Mackay
PM: It's great to be here, thank you very much to Tony for having us on his property. I'm joined by Kirsten Livermore, the Member for Capricornia, Bronwyn Taha the Labor candidate for Dawson, and of course by Senator Joe Ludwig one of our Queensland Senators who is also the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry.
And we're standing here to make an important announcement about the future of Reef Rescue.
Since 2008, there has been a program called Reef Rescue which has been about protecting our Great Barrier Reef and increasing agricultural productivity. We've just been having a conversation about the difference that it has made.
I'm here today to announce that we will be investing $200 million into continuing Reef Rescue.
What that means is over the next five years we will be investing $200 million to protect the Great Barrier Reef and to increase agricultural productivity.
For those who care about our marine environment and the reef, this is great news. For our farmers who want to increase their productivity, this is great news too.
Already, what we've been able to achieve under this program is the equivalent of a million wheel barrows of stuff, of pollutants, not ending up in the Great Barrier Reef.
That's a great result all around. Great for the reef, great for agricultural productivity because it means that farmers are seeing less erosion, less movement of top soil, they are finding new ways of working so that they use less insecticide; new ways of working so that we increase agricultural productivity, and we've just been discussing that over here with the replanting of the cane that you see behind us.
So I'm very pleased to be here announcing this today. I want to pay tribute to the stakeholders who are gathered here.
They are the ones that locally work through on behalf of industry and with those groups who care so passionately about the future of the Barrier Reef to get us to this result.
Congratulations to you, thank you for all of your hard work.
If I could thank Kirsten Livermore too, who has been very directly involved in this process and if I can hand over now to the Minister who's worked long and hard to lead to today's announcement.
MINISTER LUDWIG: Thank you Prime Minister and thank you for being here in the sugar capital of Queensland, and in fact Australia.
It is good news for farmers, landholders, Indigenous owners of the land, the representative groups across the sugar industry and many other representative groups - AgForce - all of them find the good news announcement of the $200 million continuation of Reef Rescue.
Everywhere I go around Queensland they mention Reef Rescue, the need for Reef Rescue and the great thing it does.
It does two basic things. It allows farmers to lift productivity, and also ensure that our reef continues to be the Great Barrier Reef for Australia.
When I talk to farmers the Reef Rescue program, the phase one, 3,200 farmers have benefited from this program.
An enormous number of farmers out there are working for Australia, working to export into Asia - all of them doing their job but they also know they want to continue to have a great reef.
They also know that they are responsible landholders, they want to continue to be good environmentalists and this program allows them to do that work well.
And if you look at the catchment across Queensland, 25 per cent of the catchment across Queensland from Cape York all the way down to the Mary River flows out into the Barrier Reef lagoon.
So it's important that we do have the extension of this program. The $200 million from not only - I think the Prime Minister's mentioned my hard work, but truly Prime Minister tip my hat off to you though I'm not wearing one at the moment.
But it's been a great program and to see it continue, we've worked with environmental groups, Kirsten Livermore from Capricornia has worked with the WWF, the industry sugar bodies and of course all of those people have said we want to continue Reef Rescue for all of the good reasons that it's provided.
And we are here on Tony's property. Tony is a good example of just one of those 3,200 farmers who have contributed to having great environmental outcomes.
Those environmental outcomes mean that we have less sediment, we have less pesticides, we have less chemicals run-off into the reef.
All of that, if you look at the number of wheel barrows the Prime Minister has mentioned, to put it in context we're talking about around 92,000 tonne of material that would have otherwise flowed into the Barrier Reef lagoon.
So with those short words, I can't speak enough for the industry assistance, they have made representations about how good Reef Rescue is. But they have also, which is one of the real good facts in this story is, for every $1 of government funding the industry has put in on average $1.80.
So they recognise the benefits of being both good environmentalists and good landholders, good agriculturalists and supporting our country's export industries.
JOURNALIST: When will the money be available for farmers?
MINISTER LUDWIG: From 1 July it'll be available so the current program will expire on 1 July and we'll then run out for five years thereafter with the Reef Rescue program.
It will have a range of programs, it will look at water quality. It will look at how we can support the industry in looking at technology, looking at how we can improve less applications of pesticides, less applications of nitrogen or phosphorous fertilisers into the soil.
All of those then benefit the landowners as well by cutting their costs. That's why they've been so supportive of it.
JOURNALIST: Do you have any actual scientific evidence that the reef itself is benefitting from this program?
MINISTER LUDWIG: The Queensland Government through water quality program have been also contributing $35 million to, and working with, the Department of Sustainability to ensure that we do have the science to underpin this work.
