ADJOURNMENT

Mr PASIN (Barker) (16:40): The right of Australians to farm their land, build their businesses and pass their livelihood onto the next generation should never be undermined. For generations, farming families have been the backbone of regional Australia. They rise before dawn and work through droughts, floods and market downturns so that they continue producing the food and fibre that keeps our nation running and the world fed.

Yet increasingly many of those families feel under siege. They see decisions being made in distant capital cities by people who have never worked the land, never depended on rainfall for income and never carried the responsibility of keeping a family farm viable for the next generation. Across regional Australia, farmers are facing a growing list of challenges.

The Albanese Labor government has legislated the end of the live sheep export trade, creating uncertainty for producers and the communities that depend on that industry. It has pursued politics that place increasing pressure on regional businesses and agricultural enterprises. Farmers are watching with growing concern as governments propose major developments across productive farmland without properly listening to the people these decisions most affect.

What frustrates farmers the most—indeed, it terrifies them—is that this isn't one policy decision; it's a pattern. It's a pattern of government expecting regional communities to bear the cost of decisions while receiving little say in the process; a pattern of treating agricultural land as though it's empty space, waiting to be utilised for someone else's agenda; a pattern of forgetting that food security is in fact national security.

Prime agricultural land is not just a turn of phrase. It's the foundation of regional economies, local jobs, export industries and indeed family livelihoods. Farmers don't ask for special treatment.

They simply ask for respect, consultation and the ability to continue doing what they do best: feeding Australians and the rest of the world. That is why I strongly support the principle of the right to farm—the right of farming families to have confidence in their future, the right to invest in their businesses without fear that changing political fashions will undermine their livelihoods, and the right to know that government understands the value of agriculture and the communities that depend on it.

The Limestone Coast is one of Australia's most productive agricultural regions. It's home to world-class livestock producers, grain growers, forestry operations, dairy farms and wine-grape growers, to name a few. Its success is built on three things: productive soil, high rainfall and reliable groundwater.

That reliable groundwater is not merely important; it's almost everything. It sustains farms. It supports regional towns.

It underpins billions of dollars of agricultural production across the south-east. That is why the South Australian parliament established a 10-year moratorium on hydraulic fracturing in the Limestone Coast in 2018. That moratorium was introduced after overwhelming community concern about the potential impacts on water resources and agricultural industries.

Now—in a pattern that is common: without saying anything before an election—the Malinauskas Labor government is attempting to remove that moratorium, putting at risk all of those industries that rely on that pristine underground aquifer. In fact, there is more irrigation effort in the south-east of South Australia than in all of the Murray-Darling Basin in South Australia.

I say to Peter Malinauskas: Why take the risk? Why gamble with one of Australia's most valuable food-producing regions? Why put at risk a groundwater system that has sustained communities and industries for generations?

This is not a debate about being anti development. It's a debate about what your priorities are. When food production, water security and agricultural prosperity are placed alongside resource extraction, I know where the people of Barker stand, and I stand with them.

The south-east should be known for growing food, producing wine and supporting thriving regional communities, not for an experiment in unconventional extraction in a limestone region. The people of Barker have made that view clear. They want farmland protected, they want their water protected, and they want governments to recognise that some places are just too valuable to risk.

Agriculture has sustained the south-east for generations. It will sustain it for generations to come if governments have the wisdom to protect it.