CORRECTED VERSION

OUTER SUBURBAN/INTERFACE SERVICES AND DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE

Inquiry into sustainable development of agribusiness in outer suburban Melbourne

Greensborough— 29October 2009

Members

MrN. Elasmar / MrD. Hodgett
MsD. Green
MsR. Buchanan / MrD. Nardella
MrM. Guy / MrG. Seitz
MsC. Hartland / MrK. Smith
Chair: MrG. Seitz
Deputy Chair: MrK. Smith

Staff

Executive Officer: MrS. Coley
Research Officer: MrK. Delaney
Witness
Presenting:
Mr David Magahy, Farmer (sworn).


The CHAIR— You have parliamentary privilege in that whatever you say here cannot be held against you under the Constitution Act, the Parliamentary Committees Act, the Defamation Act and, where applicable, reciprocal legislation in other states and territories. However, what you say outside the hearing is not afforded such privilege. What is your mailing address, please?

MrMAGAHY— My mailing address is 255Eagles Nest Road, Arthurs Creek.

The CHAIR— Thank you. You have 20minutes to talk to us.

MrMAGAHY— I will not take 20minutes of your time. First of all let me thank you as a committee for allowing me to appear, and I apologise for the amateurish nature of my presentation. I did not have a great deal of time to prepare a presentation. However, I have a few thoughts, and they are possibly a little different from those of a couple of the previous speakers.

I am a farmer. I am not a businessman with a farm, I am not a lawyer with a farm and I am not a doctor with a farm. I am actually a fulltime farmer, a fairly rare thing in the shire of Nillumbik.

MsGREEN— The real McCoy— or the real Magahy.

MrMAGAHY— Absolutely. At the moment we run not quite 1000acres, approximately 15per cent of it in the shire of Nillumbik, the rest in the adjoining shire of Alexandra. We were orchardists for five generations up until about five or six years ago. We now run a beef herd commercially. When CrBrock asked me to appear before this committee, he said it was on the future of farming in the shire. We ran an orchard up at Arthurs Creek for 30odd years. Before that the family was down in Doncaster. I marketed my own produce for 30years in the wholesale market. We had an export licence to the Middle East. We did not produce huge amounts of fruit. We targeted the absolute upper end of the market. You can imagine in exporting to the Middle East the requirements of the people who could afford to have those peaches airfreighted to them. We sold individually, and the standards were the highest. I suppose the point I am making is that I am a fulltime farmer.

I would like to say a couple of words on the future of farming, if I might. I think the future of farming is extremely grim; there is only one way out for the future of farming. That is for it to be linked with the environment. After all, farmers own roughly twothirds of the land mass of Australia, and if the environmental problems are as bad as we are told, and I accept that they are, farmers have to be linked with those solutions. They cannot be left out— and this is going to be my theme— and they cannot be treated by the bureaucracy as the enemy to be destroyed. If I had a letter from the shire council waiting for me at home and it said they were coming up to see me, I would not be filled with fear; it would be trepidation. It would not be anything positive, because my whole experience has been negative.

If I went around this room and said to anyone, ‘Do you expect a 20 to 30per cent drop in your income this year?’, I very much doubt anyone would say they do. But I do. It is no fault of government or bureaucracy or anyone; it is just the economic conditions, because the Australian dollar has appreciated to such an extent. The marketers came down; we use a mob from Wodonga. They said to me that I can expect, because of, as I say, the appreciating Australian dollar, a drop in my income of 20 to 25per cent. There is a unique example, for a start, that the vast majority of the Australian populace do not face. I am not a big corporation, I am not BHP; I am at the other end of the scale. But I still cop those economic, what I call, realities.

Of course climate change has hit us badly; we all know that. That is noone’s fault. That is not the government’s fault; that is just a freak of nature. We could debate whether it is man’s fault. So there is another thing that makes farming— whether it is in the Nillumbik shire or the Northern Territory— more difficult. There are increasing costs and, as I have said, bureaucracy.

I turn to the future in the Nillumbik shire, and I pay tribute to CrBrock for his interest. We were going through some of the things that we can do in the Nillumbik shire, and he brought up horticulture. We have had a couple of grape growers. But generally you can rule out horticulture, just about put a line straight through it. The reason? One word: water— no water. Even if there was— and there is in some areas— you cannot get a permit to put a dam in. The bureaucrats will not allow you; it is environmentally unsustainable. There would not be a dam that has been put in of any size— and I do not call puddles a dam; I call a dam as a dam, something you can pump out of. There would not be a dam that has been put in the Nillumbik shire for 10years. That may or may not be right, but it is just fact. There are no dams in the Nillumbik shire. You cannot get them.

I see my future linked to the environment. I think it is the only one we have got. We are in the green wedge shire. I have had many discussions with what are termed ‘greenies’— or, as I term them, the Eltham environmentalists. And they are passionate about their green wedge. We hear comments in Parliament about the green wedge, and it is ‘our green wedge’.You will hear the environmentalists down in Eltham always talking about the green wedge. But I have had many discussions with them. I say, ‘What are you prepared to do to support your green wedge?’— and I do not mean talking to the papers or something like that, or planting a couple of trees on the side of the road or cleaning up a little bit of rubbish, but actually cold hard cash— ‘What are you prepared to do? How many thousand are you prepared to chip in?’. And without exception the answer is, ‘Oh no! It’s your place; you pay for it’. So they have got the best of both worlds. It is their green wedge when it suits them. There are restrictions brought in on what we are allowed to do— you are not allowed to do this, you are not allowed to do that, you are not allowed to do the other— but when it comes to paying for it, on the other hand, we hear, ‘Oh, it’s your green wedge’.

