be looking beyond just their resilience. There is a National Agriculture and Climate Change Action Plan, but it is based around resilience—as if farmers can just keep slowly adapting to climate change. Farmers have been doing that. But they can no longer continue to gradually adapt, because their farm profitability will go down and they will therefore not have the resources to carry out the bigger adaptation that will be needed. We are offering these people the false hope that they might be able to continue the same old same old in areas where that will no longer be possible.

We need to look further ahead and offer long-term solutions, but we cannot do that if we do not know what the possible impacts are. There has been no overall study of the impacts of climate change on our rural producers, our rural communities or our environment. We need to start looking at a full and comprehensive range of those impacts and at our adaptation strategies for them. Climate change requires us to take a quantum leap in the way that we look at these impacts, how we manage our water resources, what we offer—for example, exceptional circumstances and drought assistance—how we encourage innovation to deal with drought and how we manage our farming systems.

We need to look beyond just increasing the resilience of our existing systems to developing new agricultural industries, probably based on native perennials and other crops. We need to open our minds to this, but we certainly will not be doing that through the existing processes. That is why the Greens believe that we need an inquiry to pull this information together so that we can look at what private researchers and the different agencies around the country are doing and at how we can share information. We cannot properly share information across the Murray-Darling Basin yet, let alone across Australia. Who is drawing those information sets together? Who is talking to the states about pulling it together? There is nobody doing that at the moment. How do we do it? How do we encourage states to share information? Those issues are not being addressed. We cannot take action if we do not know what we are actioning; therefore, we firstly need to pull this information together. I strongly encourage the Senate to support the establishment of this inquiry.

Question put:

That the motion (That the motion (Senator Siewert’s) be agreed to.) be agreed to.