Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

It is important to talk about an issue that pertains to prime agricultural land. I recognise that there is support on this issue, but the National Party went in to bat for the particular issue of the protection of prime agricultural land. Prime agricultural land, as you well know, is vitally important for our capacity as a nation to feed ourselves. On the hierarchy of needs, it is at the very top. Prime agricultural land is more important than mining, because we as a nation have a duty to feed not only our people but others throughout the world, especially as the global food task—which my good friend and colleague Senator Heffernan is always talking about—increases as population increases. We have to make sure that we have the capacity to utilise our prime agricultural land. When talking about prime agricultural land, which this amendment discusses, I think it is important to state that some misconceptions have been put out there, none better than a statement by the minister in Queensland, Ms Nolan, who has stated that farmers never had any rights over their land. That is totally and utterly factually incorrect. Certainly, the Crown had the right of prospecting on your land and, right back to Magna Carta, had the rights to gold and silver on your land. But it did not have the rights to the coal, oil or petroleum on your land as far as mining went. Those rights were taken over in Queensland in the 1915 act for petroleum and gas, for security of those rights in World War I. It is almost 100 years ago, but certainly not hundreds of years ago, and it is certainly not something that was there in perpetuity. In Victoria, as I am sure Senator Feeney is aware, it was the threat of World War II that led to security for that asset—they started pilfering it off the farmers at that point in time. Then, going all the way through to 1981, it was at that point in time that the adroit Neville Wran managed to pilfer the rest of the farmers' rights. So it is factually incorrect to say that the farmers did not actually have a property right. They did, but it was taken from them.

It is because they lack property rights that we now see the immense discrepancies and the absurdity that farmers get less than 0.75c for every $1,000 the mining company earns. I do not think that is a reflection of a fair bargaining position. I am certain that Senator Feeney and others on the other side have a clear understanding of how bargaining positions go for workers—when you are getting a fair deal and when you are not—and I imagine that there may therefore be some sympathy from over there for the fact that the farmers are not getting a fair deal.

Also, regarding the carbon sink legislation, if we lose our prime agricultural land to forests rather than mining it, is not going to be much use to us unless we intend to evolve to a higher form of termite! The idea that we will all somehow live happily ever after in an economic upland with forests kept in perpetuity rather than ones you can cut down is wrong. It will send the towns and their economies into privation. At the same time we will have absconded from our moral duty to feed other people. That is a duty we have. One might recognise that the rice industry in Australia has the capacity to feed up to 60 million people. That is quite substantial. It seems peculiar that in some of our legislation we might want to shut it down. Do we think it is not morally correct to feed people? Do we think there is something that presupposes that having scrub is more morally right than feeding people who are hungry? I think that the highest duty you have is to feed your people. I am sure my colleague Senator Brandis will agree with me on that one. No doubt he has come in here because he thinks I am an extremely loquacious speaker—