Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

I will begin by formally moving the amendment distributed in my name, and I understand that it will be seconded by the member for Lingiari, and I thank him for that. So, I move:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House notes that the Turnbull Government has failed to ensure that the collection of levies and charges which are directed to our agriculture-based research and development corporations enables a greater effort to improve the take-up of the best and latest farm management practices, particularly in light of the current drought crisis".

I've deliberately moved that after giving it some thought, for very important reasons. Obviously the opposition will be supporting the bill before the House. This is about the third attempt by this government to get what is a fairly simple change in the legislation. It's a very significant change, but very simple in legislative terms. It should not have been so difficult. In fact I think the first time I spoke on a bill related to these changes was in March 2016. The government clearly was unable to have the legislation passed through the parliament before the July 2016 election. Then we had another go after the election and that bill secured passage. On both occasions, during the debates I warned that there were real and meaningful concerns about the lack of protections around the way in which levy payer information might be shared with third parties. One of the things that this bill does is give greater confidence that that assurance has now been forthcoming, although I do note that in the Senate committee report there are some ongoing concerns, particularly around the excessive use of delegated executive power rather than enshrining some of these measures in legislation. But these are very difficult to fix from opposition. We will let this bill go through in its current form and give the system an opportunity to work and to work well.

I want to highlight two points. I'll return to them both. First of all, our research and development corporation structure, its architecture and the way it operates is in need of review. The second point is that I think it is wrong and inappropriate for us to be speaking on agriculture matters in this chamber at this point in time without having a conversation about drought. As the Prime Minister said yesterday, we are certainly in the worst drought since the 1960s and, if we don't receive meaningful rain in the not-too-distant future, we will almost certainly be in the worst drought in the history of European settlement. Many farmers are hurting, and hurting badly, along with their families. At this point in time it should be a priority for this government.

It disappoints me again that there are no members of the government speaking on this bill. I see the member for Calare in the House. He may be on chamber duty or he may be a late addition to speak on the bill; I'm not sure. But this is not just today; this is now a trend. Week in, week out, in parliamentary sittings, I find myself in here talking to my colleagues. That is wonderful and fine, because they all have a deep and abiding interest in matters to do with agriculture and are certainly concerned about the drought; but I never see any speakers on the government's side. What is the explanation for this absence? You could come to many conclusions. I like to think they haven't abandoned the agriculture sector—surely not. It's such a substantial part of our national economy. I suspect they're just a bit shy about coming in here these days to try to defend the record, behaviour and lack of achievement of this government. I remember that just after the 2013 election it was quite the opposite. Because they had so many members of the National Party, for example—I concede that a number of Liberals represent regional seats—they'd be in here en masse wanting to talk about agriculture policy and the issues impacting upon agriculture. But these days they don't turn up at all. It's very curious. I think they're just embarrassed. I don't think they want to be in here defending the Turnbull government and its record, particularly in the agriculture sector—another matter I will return to. For five years we've had lots of talk about the agriculture sector being the fifth pillar, I think it was, of our economy, but all we have is a failed white paper and a pedestrian response to drought, notwithstanding the fact that we have been alerting them to the issues for up to five years now, but I'll return to that.

Throughout the course of this week a number of people have announced that they're leaving this place at the next election, and it makes one think about the reason we are all here. I'm sure that without exception we are all here to make a difference, to make Australia a better place. Most of us arrive here having chosen a political party as our vehicle, and we choose the party which is most likely to achieve the things that drive us. You always have to be cautious about trying to summarise it, but I think it's fair to say that it's as simple as this: we're here to expand the economy; to make sure that everyone gets a fair share of the dividends of that growth; to ensure that every Australian, regardless of their background or economic position in life, has the best opportunity to capitalise on a strong Australian economy; and to give a hand up to those who slip through the cracks for whatever reason—be it prejudice, poverty, disability or any other form of disadvantage, we as a parliament are there to ensure that they too have an opportunity and to help them get there.