That's part of the reason why Reef Rescue is so successful.
If you look at the UNESCO's report they mentioned two things. They mentioned firstly that we should continue to have Reef Rescue. Why? Because they see the benefit of it.
The second thing they mentioned which was they said we should continue to share our expertise around the world about how well we manage the Great Barrier Reef.
PM: And I think, just from a common sense perspective that if there's a million wheel barrows of things like soil and pesticides and chemicals that would have gone into the water, that didn't go into the water, that's got to be better.
JOURNALIST: How much of this money is new money?
PM: Right, well I'll turn to the Minister here.
MINISTER LUDWIG: It is all new money. And it is one where we - as responsible managers of the economy - we've made the saves and we've found the new money and put it there.
So from 1 July onwards for the five years going out we'll be able to continue to support this fantastic program.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, can we just ask about the Ring Road announcement today. It's a very much long-awaited project for the city here and people are looking forward to that progressing. How is that progressing with your announcement today?
PM: Today we've announced an investment of over $4 billion in the Bruce Highway. That's a ten year program of works.
But included is finalising the all-important planning for the Ring Road, and starting the work that's needed for construction, starting the construction work.
So I know from the representations that Bronwyn our candidate has made that this is a huge issue here in Mackay.
It's something that Kirsten Livermore has raised with me frequently as well.
So I'm glad that we've been able to be here today and make this announcement - make it with Minister Albanese a little bit earlier this morning. And we're able to provide you with the details from there.
JOURNALIST: Because it has been three years since the Treasurer was in town to announce funding for a study but we haven't really seen much come of it since then. So what guarantee are you giving today that the people of Mackay will actually start seeing work and start seeing plans?
PM: I point to our track record. The people of Mackay have seen work as we've worked on the southern approach.
So people have seen us come and announce that work is to be done, and then they've seen the work start, and then they've seen the work move towards completion. That's what happens with big road projects.
So just like we've done in the past, promised change, delivered change, people can see the change, that is what will happen in the future.
JOURNALIST: Because it's $4 billion over ten year plan, with the election coming up how do you guarantee that work will all be carried out?
PM: Well I can only guarantee it under the Government I lead.
JOURNALIST: And with the acquisition of the land, do you anticipate that could raise some challenges for you? Because we're standing in a sugar cane farm, it's likely to eat into sugar cane land.
PM: Well this is why very detailed planning work has to be done, and that's why we are expediting the money for the planning.
Big road projects are necessarily complex things. I think people would understand that, that you need to plan properly, and we will be getting on with that planning work. So that will be the way in which those kinds of questions are answered.
JOURNALIST: As it is a ten year plan, can we expect to see funding allocated to projects in this region in the budget next month?
PM: Well we've just made this announcement, and made the announcement about expediting the planning work, and then moving through to commence construction.
JOURNALIST: A question back on the funding, this might be for you Minister Ludwig, it has been reported that some NRM groups have had to create commercial arms when they're struggling with money in between funding rounds. What's being done to address this?
MINISTER LUDWIG: Good news. Yesterday I announced a continuation of funding for NRM groups. They've been wanting to continue that funding, so yesterday I announced the continuation of the Natural Resource Management funding.
So it's well over $600 million for the next five years to give them that business certainty that they really asked for.
And so we've delivered on that. We delivered on that yesterday. Why? Because the NRMs play a valuable role in our community about ensuring that they protect our pristine environment, and they work - much of it volunteer work - they continue to do that in the field.
So the Gillard Government is supporting them in that work.
The other thing I just wanted to mention, there was an earlier report I noticed from the Leader of the Opposition Tony Abbott who indicated that it was really about the extension for staff that the Attorney-General has made recently.
I, as a previous Special Minister of State, should for the record really say that the previous time post the 2010 election, Mr Abbott as the Opposition Leader wrote to me and asked for an extension for a number of weeks to deal with this.
So I was quite surprised to see Mr Abbott really be a bit two-faced about this and complain about Mr Dreyfus doing the same to give staff certainty.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, it has been a little while since we've seen you in Mackay, can we expect to see you a bit more with the coming election?
PM: Really it's just about managing time, and I think you would understand that as Prime Minister I've got weighty responsibilities and it takes a lot of time, it's a big country.
I do the best to get around to every corner of the country.
Physically you can't be everywhere every day and I do have deep responsibilities that mean I've got to be in Canberra, I've got to be in Parliament, I've got to be managing the nation's business, occasionally I've got to be overseas.
But managing all of that time load, then I do try and travel as much as possible.
So it's good to be here today, I'll look forward to coming again in the future. I've been here in the past.
Thank you very much.
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