It is an honour and a privilege to be here to salute the industry which does so much to make our normal lives possible.
During the election, as some of you might remember, I frequently said that our hope, our intention, should we be elected, was to build a strong and prosperous economy for a safe and secure Australia. For the first few months inevitably and rightly the emphasis was on a strong and prosperous economy. Over the last few months, the emphasis has been on a safe and secure Australia. I want to reassure you that we will never ever neglect the imperative to build a strong and prosperous economy, because without that strong and prosperous economy nothing else is really possible. We cannot be a secure country without also being an economically strong country. Our economic strength depends fundamentally on getting a better tax regime, getting a better regulatory regime, ensuring that we are fiscally responsible because you can't get taxes down if you don't also get spending under control. You can't have smaller government without a more commensurate regulatory regime. All of that is needed if you are to do as well as you can at your job of serving the Australian public, serving the world's consumers. The essential job of providing us with what we need to get on with our daily lives. So building a strong and prosperous economy is always at the heart of what this Government does.
It is good to be back here at the Food and Grocery Council and I want to say that I've always appreciated the welcome that I've had from you, both in this forum and in your businesses right around our country. I’ve been a regular speaker at this forum for many years since I was the Minister for Workplace Relations back in the middle years of the Howard government.
In 2011 and again in 2012, I spoke at this forum and detailed our commitments to the food industry. On both of those occasions I promised to make sure life easier by scrapping the carbon tax. Well, the carbon tax is gone – and thank you for your enthusiasm. Its removal is just the start of building the stronger and more prosperous economy that we all want, with a bigger and more profitable food and grocery sector.
I also promised that we would cut red tape – and that indeed is happening. Earlier this year, we held the Parliament’s first ever Red Tape Repeal Day to cut more than 50,000 pages of unnecessary government regulation and legislation. More than 9,500 unnecessary or counter-productive regulations and fully 1,000 redundant acts of Parliament were removed. We are doing it again – there’ll be a second Red Tape Repeal Day on 29 October.
I also promised in my previous appearances before this Council, that we would help you get your products to market by building the infrastructure that you need – and we are doing that. The biggest infrastructure programme in Australian history is now underway. There is a $50 billion programme underway to build or improve major roads in our cities and national highways like the Bruce and the Pacific. We have finally resolved the question of Sydney’s second airport – or as I like to say, Western Sydney’s first airport, after 50 years of procrastination.
I promised competition reform – and Bruce Billson has just spoken to you on the progress we’re making there.
I promised that we’d improve the participation rate to make it easier for you to find the workers that you need. We’ve introduced employment incentives for older workers and for long-term unemployed young people. We’re expanding Work for the Dole. We are committed to a fair-dinkum paid parental leave scheme that should mean that more mums are participants in our economy as well as participants in our society.
When I’ve met with owners and managers of food businesses around Australia, you’ve told me how difficult it is to get job-ready employees. So we’re moving – and I’m sure Ian Macfarlane would have talked to you about this this morning – we’re moving to a new apprenticeship system that’s employer-led and outcome focused, designed to ensure that we increase the present completely unsatisfactory completion rate for apprentices.
I promised that we’d get the Budget back under control – because we need to control debt rather than let debt control us. That’s exactly what we’re doing. We are tackling the legacy of debt and deficit that we inherited.
Your State of the Industry report highlighted the need to reduce energy, transportation and regulatory costs – and that’s what we’re doing. Through our deregulation measures, through repealing the carbon tax and through building the infrastructure of the 21st century.
As we reduce your costs and improve your competitiveness – it should mean less cost of living pressure on Australian families, it should mean more jobs and more exports for our country.
So we are, as best we can, honouring our commitments to the food and grocery industry.
But keeping commitments is just the start. Our Economic Action Strategy requires constant work, constant improvements, never resting on our laurels. Our message to you today, whether it’s me now, Bruce or Ian earlier this morning, is that we all, every single one of us as Australians have a vested interest in the success of your industry. It is an industry with unlimited potential. You turn-over some $114 billion dollars a year; you employ more than 300,000 people. You’re exporting more than $27 billion worth of product every year. Our job – my job – is to make it easier for you to do your jobs.
