Bruce Scott (Maranoa, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last night I had the great opportunity of joining with part of the alumni of Nuffield scholars for a dinner here in Parliament House. Yesterday and today they will be visiting Parliament House and many places here in Canberra before they leave tomorrow on their agricultural scholarship for their Global Focus tour. They are an inspiration to be with, and I know that when they return they will be part of the future of agricultural leadership in Australia. I wish them well on their study as they leave tomorrow. It is in the context of them being here last night and the issue that we so often talk about—world food security—and the opportunities that we have in this nation to be part of the solution long-term for agricultural and food production that I want to talk briefly about Australia's agricultural land base. Since early European settlement in Australia we have been able to just go and find more land—it has been there in abundance. We have been able to expand with demand and grow that expansion.

Mining is very important to Australia. It creates jobs, wealth and export income that we all benefit from. But what I have seen with the expansion of the mining sector and urban encroachment, as well as some prime agricultural land being sold for nothing more than lifestyle reasons, is that our agricultural land, particularly our prime agricultural land base, could be at risk. Let me give you some examples. We have all seen the well-documented expansion of the coal industry in the Hunter Valley in New South Wales. Whilst the coal industry is important, it is the expansion into productive agricultural land that worries me. In my own electorate, with coal seam gas in the Surat Basin around Warra and Haystack the mining companies want to open up a coalmine on this magnificent, irreplaceable agricultural land. Some of the rehabilitation I have seen by the mining sector has not been good. It is not world-class. I am very concerned about our prime agricultural land base.

I know that states have responsibility not only for regulations but also for planning. We in this place have said that we want to know more about who owns the land, whether it is urban, housing in the cities or agricultural land; we want to see that register which has been kept in the past by states. I think it is time that we looked at our whole agricultural land base in Australia. We need to have a register of our prime agricultural land and we need to know how it is being developed so that, in the long term, we preserve our prime agricultural food-producing land and secure its future. Mining will come and mining will go, but agricultural production and the need for it will go on forever.