Damian Drum (Nicholls, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Agriculture, Drought and Emergency Management. How is the Morrison government delivering on its balanced plan to support our farmers and agricultural producers? Will the minister outline how this compares against the risks of alternative approaches?

David Littleproud (Maranoa, National Party, Minister for Agriculture, Drought and Emergency Management) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Can I thank the member for Nicholls for his question and for the contribution that the Nicholls electorate makes to the agricultural sector in helping us reach the $100 billion goal by 2030. Our job, with respect to hitting that goal, is to put the framework around our primary producers to make sure they're empowered to reach that goal. We've done that with the trade agreements with Japan, Korea, China, Peru, Hong Kong and Indonesia—243 million people on our doorstep that are now giving us market access, reducing the tariffs and opening up the commodities to allow our farmers to have access and spread their risks. Also the TPP-11, that $13 trillion marketplace to which those opposite said: 'Don't worry about that. Just forget about it. It's all too hard.' But we stuck the course and we got access to another market—that those opposite recklessly walked away from, forgetting about the agricultural sector. They didn't give a hoot. But then we continued, and we said that we have to empower our farmers to be the best environmental stewards they can be. We put $34 million into the Agriculture Biodiversity Stewardship Pilot Program to pay the farmers—not just for their carbon abatement but also for improvement in biodiversity, empowering them to look after the environment and to grow better food and fibre in the world.

But we've also talked about bringing our young people home. We've lost generations of young people out of agriculture and out of regional and rural Australia, and we're saying: we're going to increase the innovation and modernise our industry, to bring our young people back to agriculture and bring them back to regional and rural Australia. We're saying to them, there are the new jobs of agriculture, not just the traditional ones—the pick and shovel jobs—but the new ones in science and technology, empowering young people to come back, and empowering our farmers with the tools to be able to adapt. But what they want, to be able to do that, is certainty in policy settings. And, in one fell swoop, those opposite—in a reckless act against young people who are empowered to want to come back to regional Australia—have set a carbon emissions target of zero by 2050 that says: 'You will not have a future'—because the only way that they will achieve that is through culling the national herd or putting in place draconian vegetation management laws that will lock up the productivity of agriculture and will rip the heart out of regional and rural Australia. This is a reckless, heartless attack on regional and rural Australians. Let me just put the member for Hunter back in his place, after he misquoted the NFF chief executive—if he'd like to read what he said, his comments are: 'NFF is in the process of considering its climate policy which does not currently include a specific position on net carbon zero by 2050; however, the industry would have real difficulty supporting any target proposal.' There you have it. You have actually misrepresented the NFF in one of the lowest acts I have seen by a shadow agriculture minister.