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Good afternoon everyone, and it's a great pleasure and honour to be here. On behalf of the
Royal Industries Research and Development Corporation, to begin the discussion
on a future in farming.
I think it's really important that we recognise that at the end of the 2 days
which we began yesterday morning with a very positive outlook for
Australia's farming and rural communities, that we ended also in a positive
way. And it's in that spirit that I want to talk to you this afternoon.
...
OK, it was once said
that, "As for the future, your task is not to foresee it,
but to enable it." And 1 of the best ways to enable the future, is through public policy
based on sound, timely and accurate data.
In this regard, ABARES plays a critical role, not just through the collection and
distribution of it's data, but also through events such as this Outlook
conference. As a social scientist, and as the Chair of
RIRDC, I'm passionate about how we as an R and D corporation
can better enable a stronger future for Australia
and it's people, through the work that we do. My focus
has always been on building the capacity of rural and regional Australia.
And all those people who live and work there. So it won't
surprise you very much to hear that I believe that much of this future
rest with targeted and well financed R and D.
R and D plays a critical role enabling farmers and
all those who live in rural Australia, to achieve their best potential
in the face of current and future challenges. It provides
them with the information they need to deal with changing conditions
with a economic, environmental, or social.
R and D helps equip our farmers with
the knowledge they need to take a long term view, to deal with future challenges
such as climate change. And there are 3 components
central to helping Australian farmers deal with these future challenges.
An R and D program with delivers
wide ranging and long lasting public benefits, is undertaken
within a framework of cross industry collaboration and co-investment
and 1 which encourages innovation to drive productivity
and improvements, and it's this final point- driving productivity and improvements
through innovation, I'd like to dwell on just for a few moments.
We heard yesterday from the Minister that 1 of the most significant challenges
facing our sector today is increasing our productivity.
The need to look for and implement new ideas and technologies to obtain
efficiency improvements is a constant challenge facing our nation's farmers.
And we are all aware of statistics showing a decline in productivity
growth rates for the agricultural sector over recent years,
and in the sessions yesterday and today, we saw some of the impacts
of those declines, and projected future declines.
You may have heard the Minister actually undercut me a little
bit yesterday when he referred to the two new RIRDC
publications, but I would like to take this opportunity to formally launch them
as it were today and to briefly introduce them to you. We developed
these in collaboration with scientists from ABARES. And the 1st
of the reports, this 1 here, is designed to help our farmers
and policy makers, better understand trends, productivity data
and the driving forces of productivity. We use the word a lot
and it's really important that we all appreciate and understand what we mean
when we use it. RIRDC believe's that this publication will become a useful
tool to a variety of interested people to understand
the wealth of information Government produces about productivity.
The 2nd report- this 1, describes innovation in
Australian agriculture in relation to increasing understanding and awareness
of the drivers of productivity growth. Increasing agricultural
productivity is essential to the ongoing viability of the sector.
But when it comes to understanding just how these estimates are
actually defined, measured and calculated, we believe they've been
there's been knowledge gaps across the industry. And we're confident that these
2 reports will help fill this void. And so with this
knowledge, this enabling, our farmers will be in a better position to
increase their own productivity, which is vital to improving our
international competitiveness, meeting growing demand from overseas
and improving the viability of the sector as a whole.
Understand that there are still some
flyers about the brochures, just next door here.
But if you're interested you can find them on the RIRDC website.
Or you can leave me with your card, and I'll arrange to have them sent to you.
So this afternoon as we set our sites firmly on the horizon,
and we are discussing the future of farming, from the
perspective of RIRDC, which was established to provide our rural industries
knowledge and the need to become more profitable dynamic
and sustainable, it's a great discussion to be involved in, and I
look forward to sharing it with you. Thank you.
(clapping)
I'll start with an apology, that won't be the last horrible crackle cause I'll wave my hands around...
...
Thanks for sorting out the technology and thank you David for that introduction.
I'd like to start by acknowledging the traditional owner's
on who's land we are meeting today, and offer my respects to their elders
and customs.
