Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) acknowledges:

(a) and applauds the efforts of Australian primary producers as they work to protect and rehabilitate the natural environment, often in conditions of extreme hardship;

(b) that Australian farmers have replanted the landscape via Landcare and the 20 Million Trees Programme;

(c) the personal commitment of Australian farmers to replanting the landscape; and

(d) that Victorian Farmers have won the fight against high saline water tables caused by tree clearing for mining and urban development in the 1800s;

(2) applauds the:

(a) environmental codes of conduct and farmers' voluntary compliance as applied to food growers by our local food manufacturers and retailers; and

(b) clean green image developed by Australia's food producers which adds great value to our food exports and domestic markets; and

(3) calls on the Government to designate a National Day of Australian Farming that celebrates their great achievements and their contributions to the nation.

Australian agriculture and its farm families have been pre-eminent in shaping Australia's values and cultural identity. Our First World War Anzacs survived the inhuman conditions at Gallipoli and the Western Front because they lived rough, made do and when mounted they could ride and shoot better than the enemy. They came off our farms. While few today will ever get their shoes dusty marking cattle or drafting a mob of sheep, most male MPs and senators in this parliament proudly wear elastic-sided boots every day—footwear developed for safe riding and hard work down on the farm. Australia's iconic dress is a wide-brimmed akubra and clothing reminiscent of the pastoralists at ease on the veranda after a long day in the paddock. Our bush poetry was once lauded and learnt by every school child, until we abandoned wholesale teaching of Australian history, afraid of the dark parts.

From the 1840s until 60 years ago, Australia figuratively rode on the sheep's back—although in the mid-1800s kangaroo was still the main meat on the table in Adelaide. Early horticulture in Australia was developed by the Chinese, who had originally arrived as miners, and up until the 1920s one-third of all of our horticulture was due to the Chinese, in particular in Western Australia. It was Australia's agribusiness innovation that invented the stump-jump plough that allowed cropping across our huge Mallee, arid and semiarid country. Our wheat varieties were developed by Australians like William Farrer, who gave us global competitiveness, ultimately in soft noodle wheats for Asia and the Middle East. Some 51 per cent of the Australian continent is still dedicated to farm production, with 90 per cent of that used for cattle grazing and sheep on native pastures in our arid and semiarid zones. But while that is a huge area, the value of cattle earnings are closely followed by wheat, dairy, vegetables, fruit, nuts and lamb meat and wool. Every day that the ceremonial mace is carried into our House of Representatives chamber, I am reminded of the contribution that wool once made to our economy as I see the golden rams heads encircling the shaft.

Wool in particular, but agriculture in general, established Australia as a thriving, innovative economy, battling the high risks of erratic rainfall in the driest inhabited continent on earth. Agriculture drove the establishment of large ports, manufacturing and service sectors. The early success of agriculture in Australia attracted foreign investment, especially from the UK, with vast holdings of land held by these interests; in particular, in the pastoral industry of Northern Australia. Cheap labour was an essential ingredient in establishing these early industries, with first convict and then Aboriginal labour sometimes working in slave-like conditions, and then the indentured workers in Queensland's sugar industry brought in from the Pacific. By the 1900s, Australia was one of the world's major food exporters, protected as it grew from its embryonic stages by high tariffs on imports and special Commonwealth country preferred-supplier status in markets like the UK.

Australian farmers have to compete and survive in one of the highest-risk and highest-input-cost environments in the world. At the same time, they are now the least supported by any government in the developed world, whether that be in the form of special measures, tariffs on imports, subsidised insurance for the multiplicity of perils, or government-supported research and development. The low dollar has helped our exports to be more competitive but it has also, unfortunately, increased the cost of fertilisers, machinery and other farm inputs. We in Australia must acknowledge the efforts and the struggles of our great farmers—and also their triumphs, and their production that is the envy of the world: our clean, green food.

Irrigated agriculture is less than one per cent of the land mass of the country but contributes more than 28.7 per cent of the value of all agricultural production. Much of the irrigation of Australia comes from harnessing waters in the rivers of the Murray-Darling Basin. Unfortunately, with the unintended adverse consequences of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, we now have some $5 million to $7 million per day lost in value from primary production across the basin. This is due to the loss of water access security, and to speculator-driven peak prices for that water. Onshore and offshore superannuation funds and state governments are profiteering in this temporary water market, speculating on traded irrigation-system infrastructure built with taxpayer funds, all at the expense of the farmer, who quite simply cannot compete and is losing their enterprise.

We have to acknowledge the national efforts of our farmer community. The Day of Australian Farming is a day when we could celebrate their great achievements and their contributions to the nation. It is a day to remind our food consumers that 'down, down, everyday low prices' are not sustainable. Give the farmer a go. Celebrate their achievements, but acknowledge the incredible difficulties that they must today survive.

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