After more than 30 years I still very firmly believe—in fact, I know—that I chose the right party in the Australian Labor Party. I have no regrets. I think it's fair to say that Labor's achievements in government have been many: in education and the expansion of higher education in particular to all Australians, not just those with the biggest credit cards; in workers' rights, one of the key reasons for our existence; in building social justice and equality; in correcting the wrongs of the past through our response to the Mabo case, for example, and former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's apology to the stolen generations—the list goes on and on. In the eighties and nineties the Australian Labor Party opened up and made the Australian economy more competitive, putting us on a path to 27 years now, I think, of unbroken economic growth, building a resilience which allowed us to go through the global financial crisis without technically going into recession. They are big achievements, and all of us on this side are proud of them and like to talk about them.

Amongst those many achievements of the eighties and nineties was one that doesn't rate too many mentions and deserves to be mentioned far more—that is, under former minister John Kerin, the establishment of our current agriculture based research and development corporations. In all parts of our economy we can't hope to be competitive and to meet all our aspirations in future decades ahead if we haven't fully embraced and adopted research and innovation, and agriculture is no exception. What was somewhat unique around the world about the research and development corporation structure John Kerin put in place was its co-funding model. In other words, the government took the view that, to maximise effort, it was appropriate for taxpayers to match levy payer contributions under that research model up to a certain gross value—I think it's 0.5 per cent—of the sector involved. Back then, and still today, we have 15 agriculture based research and development corporations across the various commodities: Meat & Livestock Australia in the red meat sector, Dairy Australia in the dairy sector, the Grains Research and Development Corporation in the grains sector—the list goes on. Four of those remain statutory research and development corporations—in other words, tightly controlled by the government under legislation—and the balance of them, 11, are now industry-owned organisations. All of them do a wonderful job. The Kerin model lives on today and lives on very, very effectively. However, 30 or more years on, it's time to revisit that model to ensure that levy payer money and taxpayer money is being spent in the most efficient and effective way in each of those commodity sectors and in terms of the contribution they make to the Australian economy.

That was certainly the view of the government of the day in 2011, when it commissioned a Productivity Commission report into the agriculture based rural research and development corporations. I have the report with me. It should be compulsory reading for anyone with an interest in the agriculture sector. It's a comprehensive report, and it identified back then that there were ways in which we could make that model even better, because obviously, over that considerable period of time since 1991, the economy and the world have changed so substantially. It could be taken as a criticism of the former Labor government that, having reported in 2011, we didn't embrace any of the changes recommended either, but I think most people would fairly appreciate that there was a very limited time between the tabling of this report and the September 2013 election. But this government has had five years to have a think about this report, and the only thing we've seen in terms of adjustment of that model are the measures that we're talking about today. Again, while I think they are important and Labor supports them, I hardly think they are revisiting in a full review the RDC system and how it operates.

The bill makes a number of changes that will ensure improvements to the collection and reporting of agricultural levies and charges to ensure better consistency between the legislation and industry changes. The bill also makes improvements to the effective operation of levy payer registers. I will focus on that point for a few moments. As I said, the last time the government attempted to get this bill through the parliament, I made the point that, surely, people listening to the debate would be surprised that levy payers, whether they be cattle producers or grain growers, pay their levies to the Australian government, which then passes them on to the relevant research and development corporation. But the part that would really surprise people is that the research and development corporations still don't know who their levy payers are. These are organisations which are focused on their commodity sector, and there are many of them. The 15 RDCs I mentioned strike 130 levies collected across 77 commodity sectors. They look at their sectors, and their job is to ensure that farmers, growers and producers have available to them the very best in research and innovation and that that innovation is getting inside the farm gate down on the ground where it really can make a difference. But RDCs don't know who their levy payers are, which I think is somewhat surprising, because if you don't know who they are, you're not necessarily well placed to have a proper dialogue with them. These amendments will allow that opportunity, but, more particularly, they are about making sure that that information isn't inappropriately shared with third parties, and that's the issue I raised on the last two occasions that I spoke to this bill. Hopefully, these amendments put in place the changes that provide the necessary protection. Data and information like that, as you know, is quite a valuable commodity these days, and our right not to have that information shared is very important as well. Again, while this is not a big change to the model, the changes will be important if they are properly implemented.