Obviously representing not just mining,
but even more frighteningly, I guess for some of you
resources more broadly, so QRC memberships spands
full spectrum from exploration, electricity
generation, we've got some renewable members that are interested in GF Thermal
right through to Coal Seam Gas,
Petroleum, Oil Shale,
some people who'd like to be mining uranium, anything to do
with resources, it's not necessarily just a fossil fuel
sort of association. A couple of really
quick messages today, and I'll sort of aim to talk quickly and sit down
'cause I expect there'll be some direct questions for me later on,
about mining and resources. But I guess just
to bowl you some full tosses before we sort of get into the
questions. From my point of view
the challenge for my industry is better engagement
in seeing hot spots emerge right across the country where you've got
communities saying, "Hang on we're a farming community, we're
fantastically good at it. Our productivity is strong, it's grown
our prospects are good. We've put and awful lot of time and effort into our
farm, our land. Why would you want to dig it up?"
That's a pretty good question.
I guess what I'd say is, in wanting to dig that up
we'd want to dig that up in a fairly sensible way, so what we'd hope to do is engage
with the land holders, work with farmers to talk about how
the 2 business' can co-exist. So I guess
my 1st kind of headline message is, that it's not a zero sum game, it doesn't have
to be a question of either/or. You can have a farm that's got resource operations
operating on it and you can even do that in a sucessful way
that's beneficial for both of you. Yes there's a whole lot of questions
about how that happens, but at the end of the day, it's about a sensible
conversation between the people on the ground.
Just by way of background, in QLD we've got quite a complicated system
of land use. And again it reinforces that story that it's not a zero sum game,
so you can have a whole range of uses happening at the same time, above the
ground. Farming, cultural heritage, environmental values
all co-existing. Then under the ground you can have upto 5
different sorts of resource tenures. So depending on what you happen to have under the ground
you can have a couple of different variations of coal mining,
Coal Seam Gas, people looking to store
carbon dioxide, and people looking go seriously deep underground
and to tap into the heat. So
within that complicated framework already there are multiple uses being made
of the land. Where it's worked well, it's not rocket science
it's good early engagement, good communication, it's where business'
are willing to sit down and talk about what's off the table, in terms of what won't
work, and where there is some opportunites to
work together.
Sorry, coming from QLD I assume everyone knows
all about fracking. And I properly shouldn't.
The angry looking guy in the gas mask is known as 'Frack Man.'
He's... actually popped up on Four Corners the other
night, but he's sort of part of the face of protesting
about Coal Seam Gas. His concern is about the chemicals and the techniques
that the Coal Seam Gas uses to open up coal seams under
the ground and extract gas. Plus it's always an endless
source of appalling puns like, "No Fracking Way," which
I'm personally all in favour of bad puns. Again...
it's only a small test site, but a photo
taken a month ago on what... 2 years ago was a
open cut coal mine. Yes, they've been incredibly lucky with rain, but
yes, the soil is well drained, so the irony is in that part of the
Darling Downs, the really good farms look terrible at the moment because the
soil is water logged and the Sorghum crops haven't managed to grow.
But just very quickly, and
happy to expand on any of these points in sort of, endless detail
in the questions, but it's important to differentiate between exploration
and production. Somebody having a look to see if there's something on your property,
is very different than somebody announcing that they've got a plan to
dig big holes. The industries preference
is for system of, that let's it argue it's... the merits
of a project, so rather than saying, "This is essentially a national park
it's off limits forever." An opportunity to say, "Well here's
what we as the current users of the land, see as the value of that land.
How are you going work around that? How are you going to protect that?"
And that's where the industry, particularly NSW
in the context of the election campaign at the moment, talking a lot about
intergrated land use planning. Cause that's a way to have that conversation. And then
finally the challenges really, ultimately to maximize those values across
a whole range of spectrums, so it's not just an economic argument about a
there's a billion dollars of coal there- there's some more complicated dimensions to the
conversation about social values, cultural values and
conservation values. I'll sit down before I get dinged off.
Thank you.
(clapping)