DAN TEHAN:
I’d like to welcome the Prime Minister and the Minister for Agriculture, Barnaby Joyce, here to south west Victoria. I’d like to thank Roma and Glenn Britnell for having us here on this family dairy farm. We’re in the heart of Australian agriculture here in western Victoria. Obviously, we produce more milk here than any other place in the nation, we compete with the Riverina for producing the most amount of wool, we’re in the top ten for beef, top ten for grain and when it comes to lamb and sheep meat, we’re in the top three in the nation.
So, Prime Minister you’re in the heart of the Australian food bowl here. It’s fantastic that you’ve chosen Western Victoria to launch the agriculture white paper. It’s a fantastic document. Barnaby, absolute credit to you and the passion that you have for Australian agriculture that this document is what it is and I’d like to hand over to you to say a few words about the agriculture white paper.
AGRICULTURE MINISTER:
Thank you very much for that, Dan, and Prime Minister. It’s obviously great to be able to come down to western Victoria and be able to launch a plan for Australian agriculture – a plan that talks about how we will respect the mums and dads on the land. A plan that says how we are going to pull the product through from China rather than just try and push it there through the establishment of councillors that will actually be part of the process of trying to get rid of the protocol so that we can get greater access to some of those key markets. A plan that looks after the dignity of people’s lives when they’re doing it tough in drought by providing up to a quarter of a billion dollars a year in concessional loans. A plan that also works hand in glove with the fact that we’ve got half a billion dollars – $498 million dollars – on the table for Farm Household Allowances – a direct payment. A plan that looks at how we encourage people to pay down their debt by doubling the limit of the farm management deposits from $400,000 to $800,000 and having them as an offset against your current loans. A plan that talks about the refurbishment of the irrigation asset on the farm as well as the construction of new water assets off the farm. A plan that talks about how we’re going to store fodder to make us more resilient against drought.
There’s so much in here that’s part of the concise work that comes from over 1,000 people contributing to the green paper and white paper process and it is that that shows that this is a Government which takes agriculture seriously. We have to. We have to make sure that agriculture regains its solid footing as a big contributor to the income of our nation as well as alleviate the downturn on other commodity products.
So, it’s a great pleasure to have the Prime Minister with me, to have Dan Tehan with me, to have so many colleagues and that also shows that this is a Coalition that believes in families on the land.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, Barnaby, thank you so much. Dan, thank you so much. Yes, this is very much one of the premier agricultural areas of our country and it’s a pleasure to be here with Dan, with Barnaby, with the Parliamentary Secretary, Richard Colbeck, and like you, Dan, I want to thank Glenn and Roma Britnell for making us so welcome onto their property.
Farming, agriculture is one of the sunrise industries of our country, particularly given the technology that we are bringing to bear on producing better, cleaner, greener food and that will obviously be supported by the white paper.
The world is hungry – literally and metaphorically – for the high-quality food that Australia can produce. Thanks to what this Government has done with the three free trade agreements, our food exports are increasing significantly and substantially. Thanks to the innovations that this white paper has announced, things will go from strength to strength here on the land. So, I’m very pleased and proud to be associated with this white paper. Again, I want to thank Barnaby Joyce who’s brought enormous insights and deep knowledge as well as tremendous passion and commitment to the white paper that we launch today.
QUESTION:
Mr Abbott, there was some criticism in the process about this white paper containing crackpot ideas and that being one of the reasons why it was delayed. In your final analysis, how would you characterise this document?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I think this is a plan for the future. It’s a plan to help Australia to better meet the needs of the world which is hungry for good food – literally and metaphorically hungry for good food – and that’s why agriculture is going to be at least as much a part of our future as it has been in our past.
QUESTION:
And what about for the Labor Party? There’s been a lot of talk amongst the farm sector about taking a bipartisan approach to agriculture for the future, to lay out the kind of vision that you’re talking about in this document. What do you see the challenge now for the Opposition?
PRIME MINISTER:
I think the problem with the Opposition is just a lack of understanding and appreciation of agriculture. I’m not saying there’s a lack of goodwill, but certainly, the Liberal National Coalition is of the land and that’s one of the reasons why you can trust us to come forward with policies which are profoundly informed by a love of and a knowledge of rural Australia.