I return to drought and, more generally, lost opportunities in the agriculture sector for the course of the past five years. I note that in the Prime Minister's speech—I think it was in his last speech and certainly in the Prime Minister's speech yesterday—he made reference again to this aspiration that Australian agriculture will be valued at $100 billion by 2030, I think it was. I think it's important to have aspirations and goals, whether they be exercise goals—losing weight—or whatever it might be. Goals can't hurt. But I think $100 billion is somewhat modest. I think we can do better than that, if we try harder—and we should strive to do better than that. In fact, $100 billion would just leave us on the same trajectory we've been on for the past 10 years, if you rely on the ABS stats.

We can do better than that, but it won't happen magically. It will require ongoing hard work by those who work in the production of our food and fibre. It will also require smart guidance from government—something that's been lacking over the course of the past five years. In fact, over the course of the past five years there has been no guidance. We waited very patiently for an agriculture white paper, and when it finally came it was a dud. That's something that I think is generally accepted in the agriculture sector now. You won't hear too many saying it publicly, but when you talk to the sector's leadership and to growers and producers on the ground, that's what they say all the time. Expectations were raised, and they were deflated as a result of that white paper. It's never referred to now. In fact, when the now Prime Minister, Mr Turnbull, launched the latest document, spruiking the aspiration of $100 billion by 2030, I thought it was an admission on his part that the world had moved on, that the agriculture white paper was no longer of any use to the sector and that it would provide no guidance and provide nothing special to help us go beyond those aspirations.

That takes me to drought: I talked already about how bad the drought is, and it is certainly very, very bad. Is there a role for government? Yes, there certainly is. Is there a limit to how much government can do? Yes, there certainly is. Governments can't make it rain. But there are important things for government to do. The first, of course, is to ensure that those who, for whatever reason, just haven't been able to manage the severity of the drought have an income support payment for them and their families when things get tough. You can prepare for some droughts—many droughts, very bad droughts—but you can't necessarily prepare for the worst of the droughts. And there will always be those who, through no fault of their own, have been unable to work their way through a protracted drought period.

But there's another important point to that. It's why, when the COAG ministers entered into an intergovernmental agreement in 2013, they said, 'Yes, there should be a welfare payment'—I shouldn't say 'welfare payment'; I meant to use the right description, which is income support payment—'but it should be limited,' so that people have three years to work their way through their situation. And if, through no fault of their own, they haven't been able to adjust sufficiently to make their farm enterprise viable, then it might be time to do something else and to liquidate their assets. The important part of that, of course, is that there were supposed to be other measures taking place, other guidance from government, throughout the five-year period of the intergovernmental agreement, which would have helped farmers build that resilience and that capacity to make the decision to stay. But that work hasn't been done.

So, what happens? The government takes the clumsy, lazy policy way out and says, 'Oh, we'll just extend it for another year.' Well, we support extending it for another year. The drought is very, very bad, and that support is desperately needed. But it's not a policy solution to an issue that we will continue to confront for decades to come. We have to accept that the climate is changing; it's becoming more challenging. Those on the other side want to argue about what is causing it. I'll let them go. Interestingly, Minister Littleproud said on Q&A last Monday night that he didn't care what was causing it, which I thought was a curious approach. They can have that argument, but they should at least embrace the precautionary principle and accept that if there's a case to be made that human activity is causing the climate to change for the worst, we should act. So mitigation is step one. The second step is adaptation. If the majority of the scientists are right and the weather will only continue to get more challenging, we need to assist farmers to adjust to that situation.

Let me give the government a rap, as it will please the member for Dawson. There are two components to this. I won't dwell on the positive for too long, member for Dawson, because it won't take me long. There are two components to this. First, we need to give farmers the incentives that they need to invest in infrastructure: water infrastructure, irrigation infrastructure and fencing, et cetera—

Mr Christensen interjecting—

I'll take the interjection from the member for Dawson. He says dams. They talk about dams in a generic sense. We never know whether they're talking about on farm dams, off farm dams, off river dams, catchment dams—

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