Eric Abetz
The King Island Council is leading a push in Tasmania to have forestry outlawed as a legitimate rural practice. I was relieved to see that the Resource Planning and Development Commission has reconsidered their ruling on this. As I am sure were most of Tasmania’s farmers, including those on King Island. The farming community would be very nervous to have Local Government trying to put their stamp on what happens on farm land. Farmers should be able to grow on their land whatever legal product they like — be it cows or sheep or wheat or potatoes or trees or even pumpkins — and I’ll explain pumpkins in a minute.
GOOD morning distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.
It is a pleasure to be with you.
The forces driving change in regional Australia, forces like trade development and globalisation, demographic change and consumer demands are real and we need to find ways to respond to them positively – not with scapegoating which is often easy but lazy, which produces a lot of heat not much light, and which holds back the true potential of a particular sector or region.
The Australian Government is very aware of the importance of rural and regional communities and we are keen to encourage them to become more adaptable whilst recognising that the capacity to adopt has been their key to survival.
We have established programmes and initiatives that help to boost the development of communities and ensure their continuity — for example, in Tasmania we have the west coast which has diversified from purely mining to tourism and aquaculture now.
We recognise that the basis of success at a regional level is creating effective partnerships in the community — between national, state and local governments, and between industry and individuals.
Our primary industries are the lifeblood of regional and rural Australia, the source of many of our major exports, and custodians of many of our natural resources and the environment.
Economic overview
Our responsible economic management has played a key role in driving Australia’s growth and prosperity.
The macro-economic environment that now exists encourages strong growth and long-term profitability and fosters growth for small business, of which agri-business in an important element.
Despite a global economic slowdown, our economy has grown at an average rate of 3.75 per cent a year since the end of 2000.
Budget Initiatives
Our commitment as strong economic managers is undiminished.
And the 2006-07 Budget continues to support an operating environment where our rural industries – agriculture, fisheries and forestry — can continue to grow and compete internationally.
We are particularly keen on promoting self-reliance and innovation in these sectors.
Programmes like FarmBis, Industry Partnerships, Food Processing in Regional Australia and New Industries Development are designed to encourage this kind of growth.
The success of many of Australia’s agriculture, fisheries and forestry sectors and associated pursuits such as downstream processing underpins the success and indeed holds the future of the regions and communities where they are located.
We are contributing to the sustainability of these industries with structural assistance to help them adjust to change.
Two industries that are currently benefiting from this structural adjustment assistance are forestry (timber) and fishing.
Fishing Structural Adjustment Package
The fishing industry is getting help from us to adjust to change.
The Australian Government recognised that fishing communities in coastal regional and rural communities have had it tough.
Many are dying the death of a thousand cuts with too many boats and not enough fish.
Last November we launched a once in a lifetime $220 million package to assist by addressing the profitability and sustainable future of Commonwealth managed fisheries.
And can I note as an aside that it is only when you run a strong economy that you can come up with money for these sorts of adjustment packages.
The centrepiece of this package is the $150m Business Exit Assistance tender fishing concession buyback.
I am pleased to say this has been well subscribed.
It is being evaluated at present and I hope to announce the outcomes shortly.
Other measures within the package include $21 million to offset the cost of AFMA management levies, and for improved science, compliance and data collection.
There is $30 million in funding to help businesses get professional advice, and help with job seeking, job training and relocation.
And $20 million to provide financial assistance to communities across Australia that are vulnerable to the impacts from the reductions in fishing activity associated with the package.
Adaptable Regions: open minds open opportunities’
Can I say the theme of this conference –‘Adaptable Regions: open minds open opportunities’ – is very timely.
Timely because here in Tasmania, and elsewhere, there is currently a very rigorous debate taking place about the merits of tree farms
A debate about whether we should be closing our minds and closing our regions to the opportunities which tree farms offer, or whether we should be accepting them as a legitimate rural enterprise with the potential to revitalise regions and create new jobs
We in this state, and right across the country, need to make the most of every opportunity offered
Here in Tasmania we appreciate more keenly than in many parts of Australia that due to past decisions much of our sustainable timber resource has been locked up.
As a result, there are only two alternative sources for timber:
The first is that we import more timber and timber products from overseas – bearing in mind we already have a $2b. annual trade deficit in timber and timber products;
And also bearing in mind that often this imported timber comes from the unregulated forests of south east Asia, or the Solomons, or the Amazon.
And the second is that we can grow our own trees.
Can I say, I know which option is the best for the world environment and which option is the best for Australian jobs.
As an aside I cannot help but notice the extreme Greens’ opposition to tree farms for timber fibre but their wholehearted embrace of hemp farms for fibres – undoubtedly they wouldn’t use farm land!
It is also galling to note their opposition to old growth and native forest harvesting, and then see them pack-out the front rows of anti-tree farm meetings!
Now all Australian Governments — Federal and State — are signed up to the “2020 vision”
A plan that by 2020 we should have established 3 million hectares of timber plantations established in Australia
A plantation estate that would not only serve our domestic wood needs but also be a sufficient resource to encourage the development of value-adding industries such as pulp mills – of which some $4 billion are currently on the drawing board
The most significant of these, of course, being the proposed new pulp mill just up the road here at Longreach.
