Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the gallery for that warm welcome. It is not normal that we get so many people in here listening to the address-in-reply to the Governor-General’s speech!

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wouldn’t get too excited, Member for New England.

Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There are a number of issues that I would like to raise in relation to the Governor-General’s address. The first one that I would like to raise is the comments the Governor-General made about climate change. Obviously the incoming government have put climate change very close to the top of the agenda in many of the ministerial portfolios that they believe will be impacted.

The particular portfolio that I would like to spend a little bit of time mentioning in relation to climate change is the farm sector. I think it was ignored, essentially, by the previous government. The carbon task force that was set up by John Howard did not include the farm sector and did not see a role for the farm sector in terms of the debate on emissions and carbon, et cetera. I was very pleased the other day to hear the Prime Minister, after discussions at ABARE in the Outlook Conference, announce that he was going to fund the carrying out—and I believe the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry may well have carriage of this—of some research into the contribution that soil science can make in relation to the natural sequestration of carbon in the soil. I have raised this issue on a number of occasions and I have actually put a document to every member of parliament. I would urge them to read that document, Mr Deputy Speaker Shultz—and it is good to see you in the chair. I would urge them to read that document because I think there are a number of questions raised in it that should encourage the Prime Minister, the minister for agriculture and other members of the government to get more involved in researching this issue.

The Prime Minister made the point the other day that there are some difficulties in measuring carbon in organic matter, humus, in the soil and in maintaining a measurement over time. Such difficulties may well be there, though there are carbon trades taking place in the United States as we speak—so someone has some measuring device that has overcome or may potentially have overcome the concerns that some have expressed. What that means to me—and should mean to all of us—is that research is required to find out what the problems are with measurement, to find out what the problems are with sequestration of carbon and to find out what sort of soil management practices could be involved in making some of our soils a natural sink for carbon. Australian soils are very poor in terms of humus and organic matter in the main, but some of our soils are not. And early research indicates that, where various management practices such as conservation tillage practices and a variety of pasture management practices are used, there is a natural accumulation of carbon in the soil.

As I said earlier, I think there is a need to do much more research, and I congratulate the Prime Minister for taking that step forward. There will be naysayers in some of the scientific groups, because some people have looked at carbon in the past. But they have not looked at it in terms of this debate that we are having today, in terms of climate change, the warming of the climate, the polar meltdown—those sorts of issues. And I do not think they have looked closely enough at it in terms of issues of soil health and viability in relation to agriculture.

I know that you, Mr Deputy Speaker Schultz, having been an excellent chairman of the previous agriculture committee, would be well aware of the way in which conservation tillage practices have added to the availability of soil moisture and have created a better microclimate for plant growth. That in itself, in my lifetime as a farmer, has probably been the biggest adaptation to climate change of any technology in the farm sector. On those better soils, in Australia, that one change in terms of management practice has realised the equivalent of six to eight inches more rainfall in terms of availability of water to the crop. That is an enormous adaptation to climate change. There may well be other value we could get from the natural accumulation of humus and organic matter in soils that could be of relevance to the carbon debate. So I would encourage the government to look very closely at that, and to examine the potential in agriculture to assist soils to become a natural carbon sink.

The other issue I would like to raise, particularly in relation to the electorate of New England and the community of Tamworth, is the upgrade of the Chaffey Dam. Most members were very concerned during last year that Tamworth was nearly running out of water. It had the potential to actually run out of water. It has rained since then and those particular problems have gone away for the moment. There are other communities across Australia that are experiencing similar sorts of problems. It is proposed by the New South Wales government to have an upgrade of Chaffey Dam for safety reasons. It is a relatively small dam of 60 gigalitres. There is a further proposal—again, supported by the New South Wales government, by the local council and by the community—to have, while that safety upgrade is taking place, an augmentation of the dam to 100 gigalitres of storage, so that the city will not face that problem again of potentially running out of water. I recently met with the Minister for Climate Change and Water, Penny Wong, and we discussed this issue and a couple of other issues pertinent to my electorate. I am pleased to say that she is having a good look at those particular issues as we speak.

