Mr NEVILLE (12:09 PM) —I am more than happy to speak in support of the Farm Business Improvement Program. As the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry said in his second reading speech, the Rural Adjustment Amendment Bill 1998 is to make a number of amendments to the Rural Adjustment Act 1992 to allow the introduction of the Farm Business Improvement Program known as FarmBis. I am a wholehearted supporter of this initiative because it replaces aspects of the Rural Adjustment Scheme. I am also a wholehearted supporter of the umbrella policy of the Agriculture—Advancing Australia package.

The $525 million Agriculture—Advancing Australia package was released in September 1997 after close consultation with industry, rural communities and state and territory governments. Its aim is to help the rural sector maximise its contribution to Australia's economic, social and environmental wellbeing by boosting its profitability, competitiveness and sustainability. FarmBis is a key feature of this visionary AAA package. FarmBis not only contains benefits for farmers wishing to improve their business management skills in the modern world but also holds benefits for the wider community—particularly in electorates like mine that encompass provincial cities and rural areas, and are heavily dependent on the rural communities.

FarmBis is dedicated to helping farmers and their employees, and others directly involved in the sector, such as contractors, improve their management skills. Direct financial contributions will be made towards the program and the training costs in a range of areas. These include skills development, farm business and financial planning and advice, farm performance, benchmarking, quality assurance, risk management, rural leadership development and marketing skills.

I was a bit disturbed to hear the shadow minister's concept of benchmarking. I think benchmarking involves a lot more than just going around and having a look at the other guy's onions, as he put it. I think benchmarking today requires a lot greater skill. It involves such things as personal training through the Internet, field days, scientific field days and shed meetings. I think part of the problem with farming was that a lot of farmers flew by the seat of their pants. Today there are a lot of mechanisms in place. I think benchmarking should be seen as a much more sophisticated mechanism—albeit there are plenty of mechanisms around to enhance it—rather than the comme ci, comme ca basis on which we did things in the past.

This FarmBis program dovetails perfectly with the Farm Family Restart scheme which provides a welfare net for low income farmers experiencing financial hardship and who cannot borrow further against their assets and/or who are not ready to sell their farm and apply for welfare support under the social security hardship provisions. The Farm Family Restart scheme also provides income support at the same level as unemployment benefits, as well as paying farmers to obtain professional advice about the viability of their business. It is this aspect which dovetails well with FarmBis and provides an opportunity for farmers to gain skills which may be lacking.

One of the saddest things for me is that when farmers come to see me I cannot help thinking that if they had had the right skills development they would not be in the position that they are in. I see this a lot after hailstorms and floods, that provision has not been made for insurance and other safeguard mechanisms. While I appreciate that crop insurance is a very expensive field, I cannot help thinking that if farmers had a better opportunity to weigh up the pros and cons of entering into insurance—or at least into some form of partial insurance—they would be better able to cope. If we create a structure in which farmers have access to those skills, and they are readily available and supported by government, as they are through these programs, then I think they will be better able to cope.

The Farm Management Deposit Scheme and the retirement assistance scheme for farmers are other components of this AAA package. I am a great believer in these programs, but I must make the comment that I am finding now that the $500,000 limit when passing on the family farm from one family to another—it is not so bad when there are two or three families involved—does have some difficulties in it. Also, where families have set up trusts or family companies and the major breadwinner has been removed from the scene—perhaps by some fatal illness—before the family can get the opportunity to restructure is a difficulty that needs to be addressed to make that program work better.

Rural industries and the coalition have worked closely together in the development of the `Action Plan for Australian Agriculture', which sets a forward agenda for improving the profitability, sustainability and competitiveness of the farm sector. The action plan is underpinned by a shared vision that, within 10 years, Australia will have an outward looking agricultural sector based on profitability, sustainability and competitive family-farmed businesses. We are recognised in that field as world leaders and we should endeavour to enhance our efficiency, our product quality, our application of innovation, and our ability to supply and respond to market needs. The vision is supported by eight themes, under which a range of actions can be taken by the industry and the government. These themes include increased profitability, with financially self-reliant producers involved in increasingly productive and profitable enterprises; and skills development and leadership, guiding highly-skilled food and fibre industries, with a culture of ongoing skills development. That is where FarmBis fits in very well. Other themes are a close relationship with customers, driven by ongoing trade liberalisation, innovative marketing strategies and efficient supply channels able to respond to market demand; increased quality and value of Australian food and fibre products; and enhanced ongoing planning, with producers, industry organisations and government planning for the future and undertaking ongoing analysis and monitoring.

