MICHELLE LANDRY MP:
It’s a pleasure to welcome the Prime Minister Tony Abbott to Rockhampton today. This Beef Week has been just incredible for our city and for our region. The biggest event we have ever had here. I’ve had a stream of federal ministers through here and for the last day of it, it is great to have the Prime Minister. He realises how important the Central Queensland cattle industry is and we’ve had those blow-ins from Casino here this week trying to take the honour of being beef capital of Australia away from us. So, it’s great that the Prime Minister is here in Rockhampton and we will make sure that he knows that we are the beef capital of Australia. So, thank you and I’ll hand over to my colleague Ken O’Dowd.
KEN O’DOWD MP:
Thanks, Michelle and welcome, Tony, to Rockhampton. A spectacular event has happened in the last five days. It’s been a credit to the people who have organised it, to Blair and his team and all these volunteers, it’s been great.
We as a Government look forward to the beef industry playing a bigger role in our economy in all sorts of facets of the Australian way of life. We used to ride on the sheep’s back once many years ago, but I think the future of the beef industry is really looking very, very good with our Free Trade Agreements to these Asian countries and also the age of our farmers and graziers are getting older and we’ve got to look at a succession plan. And seeing all these young people here today is very, very gratifying because they are the farmers of the future and they are the future for Australia.
So, thank you all for participating in this great event.
Over to you, Tony.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, Blair, Ken, Michelle, it’s terrific to be here at Beef Week in Rockhampton. As Michelle and Ken and Blair have said, this is very important for the beef industry, not just here in Central Queensland but right around our country and indeed right around the world.
Beef is very important to the economy of Northern Australia. Here in the Fitzroy region, you’ve got about a billion dollars in agriculture every year; some 60 per cent of the agricultural sector in the Fitzroy region is beef.
In Northern Australia, beef is probably the biggest industry apart from tourism and resources and it's very important that beef stays strong. About 90 per cent of our cattle exports come from Northern Australia. We're exporting about $3 billion worth of beef at the moment. It's going up and up and that will continue, thanks to the Free Trade Agreements that the Commonwealth Government has negotiated with our major export markets.
The other good thing about the beef industry is that the live cattle trade with Indonesia is strong again, thanks to the changes that this Government has put in place and I want to thank Barnaby Joyce in particular for the great work that he has done.
Now, as you all know, we've got a Northern Australia White Paper that we have promised and today I want to announce the first measure that will be part of the Northern Australia White Paper. That's a $100 million fund to help improve our beef roads in Northern Australia. Something like 35 per cent of the cost of getting beef into markets is transport; 35 per cent of the total cost of the beef is in transport. It's very important that we do everything we can to get our transport costs down and that's what this $100 million beef road fund will do.
I want to thank all of my colleagues who have been involved in the Northern Australia White Paper. Andrew Robb has had a lot to do with it, Barnaby Joyce has been critical. But Warren Entsch and Senator Ian Macdonald have all played their part as well as the local Members here, Ken O'Dowd and Michelle Landry.
So, this is an exciting time for Northern Australia. There will be further announcements from the Northern Australia White Paper in coming days and weeks. But again, we can only do anything if we've got a strong Budget and that's what people will see from this Government on Tuesday night – the right Budget for these times. A Budget that is measured, responsible and fair. A Budget that does have good news for families, good news for small business, more jobs, more opportunities for work, but above all else, a credible path back to surplus because governments, countries like families and small businesses, have got to live within their means.
So, I'm very pleased with the progress that we've made. Yes, there's a long way to go, but this country is on the threshold of an exciting new era and I'm really pleased today to be here in Rockhampton at Beef Week to see the exuberance, the confidence and the optimism which is so readily apparent in the beef sector right now.
QUESTION:
How much bitumen does $100 million buy?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, it will depend upon what our partners want. This is a fund that will be spent in conjunction with state and local governments, in conjunction with the private sector. Co-investment is the key to making this money go as far as it possibly can. I probably should point out that the CSIRO has recently developed new techniques, new modelling, which is very good at identifying what the investments are that will make the biggest difference, and this is going to help.
QUESTION:
How much do you want the states and local government to chip in to this fund?
PRIME MINISTER:
What I want is to see the money go as far as it can. Let's see what proposals come forward but there is a $100 million fund now that is available for the beef roads of Northern Australia. Let’s see whether state and territory governments want to come in to help.
QUESTION:
What area did CSIRO identify as the priority spend in that modelling?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, for instance one of the particular areas that they have identified is the gains to the industry that can come from reorganising and rationalising the kind of tick inspections that beef transport typically has to go through, particularly beef that’s going to the abattoir rather than going from property to property. So this is the kind of scientific application of modelling to a very traditional industry.
