Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

My colleague next to me is smirking, but I raise this issue because it is an area that is much loved. These pork products—the bacon, the ham; the list continues—are favourites at our local farmers markets and our foodie restaurants in Central Victoria and Bendigo.

The pigs on McIvor Farm never see a concrete shed. They never experience an enclosed environment. They are truly free range. The passion of the owners is to have a farm with both agricultural and biological farming principles that are focused on the environment. The owners of this farm believe, and they advocate quite loudly, that to be an environmental farm they need to focus on the land. They say that they work with both pigs and their love of nature to produce this purely free-range system. Their system, they argue, is very different. To ensure that they have free range, they ensure that the pigs are part of the regeneration of their land. Those who may have farming electorates know that pigs can be very destructive to the land—uprooting soil, disturbing the land, creating problems, and so on—so the owners introduced the dung beetle to assist with the nutrients in the soil, to ensure that the soil and the plants are continuing to regenerate, repair and grow. That is just one example of how a farm near my electorate is already using the dung beetle.

I do, though, have a few concerns with an aspect of this motion, whilst we have said that we support the bipartisan approach, and that is the call in the motion for agriculture research and development organisations to provide support in researching the benefits and the quarantine implications associated with importing these two new species. If the government are serious about this point in the motion, then why have we seen such a debacle when it comes to biosecurity? Again and again, we have organisations coming out and saying that this government does not know what it is doing about biosecurity. Last week in estimates we heard that the most recent industry to come out to raise questions about the government's approach to environmental biosecurity, the Tasmanian salmon industry, is concerned at the lack of consultation with industry. It is another example of how the government like to stand up and pretend that they are being the champion of agriculture and the champion of these issues, yet one hand is not talking to the other. If they are serious about dung beetles, if they are serious about the importing of new species and the quarantine implications which are outlined in this motion, then why on earth are they not doing what other industries in agriculture are calling for and consulting properly?

I mentioned at the beginning of my speech, and would like to reiterate it towards the end, the cuts to R&D, the cuts to the CSIRO, the cuts to the universities who will train the scientists to do the research that this motion is calling for— (Time expired)

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