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

I second the motion because it is imperative and it is urgent that we debate this bill today. The reason why is that God's not making any more land but in Australia we act like he is. We continue to concrete over our best farmland in our nation. We don't value our farmland. We think that there will just be more of it, and there won't. It is a finite resource that belongs to all Australians.

Look at South Australia, my state. Only 11 per cent of our land is considered arable, only nine per cent is under production and only four per cent of the total land area of South Australia is considered highly arable farmland, where you have 500 millimetres of rainfall a year on average. And yet it is that four per cent that is under the most threat in my state, and it's under threat from the expansion of housing—the continual urban sprawl. We are going to get to a point in our nation where we have nowhere to farm, nowhere that has quality land, because it's all going to be housing. What are we going to eat?

These decisions that we make in this place today affect generations to come. The decisions that we make in this place today are decisions about which in 100 years time fellow Australian are going to say: 'What on earth were you doing? Why did you not protect our most important resource?' That is why we must debate this today.

I commend the member for Calare. I second this motion and commend him for this bill, for his foresight and for his insight, because right across Australia our local and state governments, through greed and through laziness, are continuing to carve up every decent bit of farmland, turn it into 300-square-metre blocks and stick a house on them. We're going to have nowhere to grow food. And what does that mean? Where do we get our food from? We're still going to need to eat as a nation. Do we import all of our food? Does our milk come from overseas? Does all of our food—everything you buy in the supermarket? It's bad enough now how difficult it is to find Australian food on our supermarket shelves. In generations to come, that will become worse. We must support this bill and we must debate this bill today, because in my electorate, whether it's down at Sellicks; at Mount Barker, outside of my electorate; out to Roseworthy; or further out, we are just carving up more and more of the nation's best farmland.

In fact, in South Australia back in 1991, the South Australian government's natural resources management standing committee did a report on the alienation of rural farmlands. They said that, if rural lands continue to be alienated at the rate and in the manner permitted in the past, the state will be faced with a serious conflict between commercial farmers and other land users and, ultimately, significant losses in primary production are likely.

That was 34 years ago, and I can tell you that, in my state, since that time, we have gone further and further. The urban sprawl just continues to go further and further. I look at where we used to grow wheat. I look at where we had cattle, where we had strawberry farms, where we had mushroom farms—just beyond. And now it's all housing, and it's going to get worse and worse. We should be making decisions in this place that protect that farmland.

As the member for Calare said, over in Canada—if anyone here travels to Europe, they will see that they value their farmland. They value their food security. But, here, we just think God's going to make more of it. Well, he's not. We know that, with climate change, we're going to get drier and drier as a continent. We know that where that line is—we have Goyder's Line in South Australia. They say that it's going to become lower and lower and that the arable land will get smaller and smaller.

In South Australia, just four per cent of our farmland is highly arable farmland. That should be protected for that purpose. It should be farmland. We need to have national leadership, and that is why this is being called on in this parliament. I would urge the parliament to act on this today for future generations tomorrow that deserve our doing something today, while we still can, to fix and address this.

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