QUESTION:
So, they identified Northern Australia as the priority spend?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, this is where our beef export industry is concentrated. Something like 90 per cent of Australia’s beef exports come from Northern Australia.
QUESTION:
You must have some idea of how far that money will stretch though? Have you thought about how many kilometres of road that money will pay for?
PRIME MINISTER:
As I say, it depends whether we’re upgrading bitumen roads, whether we’re upgrading non-bitumen roads, it depends precisely the kind of infrastructure that we’re getting. But we are determined to use this money as an important contribution to the private sector, to what councils and to what state and territory governments are prepared to put forward. But this is a sign of the Commonwealth’s commitment to the cattle industry. We all know the problems that the cattle industry suffered under the former government closing down the live cattle trade to Indonesia. The cattle industry is well and truly reviving and this is a sign to our commitment to the industry.
QUESTION:
I notice NFF and AgForce aren’t here today. What sort of industry consultation will be taking place to make these decisions on funding…
BLAIR ANGUS:
Sorry, they are here today. We’ve met with them as we walked around this morning.
QUESTION:
The people that I’ve spoken to haven’t had a chance to have any input. Has there been much industry consultation?
PRIME MINISTER:
Look, I’m not going to go into the various issues of the various organisations in the industry. Suffice to say that I am very, very confident that this $100 million injection will be warmly welcomed.
QUESTION:
Will there be any money for drought affected farmers in the white paper?
PRIME MINISTER:
That’s a good question because obviously the drought is biting hard, particularly in Western Queensland and I’ll have a little bit more to say about drought in the next couple of days. The point that my parliamentary colleagues have been making repeatedly about drought is that drought is the crisis that creeps up on people. You get a storm, you get a flood, you get a fire, the emergency services are there, everyone is there to help from day one. With drought, people just stop coming and that’s why it’s very important that we acknowledge that drought can be just as much of an emergency for local areas and for local economies as storms, fires and floods and you’ll see a very tangible acknowledgement of that from the Commonwealth Government in a few days’ time.
QUESTION:
Will that include any support for mental health of farmers and their families?
PRIME MINISTER:
Some of our existing drought support funding is for precisely that and we’ll have more to say on that in the next few days.
QUESTION:
Prime Minister, when will we see the White Paper for Northern Australia and the Agriculture White Paper?
PRIME MINISTER:
You’ll see both of those papers soon, but what you’ll also see, starting today, are down payments on some of the measures in both of those white papers. We are committed to a holistic approach to northern development. We want to see better infrastructure, we want to see less regulation, we want to see more people, market access, particularly through things like the free trade agreement.
So, this is a comprehensive approach, not just about improvements in the next month or the next year, but about improvements going forward decades, because this is not the last frontier, this is the next frontier and we want to make the most of our opportunities.
QUESTION:
When will work on the roads actually begin? Do you have a date?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well as soon as possible. This money is available; we want to see it spent. We want to see it spent in ways which will maximise the economic impact of the spend, but this is a Government which is totally focused on the long-term economic development of our country. Last Budget and this Budget we’re trying to move money from short-term consumption to long-term economic investment. I say that this will be a Budget for jobs, for growth and for opportunity and this $100 million for the beef roads of Northern Australia is typical of the kind of thing you’ll be seeing in this Budget.
QUESTION:
So when you say soon do you mean before the Budget or with the Budget, this month?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, it’s going to be available in coming months and that’s the important thing.
QUESTION:
Livingstone Shire Mayor, Bill Ludwig, just ran into you at the LNP stand over there, obviously handed you his comprehensive plan for the Yeppoon Foreshore development which was one of a couple to miss out on funding for round one of Stronger Regions. Obviously, that coincides with their bid to get Category D funding following Cyclone Marcia. Can you give us an update on where that’s at and how we can get those projects running?
PRIME MINISTER:
Obviously there has been a lot of money flowing in to the small businesses and others that have been impacted by the cyclone. I know there’s a bit of disappointment that some projects missed out in the first round of the Stronger Regions funding, but this is just the first of several rounds of Stronger Regions funding and I’m confident that this part of Central Queensland, particularly because of the impact of the cyclone, will come back in subsequent rounds.
So, I know it’s frustrating, if it’s not necessarily happening today it might have to happen in a few months’ time, but what always happens in a situation like this is that the extra time can be used to further refine the proposal to make sure that we really do get the best possible bang for our buck and I know that’s what everyone wants. Everyone wants to see the right thing happening and the important thing is to ensure that all of the funding, whether it be federal funding, state funding or local government funding, we maximise the value that we get from that money because in the end the money comes from taxpayers and taxpayers deserve to know that they are getting as much as they possibly can from that spending.
Thank you so much.
[ends]