Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President, you would be interested to know that this plan was launched on 17 August by the current minister. The plan will help farmers deal with the effect of climate change on farm production systems and the heightened risks of pests, weeds and disease. This is not a lofty plan on climate change; this gets right down to the grassroots—the pests, weeds and disease. It is micromanaging the problems that will come forward with climate change.

I will read from the minister’s statement. The four strategic focus areas identified in the action plan are:

• adaptation strategies to build resilience into agricultural systems—

and exploit new opportunities arising from climate impacts—

• mitigation strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions;
• research and development to enhance the agricultural sector’s capacity to respond to climate change—

through access to improved climate information tools for decision making—

• and awareness and communication—

through raising awareness and understanding of possible climate change impacts among agricultural producers.

A number of elements in the action plan are already being progressed. For example, a vulnerability assessment of agricultural industries and regions, with funding of over $400,000, has been provided by the Natural Heritage Trust, promoting collaboration and coordination of climate change research and development across the portfolio’s research and development corporations, improving climate information tools for the use of farmers and promoting the inclusion of climate change into suitable agricultural planning and farm management systems.

Last year, the government put down a plan for the rural and regional sector. I think it is pretty clear that this government has its strength in the rural and regional areas, and not just politically—although that is the case; we hold more rural seats. We know our economic strength comes from the rural and regional areas. We know the strength of the coal industry, which is a regional industry. We know that our export strength comes from the rural and regional areas. We know the devastation of drought. We know that this drought is one of the worst, if not the worst, we have ever had and we have extended our drought EC—exceptional circumstances—funding to farmers and to small businesses within rural and regional areas.

The Greens come in here and piously seek to be the friend of the farmers and piously say that the government is ignoring the issue, but it is far from it. We could get into a whole climate change debate. We could start talking about the government securing Australia’s energy policy, which we brought down before the 2004 election, in which over $2 billion has been allocated to low-emission technology, particularly in the coal industry. We could start talking about how the other side seeks to shut down the coal industry. We could start talking about the nuclear industry. If we want to start talking about climate change, every point has to be discussed and not conveniently ignored by the Greens, who put up this motion. For that reason, we will not be drawn into this exercise. Just watch—tomorrow there will be another reference to another committee so they get their turn to debate it. And so it goes on. We will not be drawn into this. Our main focus is to get on with the business of the day and, for that reason, we reject this motion.