QUESTION:
The money for dams, is that a new investment in new dams or is that to improve existing dams?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well it’s a water fund – half a billion dollars, $200 million of it to Northern Australia, $300 million for the rest of our country. This is new money. It’s on top of the money that’s there for the Murray-Darling Basin. It's on top of the $60 million that we recently spent in Tasmania on a major expansion of irrigation in the north of that state. So, this is new money. Fifty-million of it is for studies and $450 million of it is to make things happen. There are quite a few dams that we are looking at. There's Nullinga Dam behind Cairns, there's the Rookwood Weir near Rockhampton, there's the expansion of the Ord scheme that we're looking at. I am confident that the entrepreneurs of Australia are hungry to get cracking here. What they've looked for in vain over a couple of decades is a Government which is serious about the water resources of our country. We don't have a water problem in this country, we have a water management problem and you can't manage water properly without water storages and that's what we'll have more of thanks to this water fund.
QUESTION:
Prime Minister, does this fund put too much emphasis on dams as opposed to maybe exploring underground water reserves and harvesting those?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, it does both, but the one thing that we can't have is the dam phobia which has afflicted policy making thanks to Labor-Green governments for the best part of three decades.
QUESTION:
With drought, there’s obviously been a lot of talk about drought policy. The previous government moved away from the exceptional circumstances programme. Do you think this white paper does enough to address the concerns about the instability with drought policy?
PRIME MINISTER:
I think we've now put drought policy on a sound footing. I think that we've got a reliable system for supporting people whose incomes have dried up with the water. I think we've got a better system for supporting people whose businesses are in trouble because of drought. So, I think this is a sustainable drought policy for the long-term and I want to thank Barnaby again for not just the passion and the commitment and the heart and the soul that he's brought to this, but the deep knowledge both of farming and finance that you've brought to this. I mean, Barnaby is of the land but he's also an accountant and so there's an economic responsibility about this that I think makes it sustainable for the long-term.
AGRICULTURE MINISTER:
There's also multi-peril insurance. I want to commend the work that Dan's done. Subsidies of up to $2,500 to get people their management plan so that they can self-insure against some of the issues and the vagaries of the climate. Now, we've already put that past some of the state Ministers and we're looking at even some of them matching our contribution. So, this is a real change for the better.
QUESTION:
The farm gate prices have been pretty volatile for farmers in the Woolsthorpe area, it hasn’t kept in tow for inflation for about the last eight years. How will the white paper tackle that?
PRIME MINISTER:
The white paper can't change the operation of markets, and look, we shouldn't try to fiddle the market; what we should try to do is put ourselves in the strongest possible position to take advantage of market opportunities when they're good and to be resilient when market opportunities are bad.
Now as things happen, most agricultural prices are pretty strong at the moment and the beef industry in particular, after the catastrophe of the ban on live cattle exports to Indonesia, is now in a very strong position. I was talking to some beef people in Hamilton yesterday who were tremendously excited about how things were going. So, look, markets go up and down, seasons are good and bad, but I think we are lucky at the moment that markets are particularly strong and all we have to do now is make sure the rain is reliable and everything will be perfect.
QUESTION:
Prime Minister, just a question from the local area. There is concern in the western district regarding coal seam gas. You said that mining and agriculture can work hand in hand. Can the coal seam gas industry work hand in hand with agriculture?
PRIME MINISTER:
I know there's been a lot of concern in rural areas and I want to assure people who are concerned that this Government would never, ever allow anything that we think threatens the long-term viability of our agricultural sector. Prime agricultural land is just about this country’s greatest natural asset and it can never, ever be compromised.
We've had coal seam gas extraction now for a couple of decades. There is no evidence that coal seam gas extraction done properly damages water tables. The Chief Scientist of New South Wales did a very comprehensive report which came out about a year ago and that certainly said that if done properly, coal seam gas extraction can and should go ahead and that's the point: if it's going to happen it's got to be done properly and I would certainly urge state governments to make sure that there are the highest possible environmental standards applied.