Currently we are well on track to this goal, with somewhere over 1.7 million hectares in the ground
But past experience has shown that any serious tinkering with the rules in relation to plantation investment – that is, the 12-month rule – has the capacity to seriously undermine the important 2020 goal and stall literally billions of dollars worth of value adding and regional jobs.
The truth about tree farms
Whilst the future of this rule is currently being considered by Government, I would like to take this opportunity to address what some call the “rural myths” about tree farms
The 12-month rule has been very successful in leveraging private sector investment to foster innovative agriculture and create timber farms, through managed investment scheme arrangements.
It has also been very successful in bringing city money into the country
That is, city money creating rural jobs.
When was the last time you heard people arguing against this?
Something which offers a great counter to compulsory superannuation, which is often criticised for taking rural money into the city.
Then there are claims that plantations somehow destroy rural jobs and rural communities.
People talk a lot about the damage tree farms will supposedly do to other farms, but no-one to date has presented me with any hard evidence.
In fact, all the available empirical evidence is to the contrary.
Rural Australia has, unfortunately, been in decline for the past 25 years.
The 12-month rule has been in existence in its current form since 2002.
What is actually happening is that plantations are creating new jobs and revitalising rural communities, particularly when they get to harvesting stage as they are starting to now – such as at Preolenna.
There are also claims that MIS’ are driving up property prices at the expense of local farmers.
On that, let me just say that I am informed that more recently it has been New Zealand dairy farmers outbidding companies like Great Southern Plantations for land who are driving up prices.
But is that a bad thing?
Shock horror to think that rural land values might actually be going up in line with the suburbs!
Can I say I don’t know many farmers who would not prefer their land to be worth more rather than worth less.
Greater capital value means more equity to develop farms.
And in many cases it means farmers are able to exit with dignity and sell their farm for a decent price which would not otherwise have been achieved
Open minds = open opportunities — an excellent theme
And herein lies the crunch.
The King Island Council is leading a push in Tasmania to have forestry outlawed as a legitimate rural practice.
I was relieved to see that the Resource Planning and Development Commission has reconsidered their ruling on this
As I am sure were most of Tasmania’s farmers, including those on King Island.
The farming community would be very nervous to have Local Government trying to put their stamp on what happens on farm land
Farmers should be able to grow on their land whatever legal product they like — be it cows or sheep or wheat or potatoes or trees or even pumpkins — and I’ll explain pumpkins in a minute
Not only is a tree farm ban the thin edge of the wedge, it runs totally counter to the theme of today’s conference of Adaptable Regions: open minds open opportunities
To lock our rural economy out of a potential growth area is a very unwise path to take
The rural economy is a fickle beast
Markets come and markets go
To say to the farmers of the future that “thou shalt not grow trees” – or any other valuable crop for that matter – is something which I think all farmers should rightly be very wary of.
You can’t live in a pumpkin
We certainly need and value the food and other rural commodities our farms produce
But it is absurd and silly to argue, as some stridently opposed to tree farms are, that you “can’t eat a tree.”
Of course you can’t.
No doubt our foresters could retort with: “you can’t live in a pumpkin.”
But just as you need food to eat, so you need a house to live in, furniture to sit on, and paper to write on
If capacity to eat the product is the test for allowable agriculture we would be without wool, cotton, lavender and other farm-based industries
We need a mature and sensible approach to change, not lazy catch-cries that fail the most basic tests of logic
Ultimately, it should be up to each individual land owner to decide what he grows on his land or who he sells it to
This is the Australian way and this is how it should be.
Conclusion
The great catch-cry of the 1990s in rural Australia was “diversification”
We sought to protect ourselves from a price shock in one rural industry by also growing other rural commodities
In many ways the theme of today’s conference Adaptable Regions: open minds open opportunities is a logical extension of this, from the individual to the community
Rural and regional communities need to protect themselves from commodity price shocks by opening their minds to all forms of rural commodity and rural investment
Indeed, some of these alternative crops, such as trees, even have the potential to revitalise communities which were formerly in decline
The fact is, a community which closes off options for the future is a community which surely dooms itself to a death of a thousand cuts
Can you imagine the state of play on say, King Island, if farmers there had been told in the early 1990s that they couldn’t move from sheep to beef when the wool market collapsed because it would “destroy King Island as we know it”, putting shearers and rouseabouts out of work and destroying the Island’s image as a producer of fine wool?
King Island would now be a ghost island had that happened
Of course, it didn’t, and farmers moved very successfully into beef production
Or can you imagine our East Coast not converting sheep country to walnut groves and vineyards?
The reality of modern life is that the only constant is change
Rather than trying to fight change, regional communities should embrace it and be in the vanguard, or at least allow those who want to avail themselves of new opportunities to do so.
The value of conferences such as today’s is summed up by the saying:
If I have a dollar and you have a dollar and we exchange them we both still have a dollar
If I have an idea and you have an idea and we exchange we will both have two ideas.
I wish you an enjoyable conference and thank you for your time today.
Address by
Senator the Hon. Eric Abetz
Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation
“You can’t live in a pumpkin”
Sustainable Economic Growth for Regional Australia Conference
29 August 2006
Hotel Grand Chancellor, Launceston
