Susan McDonald (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the recent tabling of the reef water quality report card. I wanted to acknowledge the extraordinary work that has been done by farmers right along and through that catchment. What the reef quality report showed was a reduction of 25.5 per cent in nitrogen entering the Great Barrier Reef lagoon. This also earned the farmers an A for water quality improvements. But what this report does is throw up a major problem with how agricultural impacts are assessed. Cane farms in North Queensland received an A rating for nitrogen run-off reduction but they still received an E rating for overall land management. What that says is that it is obvious that the other factors used to award land management ratings are rendered virtually obsolete when water quality results are so favourable. It demonstrates that land management targets, which were originally set to be a proxy for water quality, are overly onerous. We now know that those proxy targets are no longer required because of more water monitoring stations and better data. So instead of encouraging farmers to continue good work it is driving them off the land.

I'm concerned because the Great Barrier Reef Foundation has, amongst others, a project that is encouraging young farmers. This is the ultimate in ageism, because it is disregarding the experience and the commitment of older farmers and not recognising their contribution. But, more dangerously, it is sending a message to young farmers that the work of their families, of the previous generations, is no longer valued and that the targets they're being told to meet, which are too onerous and unachievable, mean that they can never be successful. These results show that experienced farmers who have been on the land for decades are capable and are doing the right thing but they are being ignored. Why would young people rush to farming when they see their families having to undertake record keeping under the threat of obscenely harsh penalties? Yet they are still publicly slammed of claims that they are harming the Reef.

I note with interest that these latest findings will form part of the upcoming five-yearly review of the Reef 2050 plan, which will look at the current water quality targets and will consult with industry as part of this process. This review must go back to sensible measurements that reflect reality instead of modelling and green dogma. It must recognise that industry-led initiatives, such as Smartcane BMP, which are different to government initiatives, are effective and strike a balance between farm viability and environmental sustainability.

In Queensland the Labor government talks up the sugarcane industry's potential for clean energy production for biofuels and for recyclable products, such as knives and forks and other products that we hear talk of. But at the same time it is setting targets for farmers around land management that they cannot meet—paper targets, process targets—which don't recognise the fact that they are getting an A for their work and their results of water quality. Be clear: today it is sugarcane. Tomorrow it will be beef, horticulture, bananas, because these are policies that do not recognise farming as a viable, useful and important activity.

All these industries are listed as a failure in the reef care efforts and yet the one measurement that we should care about, water quality, has improved dramatically and remarkably. I'll give you an example. Last week 30 cane farms in Queensland were audited. Not one of them passed the state government's models, which are obviously no longer fit for purpose. Remember, these are farms that are being accredited and measured as getting an A on the report card for reef water quality but they cannot meet the paper based tests of the state government. There is something very, very wrong with this.

The magnitude of this water quality achievement by farmers is matched only by the ignorance of the Queensland Labor government in its single-minded obsession with sacrificing agriculture. The implementation of tougher reef regulations on farmers was rammed through in late 2019, despite the consultation period in which the ag sector repeatedly demonstrated that its members were doing the right thing by reducing fertiliser use, managing erosion and adopting new technology and management processes.

Last year's Senate inquiry found virtually zero on-farm engagement by these state government MPs or their agents. If they had bothered to get themselves out from behind a desk and visit farms, as I and other members of the LNP have done, they would have seen farmers using laser levelling, subterranean fertiliser application, cane trash blanketing, better targeted and less pesticide, fertiliser and herbicide use, construction of wetlands and silt traps, and free planting close to waterways. But Labor ignored all of this and appeared to have already made a decision before consultation started.

I've got to flag and have a call out to the unwavering advocacy of the Green Shirts Movement Queensland members, including Marty Bella, Mario Quagliata and Peter Jackson, and they were backed up by marine scientist Peter Ridd when the Senate inquiry was set up. The inquiry found that just three per cent of the entire Great Barrier Reef zone was affected by land use and on-farm engagement was severely lacking. The ag industry's own Landcare initiatives had good take-up rates because farmers care about the environment. They had not been shown proof they were harming the reef; they were simply being told they were and they would be penalised for it.

What we have to be clear on is that the new laws have done nothing to improve water quality, because they were introduced after these reef water quality results were taken. Instead, Labor was returned to power at the last state election and the farmers' hopes of recognition and reward for their efforts were dashed. So this report demonstrates that everything the farmers claimed was true. It exposes Labor's staggering inability to apply commonsense to so many of its policies, preferring to listen to extreme green groups over that of practical, honest, hardworking farmers—who, by the way, produce the food and fibre that we so much need and desire.

The Palaszczuk government should be extremely ashamed of itself. It should apologise for the way it's treating farmers and adding so much unneeded stress to them with the latest reef regulations. I worry about the mental health of both our existing cane farmers and the generation that is choosing not to come behind them. I spoke to cane farmers' wives, the incredibly capable administrators of the paperwork, in Mackay. They're up at dawn, trying to complete the never-ending paperwork associated with reef regulations. They watch their husbands decline under the constant threat—to be clear: threat—of harsh sanctions for even innocent land use mistakes. I want to mention the hard work being done by Queensland cane growers Dan Gallagher and Paul Schembri as well as Georgie Somerset from AgForce and the Queensland Farmers Federation. They're trying to keep the spotlight on these unfair regulations and highlight the good and important work of farmers.

I have to urge both the Queensland state government and our own federal environment department to approach this review with open arms, with an open mind. Be prepared to listen, to act—to act sensibly and to act practically. Throw your support behind cane farmers and cattle farmers who are proving they are acting in good faith and to limit environmental damage.