I turn now to another issue of concern to my electorate. I mentioned earlier the region’s black soil and how it can accumulate, through better management practices, soil moisture equivalent to six to eight inches of extra rainfall by a change in technology. Yet the black soil in the Liverpool Plains that they talk about is under potential threat from coal mining. The residents and the community have asked—and I have also met with the minister for climate change, Penny Wong, on this issue—for a study of the impact of coal mining in those areas on the groundwater systems below those areas.

There is no research in the world that has been adequately carried out on similar systems on the relationship between a very flat topsoil, long-wall mining, which relies on a slump factor in terms of the mining process, and massive groundwater systems that are not only interlinked—and we do not fully understand the nature of the interconnectivity issues—but also linked to the river system, which, in this case, is the Murray-Darling system. So I asked the minister some weeks ago to look at that particular issue and I am pleased that, just in the last week, there has been an announcement of funding of something like $7.5 million for three groundwater research studies. One of those is very pertinent to this particular issue in its broad nature. The government and the minister are going to be looking at coal mining and the various planning practices of coal mining in an area where there are massive groundwater reserves, and that interconnectivity issue that I raised a moment ago. So I think that is a very important first step.

The people on the Liverpool Plains had requested a study—and a lot of politics were played on this by the previous minister for environment prior to the election—into the nature of the specific mine, as proposed by BHP on the Liverpool Plains, and the impact it would have on the groundwater systems. I am told that the minister’s office and the department are still considering that request. The great difficulty with this issue is that we have a state based planning process. A coal miner proposes an exploration area, an assessment is made and that is yea-ed or nayed by the state government of the day. There is no real capacity in that planning process to significantly measure or assess the downstream impacts on other groundwater systems, as in this case. The state based planning process says that if you can carry out an EIS and maintain the damage within that particular area, or just buy the soil and destroy it, then that will make it pass the test. I am pleased that for the first time the Commonwealth government has involved itself in this issue. I know it is a start to look at the broadbased issue of mining and its relationship with groundwater and catchment systems. It is the first time, to my knowledge, that the Commonwealth government has come in on what is essentially a state based planning process, and that is a good start. It is not a finish, but it is a good start.

The wheat debate is an issue that I would like to touch on, and I notice the government has proposed a multiple licensing arrangement for surplus export wheat to go out of Australia. I do not know where this proposal has come from. Apparently it was an election promise but nobody seems to know who invented it. The shadow minister at the time is not the minister at this time, and no-one seems to know who presented the argument. Polls that were done would indicate that 11 per cent of grain growers were looking at the multilicensing arrangement model and that by far the majority wanted some sort of single desk structure. I inform the House of two things. I intend to carry out a poll of the 24,000 wheat growers to ask them what they want. We have a lot of people in here that seem to have great knowledge of what is good for them. But it is their industry and I intend to carry out a poll, as I did last year. In that poll 82 per cent of them, irrespective of which state they were in, indicated that they did not want a multiple licensing arrangement, as proposed by the then government.

When the now Prime Minister was in my electorate about two years ago, as shadow minister for trade and foreign affairs, I organised a meeting with wheat growers. He was very good to them and listened to what they had to say. They were very impressed. But the now Prime Minister made a statement at that meeting where he said that, in his view, the Howard government should carry out a poll of all registered wheat growers prior to making a decision on the export wheat marketing arrangements. I agreed with him and I still agree with the statement he made at that time. To have brought this bill into this chamber without proper reflection with the wheat growers themselves, I think, is an insult to those people. It was quite clear, through the John Ralph circus—for want of a better word—that went on around Australia last year and the various polls that were done, that this type of marketing arrangement was not welcomed by the majority of wheat growers. That might have changed, so I am going to carry out a survey. It would be a lot easier if the minister or the Prime Minister did this, but I am going to carry out a service for them if they are not prepared to do it. I will ask the Australian wheat industry: what does it think of this proposal? Has it changed its mind on what it thought last year, when the various options were put forward? I will present that survey to the parliament. The draft legislation that is out there now only allows a month for the industry to be consulted and I do not think that is enough.

