Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Hansard source

This is the Minister for Agriculture's debut in this process, as he mentioned. I congratulate him on his tie. I do not know whether that counts as blue, but it is close enough. May the Blues have a great win tonight!

I advise the minister that this should be a pretty painless 45 minutes for him. The minister and I have talked often about our best endeavours to take a bipartisan approach to this portfolio. We together believe it is too important an area of public policy to be playing political games with. We are very conscious of the very short political cycle at the federal level—three years—and the need for long-term planning and certainty in this sector.

I am a little bemused though by the minister's own scorecard, claiming that everything that has happened in a positive sense in agriculture over the last 10 months has been due to the good work of the Abbott government. I challenge him throughout these 45 minutes to tell me how the rise in timber exports, the increases in frozen beef exports—and he mentioned that about four times—the bumper wheat harvest and the free trade agreements, signed or otherwise, are as a result of anything he has done.

He will of course claim some success in the live trade. He is always very keen to mention that. He mentioned that four times as well. I often think that for the minister if it does not moo it does not matter. This is a very diverse portfolio. I understand how important the beef industry is in this portfolio but there are other dimensions, Minister, to the agriculture portfolio, including forestry and fisheries, which you decided not to include in the name of the portfolio.

The minister can attempt to claim credit for all of these things but he will need to provide over the next 45 minutes some evidence of something he has done that led to the outcomes he has been talking about. Of course he will say that things have improved in the live trade sector. I have said many times that the pause in the live trade sector was unfortunate and I regret it. I would like to think that, if I were the minister at the time, there would have been other alternatives available to the government. I often also make the point that this country probably would not have the best animal welfare system in the world now—ESCAS—if it were not for the pause. It is doubtful that the industry would have ever embraced ESCAS if the industry had not been paused. Those opposite when they were in opposition always criticised ESCAS, but now in government whenever they are in a battle with those who have as their key focus animal welfare they invoke ESCAS as the great system that Australia possesses now as a defence against those charges.

I believe the government has got off to a pretty slow start in agriculture, and I am here to help in any way I can. I think the agriculture white paper, while possibly justifiable, presents policy inertia for the country at a time when we are really in a hurry. We have hundreds of reports on reviewing the industry, reviewing our outlook and reviewing where we need to go as a sector. I think it is just time that we got on with it rather than spend a year trying to reinvent all those reports through the white paper. I notice the member for Hume here. He is the author of one of those very good reports. Maybe if the minister had just spoken to the member for Hume, we could all have saved some time.

I am excited about the Agriculture portfolio and the agriculture sector. I believe that what I have described as the dining boom presents this sector with enormous opportunities. The extent to which we capitalise on those opportunities will depend on how hard we work at those aspirations. We do need strategic plans, proper assessments of where we are going, and we need a big injection of infrastructure in our supply chains. The dining boom is not going to deliver for Australia because we are lucky. The dining boom will only deliver for Australia if we put in the effort, have the correct strategic plans, we attract the investment we need in those supply chains and government policy is set correctly. Of course, it will not be just about larger volumes. It cannot be just about volumes. To pluck a number out of the air, we might be able to increase volumes threefold, but that will not bring us the dining boom as I aspire it to be. It is high yields and high-value products which will deliver off the back of the dining boom, and that is where we need to focus. R&D will be very important. (Time expired)

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