Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to have the opportunity to have a bit of a chat about the Primary Industries and Energy Research and Development Amendment Bill 2007 and a few other matters that relate to it. I endorse the remarks made by previous speakers, particularly those on this side of the House. But the Geelong supporter from Corangamite has done a reasonable thing by going through the various RDCs, what they do and how they contribute. I think that is fine, so I do not have any great divergence of view about that with him, although there will be many issues on which we will diverge. It may well be that some of the points I raise in my contribution will be points on which we will not agree.

Much of the discussion on this legislation has focused on the question of governance—and, I think, rightly so. Sound governance arrangements, including appropriate levels of accountability, are essential to the success of the research and development corporations. We acknowledge that and support the government’s initiatives in that area. It is particularly important to remove any suggestion of conflict of interest, and it is encouraging that the amendments remove the requirement for an Australian government director to be appointed to the board of each RDC.

However, I must say that I do have some twinges of concern about the strengthening of the relationship between each board and the minister, simply based on my own experience of ministerial interference in the activities of various organisations around this country and the way in which ministers of the current government are operating to dispense largesse and favour to particular electoral districts across the country. I also make an observation about the ongoing continuing interference by this government, and one particular minister, in the affairs of Aboriginal community based organisations. I think, however, that the amendments are overall an adequate response to the Review of the Corporate Governance of Statutory Authorities and Officeholders, the Uhrig report.

However, I would like the House to consider just for a while what research and development means in regional, rural and remote Australia, most particularly in Northern Australia. The north is crying out for research to provide a basis for sustainable development. It is fair to say that development is being held back because we know too little about the sustainable use of northern environments, and that includes the marine environment as well as the terrestrial environment. That being said, our research capacity—our ability to understand and to act on our understanding—has been drastically cut as a direct result of actions of this government.

It is a telling comment, I believe, on the hypocrisy of what goes on in this place at times that this government continues to talk up opportunities for agricultural expansion in the north while, at least, all but ending our capacity to provide a solid research base for that development. I welcomed the Prime Minister’s announcement earlier this year of a northern water task force. I am not sure about its chair. Nevertheless, I support the idea of us looking at issues to do with water in Northern Australia. Understanding water regimes in northern environments is the key to sustainable pastoral and agricultural development. And, with the drought biting in the southern half of the continent, there is, as you would know, Mr Deputy Speaker, renewed interest in the north where rainfall, while seasonal, is certainly more reliable.

State and territory governments throughout that vast region have undertaken significant water conservation work, and this will provide a platform for the task force. Indeed, I hope it does not go about duplicating work which has already been done in Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland. Much work already has been done. What I said at the time of the announcement of that task force was that the first thing that the government needed to do to improve the task force’s chances of being successful was to plug a brain drain—one of its own making.

Last year, the CSIRO agricultural research station at Berrimah in Darwin was shut down and CSIRO funding has subsequently been restricted. Last year, the weeds cooperative research centre was defunded. In the near future, the Tropical Savannas CRC will come to the end of its useful life—and I will talk more about that CRC later. We cannot afford to lose one of them, but we are set to lose all three. Together, they have been providing the kinds of insights and information on maximising crop yields, efficient use of available water, pest and disease management, grazing regimes and fire management that underpin an environmentally sustainable and profitable rural industry sector.

We have yet, of course, to see much research into the social dimensions of any expansion in the rural economy, and I would suggest that this is an important element to consider before we contemplate how that expansion might proceed. There is the need to have a deep appreciation of the infrastructure needs of Northern Australia—which include commercial and essential services like roads and communications—to help bring the vision of development to reality.

That said, I am confident that the make-up of the task force, comprising, as it will, government in partnership with the scientific, commercial and Indigenous communities, will be a crucial ingredient of its success. But I am concerned about whether it has the research base to do its job and to do it well. The kind of research we need includes, but goes beyond, the primary industry and energy focus of the RDCs. There is already research in some important areas in the north, but our research portfolio needs to be boosted if it is to be of much use to the task force.

I have already mentioned the Tropical Savannas CRC, which spans the top of the nation, from Queensland, through the Territory and across to Western Australia, and which has been an invaluable research tool for the cattle industry in the savanna belt in particular. The Tropical Savannas CRC has been the host organisation for a very innovative and exciting development called the North Australian Indigenous Land and Sea Management Alliance, more commonly known as NAILSMA. NAILSMA’s brief is to support locally based Indigenous land and sea research and management programs and initiatives from the Torres Strait across to the Indian Ocean. Its research projects include dugong and marine turtle management, foreshore management across the variety of environments in Northern Australia, Indigenous knowledge conservation, scoping tropical rivers, and leadership, scholarship and communication.

It is also worth noting that NAILSMA member organisations, particularly the marine ranger groups from Weipa to Broome, provide an invaluable service to the entire Australian community when they apply their knowledge of sea country to tracking and surveillance of illegal activity in our waters. NAILSMA’s mainstream work, however, should be of great interest to the northern waters task force. I think the government needs to understand the importance of finding and supporting a proper home for NAILSMA once the Tropical Savannas CRC goes out of existence.

