Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. Is the Treasurer aware that not only is Australia now a net importer of fruit and vegetables, pork and seafood but also the ABS international trade series indicates that Australia will become a net importer of all food items within the next 12 years? Would the Treasurer advise how Australia will feed itself when the Murray-Darling, currently producing 45 per cent of Australia’s food, is cut from eight million megalitres of irrigation to only five million megalitres?

Finally, in light of this and the dire implications of the diminution of our indigenous soil—albeit that all three are creations of the previous government—could the Treasurer assure the House that, in contrast, this government will look at some food and biofuel production in Northern Australia, where an area the size of Europe with almost all of Australia’s water has at present virtually no agricultural or biofuel production whatsoever, except for a minute coastal strip in a small dot of the Ord—

Honourable Members:

Honourable members interjecting—

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a good point that I am going to make. Just shut up and listen. Is Northern Australia to continue—as a creation of previous governments—to be increasingly condemned to being a fire starter, a feral pig farm and a prickly acacia nursery?

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

Order! The member for Kennedy should approach his questions with a little bit more care. I understand his enthusiasm.

Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Kennedy for his question. He raised a number of very important points of policy, and I will attempt to address as many of them as I can. I start off by saying that I and the government recognise the enormous potential of Northern Australia. With dangerous climate change, this brings great opportunities to that region and also great dangers and great threats to a number of our traditional industries elsewhere in the country. Indeed, I think this is a view shared by the member for Solomon, the minister for regional development, the member for Kalgoorlie, the member for Leichhardt and the member for Dawson.

There is a variety of issues here. I will start with one that is foremost in my mind. Can I say that I very much enjoyed my recent trip to Mount Isa—to the centre of what is called the ‘northern economic triangle’. This was to evaluate, as the minister for resources knows, what can be done not just to enhance the supply of power to Mount Isa but, in solving this critical problem, to further enhance mining in the region and, most particularly, to liberate the potential of this area for renewable energy.

If you look at a map of Australia in terms of potential for renewable energy, what you will find is that across Northern Australia—and particularly in the seat of Kennedy—there is enormous potential for renewable energy, for solar, for geothermal and for wind power. If we can overcome some of the issues to do with transmission—and a part of that is a study about power to Mount Isa—then that combined with the government’s response to climate change through the CPRS, and most particularly through the renewable energy target, will have a dramatic impact and provide an enormous incentive for investment in these areas. That is just with renewable energy, and there are many other possibilities.

The Prime Minister has been to the Ord, where something like $100 million is going in from the Commonwealth to stage 2 of the Ord. On top of all of that there is the potential for industry and the potential for trade. The Minister for Trade is spending enormous numbers of hours on planes, going around the world trying to do something about breaking through the gridlock in the Doha trade round. There was a very encouraging meeting in India just last week in which the Minister for Trade was very prominent in trying to ensure that we can make some progress. Why do I raise that issue? I raise that issue because one of the very big problems we have, being a country that produces an enormous amount of rural produce, is getting access to markets. Many other things need to be done in that sector but without getting access to markets we have a real problem, and the government is very much seized by that issue. That did happen over the last 12 years, as the member for Kennedy indicated. Come in, spinner, because the member for Kennedy was quite correct in his categorisation of the inertia of the previous government when it came to Northern Australia.

I have always had a long interest—as the member for Kennedy knows—in what can be done to enhance food processing in this country. The nature of food processing has a lot to do with price at the farm gate, as the member for Kennedy has indicated. A review of the Horticulture Code of Conduct is currently in train and recommendations are coming from that. Even if those opposite do not understand this, I know that the member for Kennedy does understand the importance and how those couple of issues are linked. Then there is the wider issue of what happens to agriculture in this country. You are correct to point to the fact that there is so much water in the north and that, as climate change comes forward, we have some very big decisions as a country to take in this area. That is just covering a few of the issues raised by the member for Kennedy but, as always, I am happy to talk to him later on about the rest of them.