As your report points out, the best way to protect jobs in the food industry is through growth and exports. When I said on election night that Australia was under new management and, once more, open for business, I was acknowledging an iron law of public policy. You can’t have strong communities without strong economies to sustain them, and you can’t have a strong economy without profitable private businesses. Successful private businesses are central to the prosperity, to the life, to the decency, to the fairness, to the justice of the societies we live in. It was my great predecessor Sir Robert Menzies who said at the opening of an Edgell factory back in 1959 that you can’t truly understand the economic history of this country unless you go and seek to understand the life story and the life endeavours of the human beings who create their own businesses. Everyone in this room is familiar with what it takes to create businesses, either as a businessperson yourself, or as a facilitator of other businesspeople. Businesspeople take risks, they put their economic future on the line for their business. They mortgage their homes, they risk their future to help others and we need to acknowledge what they do. Gordon Edgell for instance and his sons created an Australian vegetable manufacturing giant from just three acres of asparagus. Thousands of Australians today are following the same path – looking to the food industry to make their mark and their fortune. It’s a tough industry – of course it’s a tough industry, the vagaries of weather, of markets, of policy, but it’s a dynamic industry too. Your industry is a modern success story. Take Edgell – now Simplot, whose Managing Director, Terry O’Brien is your Chairman.
This Government wants to give the Gordon Edgells of 2014 a fair go because all of you out there are having a go. You are reflecting what’s best in our Australian character. We want to attract and retain big manufacturers like Simplot, because we need greater economic activity in the non-resources sector. We need greater workforce participation, better infrastructure and stronger productivity growth. I should, Gary, thank the Council for your submissions to the Competition Policy Review and to the Agricultural Competitiveness White Paper. These are all about boosting our competitiveness, strengthening our economy, adding to our ability to have more jobs and more prosperity. The Industry, Innovation and Competitiveness Agenda is being finalised and we will as part of this agenda outline further measures to improve manufacturing competitiveness, encourage innovation and reduce regulatory costs. I know another concern of yours, is the availability and price of gas for east coast manufacturers. I want to assure you that the Government, as part of the Energy White Paper, is looking at ways to help make the energy sector and energy prices more competitive – through a renewed focus on privatisation and deregulation. The Energy Green Paper, released last week, outlines our proposed policies to tackle this issue and I hope it allays some of your concerns and I would encourage people who are in this area to make submissions based on the Green Paper.
As you can see, we are doing everything we can to be open to the businesses of our country. We want to work with business because we know that profit is not a dirty word. We know that without profit you can’t survive. If you don’t survive you can’t employ, invest and create prosperity. I know that our food products are the best in the world. Our reputation for quality, purity and taste means that we can compete effectively in the world market, wherever we have the opportunity to do so. That’s why we’re doing everything we can to encourage more and freer trade. We’ve have the free trade agreements finalised with Japan and with Korea and we hope to do so soon with China. We were the first big agricultural exporter to secure a bilateral agreement with Japan. It’s not about “catching up” to preferential treatment other countries have already secured, but about actually delivering to Australian exporters a first-mover advantage. It’s a market – Japan – that our food producers know – it’s our second largest, worth around $3 billion last year. Now it has more chance to grow, with tariff cuts for beef, for cheese, for sugar, for seafood and improved market access for many processed food exports. There are also big opportunities for food exporters to Korea, with beef, dairy and wine, big winners from that Free Trade Agreement and tariffs reduced or eliminated on a whole range of horticultural products. Nearly all of my overseas trips have incorporated trade missions – with hundreds of businesses, including some in this sector, travelling with me. So, in Government, we are doing everything we can to open the doors for you – but in the end you still have to walk through them if we are to maximise the benefit of these arrangements.
Now before the election, we often spoke of Australia becoming the food bowl of Asia. In recent times, Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce has put the case that the markets and opportunities of Asia are so vast, that even if we doubled, tripled or quadrupled our production in fruit, in vegetables, in meat and groceries, we would still only be providing a fraction of the needs for food in our region. Barnaby is absolutely right. The markets there are so vast and the opportunities are so great – that there really is unlimited potential for this industry. Food and agriculture is not just an important part of our economic past, it is an absolutely vital part of our economic future. The only things that limit us are the physical constraints of our land and climate and our competitiveness as a country. That is why we need to lift our vision and continue to remove the impediments to Australia. This must be a growth industry that generates more exports, creates more jobs and feeds millions more people and I know you are up to this.
I want to thank you for your commitment to working with government to strengthen the foundations of our economy. My commitment to you is to keep working with you to remove any of the burdens that are holding you back – because I want Australia’s food and grocery industry to prosper and succeed. We all need your industry to prosper and succeed and I pledge myself to do whatever I humanly can to make that possible.
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