In the Territory there is also the Darwin based CRC for Aboriginal Health, which is halfway through its second funding period and which is providing valuable insights into preventative health, as well as managing chronic disease among Indigenous people. The work of the CRC is backed by, among others, the Centre for Remote Health, in Alice Springs. It is, unfortunately, one of the few remaining ‘public good’ CRCs—a CRC which is not and indeed cannot be expected to deliver a commercial return and morph into a commercial research and development organisation. Unfortunately, it is one of the few.

In Alice Springs the CSIRO maintains its Centre for Arid Zone Research and is a major partner in the Desert Knowledge CRC, which is essentially another ‘public good’ CRC that is looking toward commercial outcomes from research that will help to deliver sustainable livelihoods for people who live in desert environments. Its brief is to: provide sustainable livelihoods for desert people that are based on natural resource and service enterprise opportunities that are environmentally and socially appropriate; encourage sustainable remote desert settlements that support the presence of desert people, particularly remote Aboriginal communities, as a result of improved and efficient governance and access to services; foster thriving desert regional economies that are based on desert competitive advantages, bringing together Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities, government and industry; and apply social science insights into governance.

Alice Springs has also long been the home of the Centre for Appropriate Technology, which has pioneered research into, and the development of, low-cost, low-impact and energy-efficient technology for remote community living. There is support from the private sector on the energy front, too, with two Territory businessmen leading the field in energy conservation and alternative power sources. Alan Langworthy and Juergen Zimmermann began by supplying power generating equipment to mining sites, industrial complexes and remote communities and now they are pioneering wind-diesel systems and applying new technology to damping down power surges. They are actually exporting their technology to Malaysia, Alaska, Antarctica and Portugal, and they built the new power station for the Cocos Islands community, which is in my electorate.

There is a growing emphasis on social research at Charles Darwin University, with the School of Social and Policy Research looking at the reform of educational systems, hosting the National Accelerated Literacy Program and investigating more accurate and relevant demographic studies that take into account the nature of the Territory’s population. The internationally renowned Menzies School of Health Research, now under the auspices of CDU’s Institute of Advanced Studies, has made an international impact with pioneering work on malaria and melioidosis to complement its important work in all aspects of Indigenous health. Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education has also recently announced itself as a new player in Indigenous research. Over in Queensland, James Cook University, with campuses in Townsville and Cairns, has an enviable reputation.

I have listed these examples of what we are doing to illustrate what is currently happening in research in the north. It has always had a regional and national impact and, increasingly, is having an international impact. It is entirely appropriate for government to support and build on this research base to meet the challenges of northern development. We need more hydrological research to support what we are trying to do already, let alone what we might be expected to achieve through the workings of the northern waters task force. We need sustained research into pastoral and agricultural programs and we need research into models of appropriate and sustainable regional development. What we do not need is a return to the days of the carpetbagger and the quick fix approach.

It used to be a standing joke that the Northern Territory News had an all-purpose headline set in type: ‘Territory set to boom’. The accompanying story was often about a big dollar pie in the sky scheme that was going to be the magic bullet that would end our economic dependence and allow us to forge ahead as rich and free citizens of Australia. The schemes, as you might imagine, never got beyond the inflated headlines. If they did, they proved to be modest in the extreme. But the common factor is that rarely did they consider the need for a sound and comprehensive research base for the future wellbeing of the north. We need that research base if we are to sustainably expand our agricultural and pastoral yields and make some contribution to beating the drought. That means, I say again, we need the government to support and extend our existing research capacity.

But the government should also note that, within the requirements of good governance, the north is equally—and rightly—concerned with how we do the business of research. For research to be meaningful and appropriate to our needs, we have found collaborative approaches to be the most successful. One of the common features of CRCs, for instance, is that they bring together partners from government, industry and academia to work together collaboratively to determine research agendas for the common good. In the north, that means we have to involve Indigenous people as true partners if we are to get anywhere near sustainable outcomes from appropriate and meaningful research.

We cannot, for instance, consider what makes a sustainable environment in zones of extreme climatic conditions—the arid centre, the monsoonal Top End or the fabulously rich variety of marine environments—without tapping into the intimate environmental knowledge of Indigenous Australians. We should not even begin to think of how people can live in these conditions without looking at matters to do with traditional diet, food harvesting, social systems and population densities. Involving Aboriginal people as partners is not just a matter of equity; it is about learning from success. It is about an exchange of knowledge. Aboriginal physical and cultural survival in northern Australia is a success story whichever way you look at it. So when the north is targeted for another big spending task force, and the government sends out their heavies to talk it up, I just ask for a deep and abiding recognition of the way we do business and a respect for what we see as a diverse northern community that can contribute. It is no use talking things up unless you listen first to what the people of the north say and then learn from what they know.

The legislation we have been discussing today and which I have used as a mechanism to talk about the issues to do with research in northern Australia is to be commended—there is no question about that. It is very important, as the member for Corangamite pointed out, that we acknowledge the way in which these regional development corporations have worked in partnership with the industry sectors that they serve, and that is a very positive thing.

I say to the government that, in the context of getting the sustainable view of northern Australia, you need to do a great deal more than you have done. You need to ensure that you do not take the research capacity that exists away from us in the way you have done previously, that you actually build upon it and build upon the knowledge base that exists so that we can get a more sustainable use of our resources in a way which would profit not only the regional economies of northern Australia but the Australian economy generally.

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