Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

I rise in the strongest of support for the member for Indi's motion. Australian farmers are on the frontline of the war against climate change and primary producers are the most dependent of all Australians on the weather for their livelihoods. Droughts, floods and fires ravage our land, and more frequently than ever before. Repeated disasters and prolonged high temperatures are sapping the remaining environmental and agricultural resilience from our landscapes. If the current predictions come to pass, soon the entire length and breadth of the River Murray and the Murray-Darling Basin, the agricultural lifeline of four states and one territory, will be in the grips of a severe drought. Already most of the basin is the Bureau of Meteorology's severe deficiency category or worse. Yet the government has no coherent plan to address the medium- to long-term impacts of climate change on Australia's agriculture. While immediate drought relief is desperately needed, throwing buckets of money at short-term solutions with no view to medium- or long-term climate change mitigation or adaptation is an abandonment of Australian farmers to a blinkered ideology of climate change denialism.

The government should make no mistake: rural Australians are waking up to the hotter, dryer, harsher future that awaits them. I would say, in fact, that it doesn't just await them but is here now. If the government refuse to minimise Australia's contribution to climate change, they can at least minimise its impact by properly preparing our frontline farmers for the hotter, dryer, harsher future it will bring. In practical terms, this means the government must design and implement the national strategy on agriculture and climate change that the member for Indi has just argued for in persuasive detail. We do not need bandaids; we need a comprehensive plan of attack. I join the member for Indi in championing a better future for our farmers.

As a matter of urgency, the government needs to instruct the Murray-Darling Basin Authority to conduct a comprehensive review of the climate change risks in the Murray-Darling Basin to complement a national strategy on agriculture and climate change. It beggars belief that the impact of climate change has yet to be taken into account in the implementation of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and that the government's only plan to do so appears to be at the next required review, in 2026, which is still another seven years away. Another six-plus years of inaction cannot be defended. In my electorate of Mayo, our apple, pear and cherry growers are facing the new normal, which is severe hailstorms and hotter seasons with lower rainfall. Support for horticulture netting to protect our crops is an excellent example of a climate change mitigation measure, and it's desperately needed. I've spoken in this place repeatedly about the urgent needs of our growers. If we had netting, it would mean that we would use less water. There would be around 30 per cent less waste. We talk about growing to a $100 billion agricultural industry. Well, that is a real and very easy way that we can do it. And that netting needs to be right across the nation.

Something that needs to be part of any national agriculture and climate change strategy is a floor for recurrent funding support for community environmental organisations. These groups are dedicated to their local environment because they love the country they live on and want to see it thrive and prosper. In Mayo, the Coorong, Lower Lakes and Murray Mouth Recovery Project, known as CLLMM, is an excellent example of how modest funds can really mobilise our communities to great effect. Their work has achieved so much to safeguard the Lower Lakes and the Murray from further devastation. The lack of government commitment to even the most modest of recurrent floor funding switches off the life support for these organisations. When disaster comes around again, as it always does in Australia's landscape—and I have the most vulnerable part of the river; the mouth of the river flows through Mayo—the capacity to re-form these groups across the river is incredibly limited. We really need to make sure that we can provide longevity to these groups.

The new environmental program that the government has announced is a step in the right direction. I urge the government in the strongest of terms to continue with significant expansion and increased longevity of these programs. If we want our kids to continue to eat Australian food, we need to invest in and support agriculture and the environment that surrounds it.

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