Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Happily; I will table it. I will seek leave to table this document at the end of my speech. He said—and this is only in part:

There appears to be a premeditated effort underway to destroy the credibility of the report by attacking the task force’s bona fides and credentials.

He goes on to say:

The task force includes three members with impeccable Northern Australian agricultural credentials, including the President of the National Farmers Federation, a tourism industry leader, the head of CSIRO’s Land and Water Research Group, the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Charles Darwin University as well as eminent conservationists and Indigenous leaders from Northern Australia.

These are the people whom Senator Macdonald and Senator Scullion are attacking. These are the people who have given their time to provide us in Northern Australia with a blueprint for the way forward. Mr Roche goes on:

The task force did not contain bureaucrats and neither did they write the report, which was a collective effort by task force members.

He then says:

Instead of massively misrepresenting the credentials of the task force, let’s have a discussion about our findings and recommendations and around our reliance on the best available scientific evidence rather than name calling and slogans.

That is what Mr Roche had to put into press in the Townsville paper, which Senator Macdonald reckons he did not see—and I am surprised at that—and also in the Cairns Post. Instead of playing the man, let us talk about what is in the report. Let us talk about what other people said about the report. David Crombie, from the National Farmers Federation, said:

I don’t think anybody expected we were going to be transferring the Murray Darling food production system to northern Australia.

I disagree with him slightly there; I think that Senator Heffernan did. He goes on to say:

There are opportunities for greater intensification of agriculture, there’s opportunities for more integrated development in the livestock sector, there are opportunities for pastoralists and lease holders, and there are opportunities for indigenous communities.

This brings me to the point that Senator Scullion was making. I do not think Senator Scullion has read this report—I am sure he has not—because if he had he would have come to a very similar conclusion, I imagine, as David Crombie from the National Farmers Federation. As Mr Crombie says, there are opportunities identified in the report for an increase in agricultural production, for an increase in a whole range of economic activities that all of us in Northern Australia have the opportunity to partake in, particularly—and this is a very strong focus of the report—Indigenous people. I also want to go to Rachel Mackenzie from Growcom. I think her words are very informative:

It was time southern Australia gave up fanciful notions that horticulture could be simply moved holus bolus from areas such as the Murray Darling Irrigation Basin to northern Australia. Growcom supports the development and expansion of horticultural crops suitable for the climatic conditions and soils in northern Australia and wherever else in Australia that suitable climatic conditions have been shown to exist.

It rains a lot in Queensland and Northern Australia, but it is a very short season. It rains a lot, but it is pretty close to the coast where you cannot dam, and it is also a long way from market. Let us be a bit honest with the people of Northern Australia. (Time expired)