Gary Gray (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Resources) Share this | Hansard source

I join the previous speaker in congratulating the women who won the rural leadership awards just last month—in particular, Jackie Jarvis, from Western Australia, who was runner-up to a very worthy winner in Pip Job. Jackie's work centred around building good jobs and good support structures for refugees, bringing people into our regional and rural communities to work, to have good lives and to enjoy the great environment and the strong communities of regional and provincial Australia, in this case rural and provincial Western Australia. Jackie's efforts were acknowledged by her peers and acknowledged by RIRDC through that wonderful evening.

My sister-in-law, Shelley Birch, who farms at Karoo in the northern wheat belt in Western Australia, was a past Western Australian winner from the early 2000s, demonstrating the importance of a vibrant rural sector, a broad understanding of what research actually means and an engaging culture of those things that we can do to lift the productivity of our rural sector in a meaningful and measurable way. The Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation is a great organisation, and it is a great evening that we all have here once a year to acknowledge the women from our regional, farming and primary industries communities for their simply outstanding effort.

The Rural Research and Development Legislation Amendment Bill 2014 is not an outstanding effort. This bill is a sneaky attempt to make a saving where no saving should exist. It is an attempt to take, as a saving, the fees paid by RDCs to international organisations as part of their international affiliations. I mentioned my family connections to the Western Australian grain belt. The Western Australian grain belt is an economic pillar not only of Western Australia but also of our nation. We produce, in Western Australia, our nation's export grain crop. That export grain crop frequently runs in the order of 12 million to 18 million tonnes or maybe even more per year. It earns us export income and generates good jobs. The Western Australian grain crop is mostly exported through the Kwinana terminal in my electorate, through CBH. But, importantly, our export grain crop is generated through, largely, family businesses run through the grain belt of Western Australia.

The Western Australian grain belt is a unique proposition. One hundred and twenty years ago, farmers attempting to grow crops in the grain belt of Western Australia found themselves unable to produce sustainable crops in the weak and ancient soils of Western Australia. They found themselves north of Geraldton, at Champion Bay, producing crops that were so weak and so feeble that communities faced malnutrition and starvation. The fix for the Western Australian grain belt was the discovery of the reason for the feeble soil, which was a lack of trace elements. That was done through science and the application of good research to understand the reasons why our soils of Western Australia were not capable of producing bountiful crops. It seemed, from the weather pattern and from the nature of the vegetation, that the grain belt of Western Australia should have been productive land. But the reality for our farmers trying to open up the hinterland around Geraldton was that it was simply impossible to grow a sustainable crop.

The science that understood the role that copper and other trace elements play in renovating those large tracts of land in Western Australia was simply second to none. The work that was done to apply superphosphate to the weak soils of Western Australia was simply second none. And, of course, the ability to apply those trace elements and the ability to apply superphosphate occurred in Western Australia at almost the same time as the application of the internal combustion engine to provide motor force and tractor capacity in Western Australia to allow the development not just of a science based grain belt but also a capital based grain belt. It was investment in substantial tractor capacity motor force that allowed the grain belt to be opened in Western Australia from the 1920s.

My wife's family moved to Doodlakine in the 1930s to open land in those circumstances. As my father-in-law, former Senator Peter Walsh, is fond of saying, the land which they opened at Doodlakine in the 1920s and 1930s has always been productive and returned the cost of that crop. Therein you have the great synergy between science, research and a productive rural sector.

As we speak here today, in the grain belt of Western Australia from Esperance through to Geraldton, crops are being taken off. My family at Coorow began the harvesting process three weeks ago, and the harvest is going pretty well. It is not going so well at Esperance where very bad weather conditions struck a number of property owners just north of Esperance, and the season does not look as if it is going to be good for them. All we can do from this place is offer our best wishes and acknowledge the importance of our rural industries and communities not just to Western Australia but to the nation.

That brings me to the importance of RDCs. RDCs are about establishing communities of knowledge in some areas where international funding is paid to international sister organisations. It is also about good science and being practically capable of implementing measures that we want to have in place, for instance, in managing a fishery. Fish tend not to respect national borders. Fish tend to swim wherever they choose and so therefore having RDCs which link with international organisations tends to be good public policy but also good policy in fisheries management. Good policy in fisheries management is about sustainability: it is very much about productivity and it is absolutely about ensuring a sustainable future.

When we look at the decision of the government to save a paltry $7 million, we would have to conclude that this is not simply unnecessary policy, it is not properly balanced policy. We are still in search of the new $100 million that the government said it would invest in RDCs. We are still in search of what that means, because we are confronted by the surprise that all we have to debate and consider here today are the cuts to RDCs—cuts to those very organisations that work in a collaborative and cooperative way with our regional communities; our scientists who help manage good public policy in agriculture industries; families; people like Pip and Jackie Jarvis—people whose family concern and interest in developing their good businesses and their strong regional communities had always until now been partnered with a deeply bipartisan approach to RDCs.

RDCs have always been a realistic and valuable part of our public policy infrastructure in primary industries for over a quarter of a century. They have grown in their influence from being specifically sectoral to on many occasions international, and are accountable to their membership organisations, transparent to government, supported by communities and celebrated by this parliament.

When we saw a $7 million saving over four years, many of us thought: 'I can't believe that that can be true. I cant' believe that you would attempt to extract a saving from such lean organisations'—organisations that are not simply run on the smell of an oily rag but on the rumour of the smell of on oily rag. The families and the communities that support our RDCs are genuinely frugal. They do not sign up to international organisations to have fun; they do it in the name of good research, good partnership, good science and good outcomes. Because good science is about regional solutions, and that is never more obvious than in the context of fisheries research and management.

We found ourselves genuinely struggling to understand: why this saving? We find ourselves incapable of understanding why—when RDCs bring together industry and researchers to establish research and development strategic directions and fund projects that provide industry with innovation and productivity tools—you would want to wind that back, especially in global marketplaces; especially when the farming family to which I belong is in competition every day of every week with potential grain suppliers out of the old Soviet Union, North America and South America. They need to be kept up to the game in whichever way they possibly can. They need not just the dollar support they receive from the Australian federal government but the emotional support.

I find it distasteful, unfortunate and unnecessary that, in the weeks following that terrific event in Parliament House where we acknowledged the winners of our RDC programs and I was simply overjoyed to see how well Jackie Jarvis had done—and the great project that Pip had brought and which was the national winner—we would not acknowledge that we see an efficient spend of public money in these organisations. We see an effective spend of public money. We see networks that support Australian farming families. We see international networks that support the productivity agenda that is critically important to key primary industries, in particular fisheries and fisheries management. We also find ourselves stepping back inside Australia and not embracing the world in which our agricultural and horticultural projects and produce need to compete. That is important, because the future of farming is the future of our regional communities. In Western Australia, Merredin, Geraldton, Mukinbudin, Esperance and Albany are all communities that live and go from strength to strength on the strength of our agricultural opportunities and fortunes. They need to know that governments will stand by them.

Not one of the people who I have spoken to about this bill was aware that the government had cuts in mind. Not one of them had in mind that the cuts would be to such an infinitesimal area of the operations of RDCs; yet it is such a very important area of the operation of RDCs. I find myself in opposition to this bill not simply because it makes no sense but also because I find myself surprisingly emotionally in opposition to this bill. That is because I know the great value that comes to our farming and our agricultural communities from good dollars that are spent effectively in the interests of our farming and regional communities. That is something that is so important and had never been questioned before through successive budgets in 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1997 and 1998—all the way through to today. We had never seen this sort of initiative from a federal government. I ask members of the government to please reassess why you are doing it and change your views. (Time expired)

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