If the government are hell bent on going down this track—and they may have some very good reasons for doing it this way but just have not told anybody yet—I would urge them not to rush. Given the nature of the Senate, given the nature of the wheat crop that is coming up—which is potentially the largest in Australian history, when international prices are the highest that we have ever seen—and given that we are just coming out of a massive drought and this is the crop that could save a lot of our wheat growers in a financial sense, this is not the time to have a barrage of licensed grain merchants who will, if this legislation is passed as is, have access to the storage at the ports. There is no guarantee that this will get through the Senate. There is all of this uncertainty in this potentially big wheat year. The wheat crop will be in the ground when the changeover is to take place. We will not even know what sort of marketing arrangement will be in place.

I implore the Prime Minister to forget about the politics of this—and to forget about the divide between the Nationals and the Liberals and all the little games that will be played in the Senate—and to think about the wheat grower. This is not the time to proceed with something that is so complicated. You have that extra complicating factor in New South Wales, where there are no trains. Pacific National has said that it will not cart wheat any more. You are going to have a multiplicity of grain merchants all competing for a train network, which is not there at the moment, to get the surplus grain to the port and then there will be a barney about who has preferred access to storage at the port. There are a whole range of potential segregation issues. This is too important an issue to rush. As I said, I will be conducting a poll of all growers.

I will be talking about tax cuts at a later date. I would urge the government to renege on that election promise, given the inflationary and interest rate effects. When that legislation comes to a vote in the House, I will be asking that my vote be recorded against it because I think it is quite a dangerous pursuit at this particular time in the economic cycle.

I have other issues that I would raise in terms of infrastructure in the New England electorate. The first is the Ardglen tunnel. Half of the freight in eastern Australia goes through the Hunter and the north-west—110 million tonnes out of 220 million tonnes in eastern Australia. The Ardglen tunnel is and will, when the third coal loader comes on at Newcastle, be a real bottleneck in terms of produce to port. I would urge the new government to have a serious look at that issue, particularly with the advent of more coalmines north of the Murrurundi Range.

Money is required for the Tenterfield bypass study. That is a very important study. There will be deaths in the main street of Tenterfield if something is not done. It is a very narrow street, sloping at both ends, and heavy transport still goes along it. It is something that needs to be progressed. The former government ignored it and I hope this government does not do the same. Bolvia Hill, south of Tenterfield, is another very important area that needs to be upgraded. I was pleased to see the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry defer the horse levy arrangements. That legislation effectively puts the cart before the horse, making a determination that horse owners should pay for something that may well have been caused by someone else. Obviously, the legislation should be not brought into this place until the Callinan inquiry takes place.

In conclusion, I implore the Minister for Health and Ageing to meet with a constituent from the north-west, not in my electorate. She is a very devoted advocate of cancer treatment in terms of low-dose radiation and radiowave therapy. I would implore the minister for health to actually meet with Mrs Jenny Barlow. Mrs Barlow lost her husband to cancer a few years ago. She has been working with this technique that is used in various parts of the world. Mrs Barlow has proposed to build a clinic in Sydney where this procedure that has been taking place in many parts of the world can take place. She is asking this government, and she asked the former government and they ignored her, to put in place some facilities to assess how this clinic works. She is not asking for money to build the clinic or to conduct the research—just to have health people there to measure the adequacy of the procedure. Mrs Barlow will be in the House next week and I would ask the minister for health to spare some time to at least speak with her. (Time expired)

Debate (on motion by Mr Murphy) adjourned.