John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to speak about what I have been trying to do in Samoa. In 2011, I took my wife, Nancy, there for Christmas. Being in rural Australia all my life, thankfully, I looked to see what they were doing with their land. They have thousands of acres of land that is simply not producing anything.

When I returned I spoke to a friend, and I got to meet Nabi Saleh, who owns Gloria Jean's and helped establish the tea and coffee industries in Papua New Guinea. He asked me: 'Senator, what you want to do?' I said: 'I want to help these people in Samoa, help them get their own industries going and get them off the international drip—their kids have to go overseas to work and send money back et cetera—and get some use of the agricultural land and get the coffee and cocoa industries going.'

Nabi Saleh, in a very generous way, came back to Samoa with me for about four days. We brought an expert from France, Christophe Montagnon, who had set up the coffee industries in Mexico and the Ivory Coast—that was his profession. We went through the country, we viewed it, we checked out whether the altitude would be suitable for robusta or arabica coffee, and we did a report. We met with the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and the opposition leader.

Last year, I was contacted by a lady called Lita Guagua, who worked in New Zealand and is from Samoa. She went over there on a study tour. She said, 'I spent all my study to money on trying to help Samoans'. We went back there and we saw the Prime Minister, the opposition leader, and the agricultural minister, and we met with Ken Newton, who established CCK in Samoa. Amazingly, Ken Newton imports all of his coffee beans from PNG. He does not use any of the coffee beans locally grown in Samoa, because they are an old, 1905 version the Germans took there. They are outdated, they do not produce and they have virtually failed.

We have worked on this ever since. When I returned from the first trip, with Nabi Saleh, I met with the then Minister for Foreign Affairs, Senator Bob Carr, and his staff to see what we could do to set up a trial plot to show the Samoans how they can grow modern varieties of coffee that will yield well. You cut the tops off the trees so they do not grow high and the cyclones do not blow them over. We wanted to try and get these people into a state where they can just make their own wealth.

I was quite amazed on 2 September, last Friday week, to read in The Australian newspaper, 'Political junkets searching for a cause'. That was the headline. The article read:

Nationals senator John Williams needed 10 days in Samoa "to investigate the feasibility of establishing a coffee industry" there.

I found this very annoying. The journalist, Sean Parnell—a bloke who actually comes from Inverell—never phoned me to ask what I was doing. That was on a Friday. On the Thursday I had actually spoken to Minister Connie Fierravanti-Wells to say: 'Yesterday I rang a bloke called Geoff Philcox, who was born in New Zealand. He has landed in Samoa and is keen to get industries going. I'm working with him, and I said to him, "Put a business plan forward, and I'll put it to the minister, Senator Fierravanti-Wells."' She said, 'Let's go for it and let's see what we can do to help them.' I was still working on this the week before last, on the Wednesday and the Thursday. Then on the Friday I got this story in the paper saying it was a junket. I was very annoyed about it.

Here is the situation we face. We cop flak for not doing enough for people, so then we try to help people. What do we get? We cop flak from a journalist like this who, as I said, would not ring me. I think that was very unprofessional. We try and help people. I was very annoyed about the article and I thought: 'Will I give up? No, I won't give up. That'd be doing the wrong thing.' So I am going to continue. I am certainly not running for another election. I am here until 30 June 2019, unless we have a double dissolution prior to that, of course, which is probably not on the cards. I am going to continue to work with Minister Fierravanti-Wells, with the people in Samoa and with Geoff Philcox—and I sent the report to him just the other day.

But I just take offence that people think these are so-called junkets. I have had three weeks overseas in my eight years in this place, including one week to Tbilisi with former Labor senator Mark Furner, from Queensland. We were sent over to view and inspect the election in Georgia, where we gave them a lot of advice. They did not have prepoll. They did not have absentee poll. You could not vote outside your electorate. So we did some good work there.

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And they didn't have any crossbenchers, Wacka!

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No; exactly! Anyway, then I have had these two trips to Samoa, one for four days and one for about 10 days. That includes travel, so you lose the first day getting there overnight, and it is just about a day to come home, by the time we get back to Inverell, for sure. But I was trying to help these people. I met with Sue Langford, the high commissioner from Australia. I met with the agriculture minister. I met with the Prime Minister. I met with the opposition leader. We are doing our best to help these people get established, to develop industries, to get them off the international drip, so the taxpayers of Australia do not have to keep forking out money for them, so they can stand on their own two feet in time to come. What happens? We get bagged in the media. Sean Parnell, next time you want to bag me out for trying to help people, at least have the decency to give me a ring first and have a chat to me about it.