MOTIONS

Mr HOLZBERGER (Forde) (17:05): I always jump at the chance to speak on a motion regarding agriculture because I like to surprise people a little bit, being a member of an outer suburban part of Australia. That's because I always like to remind people where I come from, which is where I used to work, on sheep and cattle stations around my hometown of Broken Hill, where I had a small business.

I call it a small business, but, really, it was just a bike, a ute and a pack of dogs—and the will to win, which is the thing that you need most when you're working on the land. I was there through a very tough time. It can be tough on the land at the best of times, but I was there at the worst of times, when we had the millennial drought in around 2000.

Over the course of about 18 months or so, I think we had about 180 points of rain, which is just under two inches, on the old scale. We saw, unfortunately, thousands of sheep die and hundreds of cattle die. It was a lesson to me in many ways that you couldn't get a bunch of people that are more resilient, more ready to take that sort of self-responsibility.

And it was a lesson for me that, had the government not stepped in and looked after those farmers, then all of those farmers would have been out of business and off the land that they'd looked after for generations. All of that stock would have died. And so government has an essential role in agriculture.

The other reason I speak to this is that I take any opportunity I have to listen to the member for Kennedy as well, who brings such a lifetime of experience. I'm always amazed to think that I'm speaking in the same parliament as a person who sat during the Bjelke-Petersen government, with which history shows there are, I think, many good things involved. The Bjelke-Petersen government, despite all of its criticisms, was an active government when it came to protecting Australian industry and protecting Australian farmers.

And so there are many lessons that I learned from that. It is a chance not just to remind people about my own personal history but also to reinforce how important agriculture is to the Australian economy generally. You might actually find it hard to believe, but the Australian AgriBusiness Institute is a college which has only just opened up right next door to my electoral office in Beenleigh, and it is going to have 900 places for students to learn about agriculture as we move into the 21st century—900 places.

It is going to bring tens of millions of dollars to the local economy just through that sector alone, let alone training the agricultural experts in the future. I would like to take this opportunity for a big shout-out to my now good friend Bernard Malik, who has worked tirelessly to get this up off the ground. It is something that is going to contribute, as I said, tens of millions of dollars to the local economy and, over time, hundreds of millions of dollars to the Australian economy.

It is, I think, important for all members to realise that this $100 billion-a-year industry, agriculture, is something which is not only so important to those in the back blocks of western New South Wales, where I come from, or the inside country, as we call it, along the coast, but also something essential to the Australian economy generally and, I might just say, to the Australian psyche as well, psychologically.

We are very much a country where we might have huddled close to the coast but our history and our values come from the bush. The last thing I'd say is this: I also like to remind people that I worked in farming as a prelude to say that I was also an electorate officer, a political staffer, when I worked for Murray Watt, who was the agriculture minister when we came into government.

I saw Murray go from being an opposition shadow minister to being the agriculture minister responsible for handling the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Indonesia. I'd say that that one example really exemplifies the Albanese government's attitude to these sorts of concerns—that, when there is a crisis, we will throw everything we can at it and, where there is a chance to prevent it, we will do everything that we can to prevent it.

So I saw Murray work his guts out and stop FMD coming into Australia. Of course the media never focused—there's never a moment where you go 'mission complete,' but you know that when you've solved the issue is when it when it starts dropping off the headlines in the papers. There are many things in this motion to be commended by the member for Kennedy.

They'll be voting against it. Always happy to listen. (Time expired)