Bill Heffernan (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I retract it. I had better not say 'bugger'. It was a 'not a very nice' site. He said, 'Look, Bill, I've got to get the inner-city preferences'—this was two elections ago in Brisbane—'so I've done a deal with the Wilderness Society to enact the wild rivers legislation.' The wild rivers legislation locks up the first kilometre on either side of all those rivers all the way up Cape York Peninsula—17½ million hectares. The average annual wildfire there burns five million hectares. The biggest wildfire they have had burned 11 million hectares. It is a soft entry point into Australia for foot and mouth disease because of all those feral pigs. We are fantasising about locking it up. So the opportunity for Indigenous people up there will not be economic agricultural production for the first kilometre, which is just as good as any riverbed or floodplain down the Murrumbidgee. No, we are saying: 'What we want your opportunity to be perhaps is tourism. You can get your picture taken standing on a stone with a spear for the tourists.' That is what we are saying to our Indigenous people. And bear in mind that there are still approximately 7½ thousand kids in the Northern Territory who do not have a bloody high school to go to. What sort of a disgrace is that?

Go to Bangladesh and try to explain that to the people in Bangladesh. It is predicted that 1.6 billion people on the planet will be displaced by 2070. If the science is only 10 per cent right, that is 160 million people. Bangladesh has 160 million people who live in an area half the size of Cape York Peninsula. Fifty-seven rivers flow into Bangladesh, 54 of them out of India. India is mining the water that comes all the way along the Ganges—right down. India is still in denial. If the sea rises just under a metre and India continues to mine the groundwater which becomes the river water for Bangladesh, by 2050 those people are going to have to move because they are going to be inundated and lose their freshwater—and here we are fantasising about not developing anything in the north.

The CSIRO were not allowed to consider storing or damming water, but that was not because they could not do it. Better than anyone in this chamber, I understand the science of what is happening up there. The bulk of the water falls to the bottom of the catchment, unlike the catchments down here where the water falls to the top of the catchment. It is an event based thing, but you can recharge sandbed aquifers—the Gilbert River west of Georgetown was pegged out for irrigation in 1957.

We have all said: 'Oh, no, it's too hot to go up there. And it's too far away from the market.' Where's the best place to be on a hot day? In the cab of a tractor. It is better than the airconditioning in the house. Why do we think we are we too far from the market? Because we are looking in the wrong direction. Two-thirds of the world's population are just over the water. Two-thirds of the world's population are closer to Darwin than they are to Sydney.

So here we are thinking that somehow we are going to flog through with what we have got. No-one is listening to the science in this debate about agricultural land acquisition. We were briefed the other night by the ABS, and I took the trouble to ring them. As they will tell you, the game has changed. I have heard all these political speeches today—mostly prepared notes that someone else has written for them—but no-one is giving consideration to the seismic change that is occurring in the world through the loss of sovereignty through modern communication, transport, free trade agreements and all the rest of it. And that was my point to Senator Farrell on the free-trade agreements: we gave away a five per cent and a 15 per cent tariff in the American free-trade agreement and imposed a 45 per cent tariff. In 2004, when that was agreed to, we were at 67c to the US dollar. When it was enacted, in January 2005, we were at 70c. We now have a 45 per cent tariff against us on our terms of trade, yet we gave away a five per cent tariff. It is all stupid.

It is premature, this bill. I am sorry, Senator Xenophon, but it is premature. Let's get everyone educated as to what the problem is and let's have a strategic view in Australia of where we are going to be in 50 years time and in 80 years time. Let me give you some suggestions on that. There needs to be true definition of the difference between foreign sovereign acquisition—and the ABS will tell you this if you go and talk to them—and foreign capital. I do not care about foreign capital coming into agriculture because it has been coming in for yonks. Traditionally what happens with foreign capital is that they come in, invest, feel good about it and then strike the variability of our seasons and its impact on production. Next, all their directors want a bonus, overtime and all the rest of it and then they go broke and they pack up and leave. It always happens. They all do it. One of the great institutions of Australia, the family farm, keeps the job going because we do not pay ourselves overtime.

Why shouldn't we be thinking, 'Let's sell our production into the doubling of the world food task by 2050 rather than sell our means of production'? I am sorry to have to use a note at this stage, but I will just quote ABARES talking about who owns the place. This is from the report of the Senate Economics Legislation Committee's inquiry into this bill. First there are some comments from Alan Hill, the Director of Policy for the Western Australian Farmers Federation, then the report goes on:

ABARES also noted that there is currently no database of ownership of Australian agricultural land—

this is only a few weeks ago—

It informed the committee that Queensland is the only State that collects this type of information:

Senator HEFFERNAN—Firstly, would it be fair to say for your organisation—

this is ABARES; they advise the government—

that we really do not know who owns the agricultural land in Australia?

Mr Morris—Yes.

The ABS thing is a political cover. We were briefed on it.

You know what they did? They sent out 11,000 forms based on the ATO's ABN register of agricultural interests. They did not pick up Shenhua, who bought a big lump of country around their mine to shut all the cockies up. They did not pick up all the blind trusts through the Cayman Islands. They did not pick up the sovereign wealth funds where reporting is compulsory but not mandatory. Some of these sovereign funds have all sorts of blind operations. No, we do not know about the sovereign acquisitions.

The greatest threat to Australia's sovereignty, as Mick Kelty pointed out a few years ago—no-one took any notice—is the effect of climate change and human displacement. The greatest threat now—and if you dig down into ABS, they will tell you—is the concept of sovereignty being displaced because of sovereign wealth funds. The sovereign wealth funds of some countries are acquiring the sovereign wealth of other countries—and excluding those countries from access to their own wealth. That is going to happen—places like China, to their credit, are aware of the future food problem they are facing and they are busily doing this.

If you go back to the ABS thing, the database—guess what? They started with farms that had an income of $5,000. So farms with an income of only $5,000—that could be any of these toy farms around Canberra here—were included in the schedule as some sort of commercial agricultural production. You have to have income of between $30,000 and $50,000 to be able to get a GST return—$5,000 is meaningless. Yet, in the statistical database, the model includes anything that earns $5,000. This has the capacity to completely distort the figures. This is a phoney—I am sorry to have to say that, but it is—statistical, political tool. It is meaningless. Hopefully, when the inquiry that I am going to chair gets going, we will deal with the facts rather than the political fantasy involved behind protecting a government—whoever the government might be after the next election.

I am interested, and all of Australia's farmers are interested, in where we are going to be in 50 or 80 years time. We do not want to leave the farm to a foreign interest if we can avoid it. But you cannot blame the cocky who wants to get out— (Time expired)