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

My question is to the Minister for Agriculture, Drought and Emergency Management. Will the minister outline to the House how the Morrison-McCormack government's trade pillar of the Ag2030 plan is working to expand international markets for Australian farmers and facilitating more efficient export processes? How will this plan work to ensure a stronger Australia?

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

I thank the member for Nicholls for his question. I acknowledge the agricultural powerhouse that is the member's electorate, and the significant contribution it makes to our $65 billion agriculture industry. It will play a significant part in agriculture reaching its plan of being a $100 billion industry by 2030.

In the budget, the government announced ourAg2030 plan—a seven-pillar plan to support agriculture in achieving their goal. One of those key pillars is trade. You've got to understand that we're a nation of 25 million people and we produce enough food for 75 million people. So if don't engage the world, if we don't trade with the world, we don't need the number of farmers that we've got and we don't need the communities, like Shepparton, that are there to support them.

That's why we're building on the free trade agreements that we put in place with China, Korea, Japan, Peru, Indonesia, the TPP-11, which those opposite said we were wasting our time on. I'm proud to say, because of the investment in our budget inputting agricultural counsellors on the ground—these are the men and women that get rid of the technical barriers, in a country, at government-to-government levels—we are, for the first time, sending a shipment of barley to Mexico, going into their beer, because we've been able to support our producers to be able to diversify. We're also sending 730,000 tonnes of feed barley into Saudi Arabia. That's an extra $230 million to the Australian economy, diversifying our economic base, giving our farmers the opportunity to send boats left and right to be able to diversify into new markets.

We're also working at making sure that those agricultural counsellors are expanded. Last budget, we went from 16 to 22. In fact, we put our first one in Mexico, in Mexico City, to address Latin America. And now, as part of further measures, we're having a surge of five additional agricultural counsellors that will look at new markets, working with industries, to ensure that we can open up market access, get rid of the technical barriers and allow our exporters to continue to diversify. But we're also looking at what we're doing, in how we as a government are in their lives and how we can get out of them as quickly as we can while maintaining the regulatory barriers that make sure that we protect brand Australia. And we're doing that by cutting red tape, working with industry to ensure that there are practical, technological ways in which we can help them not only apply for export permits but make sure that they are keeping up the regulatory framework that we would expect in protecting our brand.

Our technology framework is also looking at making sure we get rid of over 200,000 export permits a year issued manually, doing it digitally, also making sure that those that want to export are cutting the number of application forms from around 20 down to one. That's just common sense. So what we're doing is putting the environment around our exporters, around our agricultural sector, because if we trade with the world then, I can tell you, Australian agriculture will meet its $100 billion target by 2030.