Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is my honour this evening to rise to support an application by the Wagin community in the Great Southern region of Western Australia to the Australian government for the Regional Development Assistance Program funding in relation to an integrated food and fibre processing hub to be installed in that region. The Wagin community is a very strong and powerful community, traditionally in wool-growing and wheat, but they are looking now to diversify and in fact to even drought-proof their community. An exciting aspect is that the very technology and concept that they have developed could be used by other local areas around Australia.

Briefly, the objectives are to stabilise and to expand the economy of this region in such a way that they will have, I think, one of the most exciting concepts I have seen—that is, the concept of the hub development, which involves the cogeneration of power, the introduction of a desalination unit both to supply fresh water to the community and to use up saline water which is destroying it; and it will also add a new industry—saline aquaculture, for the community itself.

In brief, the project aims, firstly, to enable green infrastructure power generation, electricity and steam, for industry use; secondly, to remove the saline water table beneath the town—which I will speak of in some more detail; thirdly, to provide a new source of fresh water for an area of the state which, like much of Western Australia, is in need of a reliable freshwater supply; fourthly, to create a supply of saline water for use in a saline water aquaculture project, capable in the first year alone of producing some 125 tonnes of barramundi for tables in restaurants around the state, with the capacity of a lot more expansion over time; and, most importantly, it will retain business in the town and in the district, create new employment opportunities and of course create an opportunity for other councils in the future—all within a context of a genuine partnership between successful businesses, with local and state government support.

The situation concerning a lot of councils and towns in our state is that of saline water beneath the town. People might be interested to learn that, for some years now, the council has been pumping some 600,000 kilolitres a day of saline water from beneath the town. Not only is this very expensive from an electricity point of view, and a maintenance of pumping point of view, but why do they have to do it? To stop the upward movement of salt which is affecting buildings, roads, pipelines and private and public assets in the town site. This cannot go on forever, because of the costs associated with it. But what is exciting about this saline water is that up to 445,000 kilolitres a day can actually be fed into a reverse osmosis desalination plant.

The second component is the use of oat husks in the cogeneration of electricity from a bioenergy source. A food processing company in the town currently processes about 60,000 tonnes of oats and other cereals a year, of which of course oat husks are a by-product. Already they have proved the technology by using oat husks in the generation of steam, which is going back into the operation, but the intention is to actually move towards a power station, with the energy source highly viable from oat husks—and, in the future, if need be from the straw post-harvest and indeed mallee from mallee production. There is tremendous opportunity for expansion into the future.

So the power generated from this powerhouse will go back into the food processing operation. It will also provide electricity for the reverse osmosis plant and will provide heat for the saline aquaculture project. We can all see the benefits of the reduced or even eliminated use of LPG for generating power currently, less trucks on the road and no oat husks going to waste, with concurrent methane production. Equally, there is the capacity over time for the generation of more power and more water for more new industries in the town of Wagin. So the reverse osmosis to salination plant would provide some 300,000 kilolitres a day of freshwater back into the town, back into the community, to be used for beautifying the whole region, and 145,000 kilolitres a day into the saline aquaculture project.

The project itself is already proved up. This is already commercially ready to go; it is not experimental. It means working with the private sector in a project and a process that have been proved up. As I mentioned earlier, not only would there be the employment opportunities from the aquaculture project but the ongoing jobs in transport and processing, in ecotourism and even solids for fertiliser use. So you see the hub concept, Madam Acting Deputy President. What was one person's waste becomes another person's opportunity, and the whole community benefits. I mentioned earlier that 60,000 tonnes of cereals processed now can move up to 100,000 tonnes without any difficulty, an opportunity for new industries, for a greater concentration on aquaculture, and we know the challenge associated with the need to be providing more protein in this country and more fresh product in this country, which is now importing some 70 per cent of the fish that are consumed by weight amongst Australians.

One of the great benefits of the project is to actually prove up this technology so that the IP can then be used in other communities in our state and around Australia and save that cost and risk associated with it. What has been of tremendous interest to me has been the governance that has gone into the planning and into the submission to the Australian government under the Regional Development Assistance Program. I participated in a community information session in the town of Wagin only last week and was very pleased to see the availability of expertise for the wide range of people who attended either as interested and concerned residents or indeed would-be investors. I remind the Senate again that this is technology that is already proven up. The risk assessment process has been very thorough. It involves a public and private partnership between the local shire, which is supporting it very strongly, agencies of state government, research organisations, particularly the Challenger College from Fremantle, which has developed most of the aquaculture expertise to be used, and naturally enough the involvement of companies in the community who are themselves already successful business people.

So, in the final few moments, I ask: why should this be supported by regional development funding? The project itself is some $8 million, of which the proponents will find $4 million to put into it, so they are seeking that equivalent figure of $4 million as the contribution by the Commonwealth. It meets the criteria under the regional development funding scheme and therefore should be supported on the basis that the wheat belt development authority of the federal government, under which Wagin and the Great Southern come, have actually put it forward as one of their three preferred projects for consideration by Minister Crean and his colleagues.

The concept is revolutionary for the wheat belt of Western Australia. The hub concept is one that has been developed offshore but is being used successfully in the industrial belt of Kwinana south of Perth now, where again one group's waste becomes another group's opportunity. If we can prove this up in the wheat belt of WA in an area where population and investment are declining, if we can reverse that and turn it back to a circumstance of new opportunity of developing industries, of expanding the opportunities that are there already, this can only be beneficial to the regional community of that group, our state and the country. It is shovel ready. This is not something we are looking at for years into the future; it can be replicated in other areas without starting from the ground up. I strongly recommend this to Minister Crean, to the Senate and of course to the parliament.