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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, First Session (53-1)
2014-05-20 Daily Xml
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Federal Budget

Mr HUGHES (Giles) (15:06): My question is to the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Fisheries. Can the minister inform the house about the proposed impacts of the federal budget on primary industries in South Australia?

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL (Mawson—Minister for Agriculture, Food and Fisheries, Minister for Forests, Minister for Tourism, Minister for Recreation and Sport, Minister for Racing) (15:06): I thank the member for Giles for his question and congratulate him. Eight weeks in the job and he's got those giant cuttlefish back to Whyalla. I don't know what he did, and the scientists would like to know how they turned up again, but it is great news for all South Australians that these tourism icons are back in Whyalla.

The federal budget left barely an area that they didn't go through and cut, and primary industries, unfortunately, were not spared, either. I am very concerned about the effects that will have on primary production in this state and also in terms of food manufacturing. We have seen, in the past 17 years, year-on-year growth in the food manufacturing area. We have seen fantastic work done by collaboration at the state and national level in terms of scientific experiments and research and development—people from both levels of government working with the private sector to improve what it is that we do here in South Australia.

When you go through the federal budget, you can see that they are cutting the CSIRO program by $111 million. During the next round, cooperative research centres have been scrapped, with syndicates already spending hundreds of thousands of dollars preparing submissions for the next round of funding. We saw this when the federal government first got in last year: they did it in the tourism sector as well. Tourism operators in the Barossa and other parts of South Australia spent a lot of money putting proposals together for projects that were meant to be funded as in previous rounds. They put in all this time and effort and the new federal government came in and said, 'We are not even going to open those proposals and have a look at them. We are just going to scrap the whole thing and get rid of it.'

We are seeing that now in the area of research and development and the cooperative research centres (CRCs). There will be a reduction of funding to the tune of $124 million for the clean technology investment and innovation programs and cooperative research centres. The Australian Institute of Marine Science will also face a cut to its funding of almost $8 million. These are really important areas. They are areas where South Australia often leads the way. I was talking earlier in the day about how, as Team Australia, we need to work together and maybe not see the other states as our competitors but actually see other countries as competitors, and we need federal funds to be pumped into those research efforts so that we can all work collaboratively. We need to have the private sector and the government sector working well together, but we can't do it alone; we do need the federal funds.

Agriculture, food and fisheries are of vital importance to the state's economy and continue to grow in value, generating more than $16 billion in revenue in 2012-13. A lot of that research around the fisheries is done here at SARDI, and they do a tremendous job. Talking to the Victorian minister for agriculture and fisheries just a couple of weeks ago, we are doing a lot of the work for Victoria as well, just as they are doing work in other areas.

We do need to work together, but it is going to make it so much harder with the federal government applying these cuts right across the board. Hundreds of millions of dollars in South Australia will be missing if all these cuts that Joe Hockey put in his budget go ahead. I think it is of major concern to the general public in South Australia and of major concern to people in the primary industry sector who I have spoken with since the budget was handed down.

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