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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
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Question Time

AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY (Leader of the Opposition) (14:27): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Fisheries, and Forests a question about research.

Leave granted.

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY: South Australia has had a long, proud history of world-class research in agriculture and primary industries. As members would know, and I have spoken about this before, one of those research stations was Flaxley, in the Adelaide Hills. The government has closed that facility and it is selling or has sold the research station lock, stock and barrel—the locks on the doors, stock that roamed the paddocks and the storage barrels—to the highest bidder.

At the time it was closed, the deputy chief executive of PIRSA at the time, Mr Don Plowman, said:

The move is in line with the National Primary Industries RD&E [research and development] Framework under which South Australia has a leadership role in pigs and poultry, wine, fisheries and aquaculture, grains and biofuels.

Meanwhile, with the closure of Flaxley, on central Eyre Peninsula, 600 kilometres north-west, is the Minnipa agricultural research centre. It was once known as the Minnipa experimental farm and it has been around for almost 100 years, established in 1915. It is operated by Primary Industries and Regions South Australia. Minnipa serves the cereal growing areas of Eyre Peninsula and, in fact, the southern dryland zone in Australia. In South Australia, Eyre Peninsula produces some 40 to 45 per cent of South Australia's wheat.

Research at the Minnipa centre is crucial to South Australia's excellence in dryland broadacre farming, water use efficiency, herbicide tolerance and farming systems. In fact, Minnipa rightly boasts that it is the centre of excellence in low rainfall farming in southern Australia and the Minnipa Agricultural Centre operates as a commercial farming enterprise and as a certified seed grower. Also, there is even an Eyre Peninsula Agricultural Research Foundation to give strategic support and planning to the centre. I am also advised that an adjoining property is now on the market and would be a valuable addition to the important research activities at Minnipa. My questions are:

1. When Flaxley is sold, will the proceeds go into general revenue where other ministers can reach out for their cut or will the minister guarantee, like former member Kevin Foley's 'over my dead body' guarantee, that the proceeds will remain in South Australian research?

2. More importantly, will the minister quarantine those funds and do what Labor promised it would do and honour its commitment to maintain a leadership role in research including valuable work at the Minnipa Agricultural Centre?

3. When was the last time the minister visited the Minnipa research centre?

The Hon. G.E. GAGO (Minister for Agriculture, Food and Fisheries, Minister for Forests, Minister for Regional Development, Minister for the Status of Women, Minister for State/Local Government Relations) (14:30): I thank the honourable member for his most important questions. Indeed, I have really spoken on this issue before in this place and outlined the government's intention and strategy. I have already spoken in this place before about the change in the nature of research conducted here in South Australia. We no longer rely on the large research farms of yesteryear in the same way as we do today. Research and improvements in technology mean that we conduct our research in a very different way, so we no longer need those large research stations in the same way today.

I have come into this place before and been quite open about assessments done on those properties that are surplus to our requirements, and those that are deemed to be surplus are planned to be sold. I am quite sure I have already outlined in this place the current arrangement for proceeds from those sales and I believe, if I recall correctly, it is fifty-fifty: the agency is able to take 50 per cent of the proceeds to use on that agency's initiatives and 50 per cent goes into general revenue. I will need to check that and if that figure is not accurate, I will make sure that the chamber is made aware of that. I have given that information in this place before and we have been quite open and direct about that.

I have talked before also about the changing structure of research. The states used to beaver away and try to do a bit of everything in terms of research, and that has now changed. We now proceed with a much more coordinated and nationally consistent approach. We work now within a national R&D and extension framework. Of course here in South Australia, SARDI is the national leader in the areas of grains, wine grapes, fishing and aquaculture, pigs, poultry, climate adaptation and animal welfare, so they are the areas we mainly focus our activity on.

I have also talked about the SCoPI and the PISC process and pre-existing national coordination and collaboration which has meant that the primary industries' R&D community over the last five years has significantly delivered on the development of a national coordination and also collaboration in a number of areas. Some of the examples of the really valuable work that we continue to do include the consolidation of multiple national wheat breeding programs, of which South Australia has two based at Waite and Roseworthy respectively, to three majors—Australian Grain Technologies Proprietary Limited, Intergrain and LongReach.

Barley breeding is another example, with a national consortium of the three barley breeding programs of the University of Adelaide, Western Australia's Department of Agriculture and Food and also the Queensland Department of Primary Industries. The executive director of SARDI chaired the national review team that resulted in the formation of a BBA, and a three-year review of the arrangement is expected to result in Western Australia's and the University of Adelaide's teams remaining servicing the national needs, which is quite a feather in our cap.

The Australian Winter Cereals Pre-breeding Alliance is a national collaboration between all of the major agricultural and molecular biological genomics, phenomics and metabolomics discovery institutions. This aims to coordinate the development of molecular-derived outputs, gene sequencing, gene adaptation, trait development, germplasm enhancement, as well as the mutually beneficial management of intellectual property and the end-point royalty screens.

Another is the South Australia and Victoria memorandum of understanding on aquatic sciences research and services to industry, which is a joint venture and a national collaborative research infrastructure strategy, which involves a number of the commonwealth NCRIS programs. Again, it involves the Australian Genome Research Facility, Airborne Research Australia, Integrated Marine Observing System, Biotechnology Products, Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network, and so it goes on. Of course, we have our cooperative research centres (CRCs), which are a major national collaborative issue as well, in which SARDI participates. They involve our Australian seafood, beef genetic technologies, sheep industry, poultry, future farm industries, pork, and the list goes on.

They are just a few examples of the collaborative way that we now partner to ensure that South Australia remains part of world-leading research in a number of different areas in a nationally coordinated way, and that is what we focus on. The honourable member is quite inaccurate and quite misleading when he suggests that we are not committed to research; indeed, we are, it is just that the face of research has changed significantly. We need to move on. We need to adapt and adjust to new ways of conducting research, and we are doing it in a far more efficient and effective way at present.

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