Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I am a farmer, as is the member for Barker, who is barking away up there, and I have personal views. But I do believe that in some of the policy issues that have been in the parliamentary sector, both state and federal, for probably the last couple of decades there are very subtle—and in some cases not so subtle—messages being sent to the farm sector, the agricultural community, that we are not needed. It is a question that we really have to take some cognisance of: do we want it, and why? Obviously, food production is important. We all eat. Our agricultural sector exports 80 per cent of what we produce to other countries who presumably need to eat and some of whom do not have much in the way of finance to pay for that food. In those negotiations, quite often the price of the product that we grow and sell is very close or below the cost of production. So in a sense we are an export nation.

I thank the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, who has just arrived, for being here. Being an export nation and relying on exports for a great deal of our income, we need to overproduce and send those products to other countries. There are a range of issues where policy is actually on a collision course, and there were some real insights into some of the points of collision during the climate change debate that recently took place. That debate is, of course, still taking place. We are told that we need agriculture in this country because we need to produce food. We need to produce food, particularly in the long term, because the globe’s population is growing. Every time we produce a surplus in this country we face what are essentially corrupt world markets, and then we have a domestic cost structure which does not reflect the nature of our export economy. So we have the worst of both worlds: a corrupt export arrangement and, at home, an artificial cost structure that affects our capacity to make those export opportunities profitable.

The climate change debate has raised a number of issues. It is suggested that carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide are concerns in terms of global warming. When we look at the role of land use there are certain positives and negatives. The minister would be well aware of some of these issues. We are told there are potential negatives in terms of methane. We are told there are potential negatives in terms of the use of fossil fuels in the agricultural sector. We are told that the transport sector is a major emitter. When we look at agriculture in this country, particularly but not only in the grains industries, we see that we export most of what we produce to other countries. Then we exchange most of those export dollars for fossil fuels which we bring back to this country.

So, in a carbon economy, we are doing two negatives. In the grains industry we produce a product—for instance, wheat, which contains starch, a carbon—which is needed for the food business. We transport that to the seaport, we put it on boats, we transport it overseas—so we are actually shipping carbon—and then we sell that product. Occasionally we have to bribe an Arab to be able to unload that particular commodity. Then we bring back a fossil fuel, which is carbon again. In a carbon economy, what role do the minister and others see agriculture playing? What are the negatives in terms of the export arrangements that we currently believe in, or is Australia badly placed in terms of distance if a carbon economy is to come into play? There are a number of issues there that need to be addressed.

We are told that we need land for food production. As I said, 80 per cent of what we produce is exported, so we are at the behest of other people, not the domestic market. We are told that land should be utilised in that capacity most of the time. But what if it were not? What if, in a carbon world, we were actually to plant trees? In fact, there was an incentive built into the government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme to shift land use away from food and towards trees. What if we went to second generation biofuels with, for instance, a deep-rooted, annually harvested plant such as switchgrass, which was the original grass on the prairies of the United States before the Corn Belt was developed? That particular plant has the capacity to produce biomass for second generation biofuels. It has the capacity to grow with very little nitrogen input, so it ticks a box in terms of nitrous oxide. It has the capacity to sequester carbon at depth, which is one of the problems in the accumulation of soil carbon. So why would we not, in a carbon economy, promote some of these non-food activities in terms of the surplus that we produce?

We have this policy conundrum, and it varies depending on which portfolio we actually look at. In my view we are not doing very well in the water portfolio, given the negotiations that are taking place between the Murray-Darling people and the people on the ground who use water and have allocations within the Murray-Darling system. We are told that we will have to use less water because of so-called climate change. But, when it is suggested that perhaps there are ways of bringing water into the system to compensate for the human induced climate change component of the loss of water in the Murray-Darling system, that is scoffed at as being in breach of nature. We are told that parts of Queensland will get more water because of human induced climate change and that the southern parts of Australia will get less, but rectifying both of those issues is deemed as being, still, interference with nature. In my view, it is not.

So the land use debate becomes a fairly significant debate. Do we use farmland to produce food or do we use it in the most economic way in terms of a carbon economy? If we went down the carbon economy route we might well not use much of our land for food production at all. Rather than growing grain to export and exchange for fuel, we may end up growing biomass for fuel, using it within our nation and ticking a lot of the boxes in current climate change policy that relate to agriculture being included globally in any sort of future emissions trading scheme.

The other issues I would like to raise relate to a report that came out only yesterday from the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Primary Industries and Resources, of which I am a member, entitled Farming the future: The role of government in assisting Australian farmers to adapt to the impacts of climate change. There is a need for much more research into soil science. Soil science—the capacity to know what our soils are doing, how soils are responding to various treatments of infiltration and the effect of the accumulation of the humus and organic matter in soils and soil carbon—is being neglected. In fact, governments have virtually eradicated many of our basic soil scientists and have left the science up to commercial interests. It was not seen to be fashionable for many years, but suddenly climate change has come along and soil carbon has been raised as an issue. Now we are asking, ‘What can we do?’ and the answer is, ‘We don’t know; we’ll have to establish a number of funding arrangements so that we can find out what is going on in our soils.’ Irrespective of whether the emissions trading arrangements or the climate change issue goes away, a lot of this work needs to be done and, in fact, should have been done many years ago.

There is also the issue of competition, particularly on the Liverpool Plains. Many people would be aware of that issue where there is an interface between the need for coal dollars as opposed to long-term food production on some of the very fertile black soil areas not only in New South Wales but also in parts of Queensland, particularly where there is an interface with underlying groundwater systems. That interface could have severe repercussions with the current arrangements to establish end-of-valley caps et cetera for the Murray Darling system. We have a range of issues out there. For instance, just recently we have had the property rights debate. It was raised again in question time today. What rights do people have who own freehold land? I think we really need to think through that issue once again because there are some very old issues there. Native vegetation is one issue that is raised from time to time, but there are other issues that relate to the rights of individuals and offside impacts such as longwall mining on the alluvial floodplain that is underpinned with a groundwater system that not only involves the localised area but also has a hydraulic effect for hundreds of kilometres and impacts on the river systems as well.

I do not think we have put together a policy that reconciles a lot of these issues. On one side, people are saying that agriculture is about food. On the other side, people are saying the innovation may not be about food. And then we have another government policy that says we have to plant some trees. They will have an impact on the run-off into the Murray system and they will have an impact on the land available for food. It will have an impact on a whole range of things. Then you have policy initiatives that encourage tree planting. I am not taking sides, but we have to start thinking about the totality of what we are doing here because we have a lot of regional towns, communities, individuals and investors who need to know where this debate is going and where it is likely to end up.

This report raises a number of technologies—which I think is invaluable—particularly in relation to drought policy. I know the government is looking at new drought policy initiatives. I urge the government to look at some of the technologies that are raised in this report. Some of them have been mentioned by the opposition in dealing with what they call direct action on climate change. Many of the technologies are good for our soils, good for moisture infiltration, good for productivity and relate to drought. We have all heard of the ongoing exceptional circumstances debate. Just recently, a group of us on this primary industries and resources committee went out to a property near Bungendore called Mulloon Creek where we met with a chap called Tony Coote, who is practising natural sequence farming. It is similar to what Peter Andrews and others have been involved with. I would urge you, Minister, to actually take the time—and I are more than willing to go with you—to go out and have a look at what is happening there. I think the advances that are being made are quite remarkable. (Time expired)

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