A very interesting aspect of this was seen last year, when the Taiwanese pork market collapsed because of foot-and-mouth disease. I was involved with a number of groups of pork producers who wanted to respond to that circumstance. I found it absolutely staggering that they could not get the abattoir capacity in Australia to be able to respond quickly enough. We had Japanese buyers out here, and they actually like Australian pork. They particularly like the lighter quality of Australian pork. I remember attending a function at Monto and seeing how keen they were to take our product. In the end, the only place they could get this additional capacity was at Cannon Hill, which is a state abattoir in Queensland. Even then it was only on a limited basis, and the chilling had to be done on the other side of Brisbane. It staggers me that, when opportunities like that are around, we cannot respond.

Enhanced planning is a vital part of a creative package that empowers farmers and their organisations to act in a better way. The package also deals with sustainable natural resource management, reflecting the application of ecologically sound agricultural practices and the maintenance of long-term productive capacity of the natural resource base at local, regional and national levels.

I often speak about this in the parliament, but integrated pest management was pioneered in my own area of Bundaberg and it plays a very important part in the use of chemicals and fertilisers. One aspect of integrated pest management is to breed up some benign insect or bug that does not affect the crop, in order to remove those bugs on the crop that may be causing difficulties. In that way, you use very little chemical, if any. It allows you to reduce the use of chemicals to perhaps one-quarter, one-third or one-fifth of what you were using before. We need to be doing a lot more of that. Other themes reflect the need for high levels of innovation, with high investment in, and uptake of, well-focused research and the application of biotechnology to increase the sector's competitiveness. Above all, we need robust, prosperous rural communities with effective social and physical infrastructure, with local industries cooperating to shape their own futures.

I do not throw that in as some sort of pious dream. I think all governments have been guilty over recent years of denuding rural communities of services that are important to keep prosperous rural communities effective. Farmers should not have to travel great distances to get to a bank, and they should not have to travel great distances to get appropriate telecommunications linkages and the like.

I acknowledge that many farmers in my electorate have already adopted world's best practice in farm business management techniques. In fact, I am proud to say that my electorate boasts some of the best farm managers in Australia. That applies equally in a number of fields, especially sugar, small crops and, in more recent times, aquaculture. It is high time that government was seen to be actively encouraging farmers to get skilled in these areas because it is something that producer organisations have been hammering us about for years. FarmBis will provide a framework to help farmers adopt a positive approach to change across the whole farm sector leading to improvements in productivity, profitability and sustainability in all facets of farm business through improved management skills. This is not to say that farmers are using antiquated management techniques. Farmers in my electorate use computers to monitor soil conditions and to run irrigation and fertiliser programs. As well, they do their accounts on computer and catch up with the latest farm information on the Internet.

FarmBis will assist all those involved in the management of farm business to build on their existing skills and improve the performance of their farm business. The exciting part about FarmBis is that it will promote continuous learning by making training more accessible. This $50 million program over three years has received strong support from farmers, which is fitting because the focus of the program is on partnerships. State agencies, industry and local farmer and community groups will contribute to meeting the training needs of the farmers. This program will be further localised with local coordinators to take primary responsibility for further skills development of farmers in their area. Of course, another spin-off from this program will be the fact that local training providers will be in a good position to provide these services. My electorate is blessed with having excellent trainers and I can envisage Bundaberg becoming the training centre for the Wide Bay-Burnett region and Gladstone for the Callide-Port Curtis area.

In my years before entering parliament I was actively involved with the development of the TAFE agricultural campus in Bundaberg and with the development of the fishing and marine college in Bundaberg. We now have these facilities in place, but there has been a weakness. There has been this lack of funding to drive the link between the farmer and the facility and I see this FarmBis package as being a very important linking mechanism. Ultimately, however, the FarmBis program, the other components of the AAA package and the action plan for Australian agriculture will only achieve real benefits for regional and rural Australia if the coalition government is permitted by a hostile Senate to exercise its mandate in implementing its tax reform package in full. I do not say that flippantly and I do not say that just to nark the opposition; I believe that.

The improvements to excise and sales tax are critical for regional Australia. The reforms in excise will mean the tilting of the playing field by $3.5 billion towards regional and rural Australia. If you then take the whole package involving exports as well you are looking at $4.5 billion. That is the sort of thing that farmers and rural communities have wanted for a long time. The sheer cost of getting parts and components to rural areas and getting the product or the semi-finished product out of the region to port and to market has been a very difficult feature.

Indeed, there are also all those other things that are important for life in a rural community, right down to the health insurance rebate. We have a structure of public and private hospitals in provincial Queensland. If one sector of that collapses, what we are going to have is that people in rural areas will not be able to get specialist and focused health needs in their own areas but will have to go to capital cities. In the last two or three decades we have been improving that. It all comes back to the coalition being able to get a whole range of measures through. This FarmBis in itself is great. But if we are deprived of the other mechanisms around it to make life attractive in rural and regional areas, it will be a tragedy. On that note, I support the legislation and commend the bill to the House.