QUESTION:
Is money for water infrastructure contingent on funding from the public and private sectors – states or private sector, rather?
PRIME MINISTER:
I would certainly expect that the new water storages and the new dams that we want to see happen would be partnerships. If you take the new irrigation system that we've just part-funded in Tasmania, I think from memory there was $60 million from the Commonwealth, there was $60 million from private investors and there was $30 million from the state and I think that's the kind of thing that we'll see. This is a Government which wants to back people who are prepared to back themselves – I want to stress that – this is a Government which wants to back people who are prepared to back themselves. If you've got skin in the game, you're going to work very hard to make the investment work out and that normally means that it makes sense to put a bit of Commonwealth money in because there are people who are serious about the investment.
QUESTION:
Mr Abbott, the ACCC measures that are in the white paper as well dealing with agricultural specific market issues, can you tell us what your view is of that? Is that sort of going into an area that requires urgent attention?
PRIME MINISTER:
I want to assure farmers and everyone in the agricultural sector that we are serious about ensuring that competition is free and fair. It's got to be free and fair. So, that $11 million will help to improve the ACCC's expertise in this area. It will help the ACCC to become more familiar with market issues in the agricultural sector and a commissioner with a specific agricultural brief, with specific agricultural expertise obviously is going to bring a whole lot of insights which might otherwise not have been there. I mean, you know, I don't want to buy into this whole Coles and Woolies thing today because, you know, they have their critics, they also have their admirers. The important thing is that competition is both free and fair and that's what this is an investment in.
QUESTION:
You wouldn’t have beefed up the ACCC if there wasn’t unfair things going on though.
PRIME MINISTER:
I don't want people to think that the only sector which is subject to market power is agriculture. All sectors from time to time are subject to a degree of, if you like, corporate overreach and it's important that all sectors are appropriately policed. But what we want to see is more expertise, more insight and more focus on the agricultural sector.
QUESTION:
Prime Minister, on the South Australian side of the border, they describe the drought policy as [inaudible] to use their words. They look across the border and see Victorians accessing these concessional loans and they’re not getting access to them. Are you going to review how you issue these concessional loans and why you’re continuing that policy?
AGRICULTURE MINISTER:
We just have a federal policy and then the states administer it. I've been on the phone to Leon Bignell and I don’t want to pick fights with my state colleagues, but it's the same policy as is for New South Wales, as is for Victoria, for Queensland and for South Australia. What we have in some instances in South Australia, obviously, is larger areas with small numbers of people, especially in the pastoral north-east and we'll be working with Leon to make sure that we get a better delivery, but might I say we don't have a differentiation of policies for different states.
QUESTION:
[inaudible]
PRIME MINISTER:
This is a Government which is serious about roads of national significance and, obviously, the Princes Highway is a very important national road as well as a very important local road. We’ve funded the duplication of the Highway from Geelong out to Colac. We’re also funding, of course, the Great Ocean Road upgrade. We’re also putting a fair bit of money into the Western Highway coming west of Ballarat. So look, we’re doing a lot of work. Dan here is obviously keen to see the Princes Highway duplicated beyond Colac and you look at these ears and they get chewed occasionally and Dan’s certainly got your bite marks in them, haven’t you mate.
QUESTION:
Mr Abbott, the Southern Hemisphere’s largest wind farm is not far many kilometres that way. I’m just wondering if you’re going to take the opportunity to go and see that on your way back to Hamilton?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well funnily enough, I did actually notice it as I was driving from Hamilton down to Warrnambool last night. It is a massive wind farm, no doubt about that. Look, I’m a bit conflicted when it comes to the wind farms, I’m not a great fan of their aesthetics I have to say, but I accept that this is a question of taste and some people don’t mind them, other people don’t like them. The important thing is that by doing what we did in the Parliament the other week, we have taken some of the upward pressure on power prices that the renewable sector was injecting while at the same time giving the industry certainty and it was a compromise, as these things so often are. No one in a sense on either side of the argument got everything that they wanted, but as a result of what we did, the upward pressure on power prices is reduced and the industry does have certainty.
Thank you.
[ends]