Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak to this motion to take note of the report Higher education and skills training to supportagriculture and agribusiness in Australia. Whilst Senator Back extends his thanks on behalf of the committee to a variety of people, I would like to extend my thanks to Senator Back for championing this issue and for his leadership around bringing this particular reference to the Senate Education, Employment and Workplace Relations References Committee.

Australia has been recently cited as becoming the food bowl of Asia—an idea, apparently, whose time has come. We already export 60 per cent of our produce. ABARES says there is potential for Australia to lift the value of its agricultural exports by 140 per cent by 2050, but this is not going to happen without a skilled, competent workforce to conduct that industry. We need to invest in education and training in the agricultural sector so that we can innovate and drive productivity gains that are needed right across the sector to continue to develop our competitive advantage.

We investigated the skills shortage. Senator Back has already made reference to the Australian Council of Deans of Agriculture report that there have been 700 graduates annually in agricultural and related courses in recent years and yet there are 4,000 positions a year needing to be filled in the sector. In my own home state of Victoria, in the north-west, there were over 30 vacancies for agronomists across the region and there were actually no applicants. There is a serious outcry right across the industry for highly skilled graduates, which is what the committee report wanted to address.

I will not go into the same issues that Senator Back did, but I would like to mention a couple. One of the areas we focused on was the cost and funding of agriculture and agribusiness education in universities—and it is cost intensive. It is a lot cheaper to have a bunch of law students or teachers sitting in university lecture halls than it is to have a bunch of scientists running sometimes very expensive and complex scientific experiments on a farm down the road. So it is cost intensive, but our funding models do not address that. As an example, there is an educational facility in my home state, Longerenong College, which has a 1,000-plus hectare farm being used as an educative tool for young students passionate about agriculture. That farm is not going to be making a profit, because part of education is about making mistakes—about learning what works and what does not. So to assume that a farm you are running to educate people in agricultural business will make a profit would just be wrong. We need to recognise that. An additional cost and funding issue for agriculture and agricultural education is the fact that regional and rural based campuses do not have the economies of scale that urban based campuses do. As a result, their costs are higher.

We did not look only at tertiary education in the agricultural sector; we were also looking at more vocationally based education. I am happy to say that my own home state is also conducting a review of agri-education and has continued its strong support of agricultural education in Victorian TAFEs. On the issue of the cost of funding agriculture and agribusiness education, Latrobe University, Melbourne noted in their evidence that they may in future be forced to sell their on-campus farm reserve in order to restore other teaching infrastructure. So the question of where to best use resources is a complex and tension filled discussion within higher education institutions which offer agricultural education. Usually, the farm gets sold.

We heard a suggestion from the Hon. Dr Hendy Cowan to address this—a funding loading of 50 per cent to agricultural colleges. I thought that was quite useful. In their evidence, Latrobe University argued that, in order to reverse the declining number of student enrolments, it is critical for industry to promote itself and the opportunities available. That was another theme that came through in our deliberations— the role of industry, community, academics, educators and scientists to promote all that is fantastic about agriculture. They need to promote the benefits of living and working in the regions in a profitable, high-tech industry which involves international travel and international trade. It is an industry where you get to live in the best part of Australia—that being the regions, Senator Humphries. It is up to everybody, particularly the industry, to promote agriculture as a positive story. One of the issues we heard about was that young people are making decisions at a very early age about what they will study and what careers they want to take up. That means it is important, in order to increase demand, to let parents, students, communities, schools and universities know that there is a bright and positive future in getting involved in agriculture. This requires collaboration and a joint effort.

Having been a teacher educator myself, I think it is important to turn young teachers on to agriculture—to enlighten them about all that is good and wholesome about it—so that they can go out into their classrooms, once they graduate, without it being an alien topic for them to bring up in those classrooms. I think one of the key recommendations the report makes is for those within teacher education faculties and agricultural faculties at universities to collaborate on promoting agricultural education and turning young people on to the industry.

I am conscious that Senator Macdonald wanted to have a say on this report, so I will not extend my remarks. The only other thing I wanted to mention was the amount of research funding that goes into agriculture. We had evidence that applications for funding for agriculture related research in universities, through the Australian Research Council grant process, have not enjoyed a high success rate. Right throughout our community, we have to get real about our role—whether it is the ARC, teachers, parents or industry—in promoting agriculture. We need to do that so that we can take advantage of the great opportunities this industry provides, not only to our nation through exports and contribution to GDP but also in the social aspects out in the regions—the underpinning of the local economies outside our capital cities. I absolutely commend this report. I thank everybody who worked on it, made submissions to it and contributed to its completion.