We have heard people talk about kangaroos. I got a permit to shoot 60 or 80kangaroos. I do not like killing animals. I am quite squeamish, to tell you the truth. I do not like killing animals. So rather than do that we spent roughly $20000odd putting up a kangaroo fence— no help from anyone— purely because I did not want to shoot the kangaroos. They are a major problem; there is no question about that, no argument. We had the shire come out to assess whether we were able to get the shire rate. I said, ‘Come and have a look at my kangaroo fence. That is surely part of the environment’. They went up and down and looked up and down it. ‘Where is the animal access?’, the two women said. I do not think I will go on with that anymore. They had absolutely no idea. I spent $20000, and they wanted to know where the animal access was and how they would be able to get in.

If you want to, we will get onto the environment, because, as I say, I keep coming back to that. If you want kangaroos, there is a very, very simple solution:the shire agists them. No, it is not funny; it is a solution. It covers all the bases; it covers the environment, you save the kangaroos, you do not touch them, you let them run wild. Everyone wants lovely kangaroos that run wild. I spent $20000 so I did not have to shoot them. Again we get back to the question that we always get back to: why are they my kangaroos? Why are they not Danielle’s kangaroos? You can bet your bottom dollar that Danielle makes a lot more money than I do— right, Danielle?

MsGREEN— Yes.

MrMAGAHY— Absolutely, and loving it, too. So why are they my kangaroos? Why not instigate a system where the shire says, ‘You’ve got 200kangaroos to run on your place— 90cents a week, a dollar a week’. Then we share the cost. We find out whether the environmental movement is really an environmental movement. I will make a little wager with anyone in this room that I bet I spend more money on the environment— and it is not just talk. There is a saying, ‘Talk is cheap’, and, my goodness, that is a great saying. I will not be very long, I know you are looking at the time.

The CHAIR— No, you are fine; you have 5minutes to go.

MrMAGAHY— No, I will not keep you.

The CHAIR— Do not let me distract you.

MrMAGAHY— I just keep returning to this theme about the importance of the environment and the onesided nature that the government and the populace have about who is going to pay for it. I will give you an example. If you look overseas, I would not think there is a comparable Western civilisation that treats the environment and the farming community the same as ours is treated. Farmers are considered to be in the very lower echelons of society. I know I certainly discouraged my children from having anything to do with the farm. It was funny the other day. My son is a plumber and a staunch member of the plumbers union. He wanted to come back farming, and he was up at our farm up in the country. We were just talking, father and son, and I said, ‘Do you regret not being a farmer, Andrew?’, and he just gave me this derisive laugh. He said, ‘I would not get out of bed for what you earn’.

Getting back to the overseas experience— and I have dozens of these anecdotes— I will give you an example of Switzerland. Switzerland, as you would know probably better than me, has these absolute pristine streams. They are magnificent. I have been there and seem them. They also have a lot of small, extremely subsidised farmers. Because of their short growing season, they use a lot of nitrogenous fertiliser. That nitrogenous fertiliser, unlike phosphate and some potashes, leaches out of the soil very readily. It was getting into the streams and was affecting the quality of the water, bringing algae and affecting their tourist industries, because the streams were not what people expected— this sparkling clear water.

What would Australia do? Australia would have a bureaucratic inquiry and ban nitrogenous fertilisers. It would just say to farmers, ‘From now on all nitrogenous fertiliser is banned’. What did Switzerland do? Switzerland also had an inquiry. It worked out what it was going to cost to ban the nitrogenous fertilisers, and the general populace compensated the farmer for not using the fertiliser. It is a totally different scheme. Everything we touch out here— to save the environment from the bureaucracy— the answeris, ‘Put more restrictions on the farmer and let him pay’.

I have spoken a little about the bureaucracy. Let me give you one story from a planning bureaucrat quite high in the Nillumbik shire. We knew the family socially. They say opposites attract, and if we were at a social gathering, we almost always got together and invariably came to discussing the Nillumbik shire. We had this animated discussion. This young lady is now a member of the bureaucracy of the state government, and she said— and I quote, because I have always remembered it; it is one of my favourite quotes— ‘If I had my way, I would make you completely revegetate your farm, at your cost, and then I would force you to give it back to the original inhabitants off whom you stole it’.

How can a little noaccount farmer like myself, running only 1000acres, fight with a bureaucracy that is so entrenched at what I perceive as my destruction? They have this entrenched, ingrained belief that people like me are the Malcolm Frasers of the world— or what used to be the Malcolm Frasers of the world.

What is the solution? As I said to Lewis, there is no use raving on about things without a solution. I think I said to you previously that the solution, I think, that the environment and farming— I am sorry, that is a fire brigade pager sounding. I have a slight interest in the fire brigade; do I not, Danielle? I apologise for that.

MsGREEN— I think ‘slight’ very much understates it.

MrMAGAHY— The solution in the Nillumbik shire, in my belief, is for the farmers to grow trees— not sawlogs but environmental trees. Think about it: is there a level of the three tiers of government that would not be in favour of more trees? We are told that Melbourne is going to be a population of 7million people. We are continually told by Danielle and her party and other government instrumentalities that green wedges are the lungs of Melbourne. Here we have an opportunity to greatly increase the capacity of those lungs.

What you do is say to a little person like me, ‘You are not doing too great out of farming. How about we form a scheme where you grow trees for the environment? We knock out all your cypress, we knock out your fences and we employ you two days a week. We do not employ any bureaucrats, because you have got the expertise and the materials. And besides, you will probably do about 10times as much as the council workers will’. It is not going to cost a great deal.

And what if it did cost a bit? It probably will; I correct myself. We are going to pay the coal companies $1000million— $1billion— for carbon trading. It is not going to stop the pollution; it is not going to make any difference. We are just going to go into this carbon trading.

I think the idea has some merit, but it has to be done on an economic basis. You cannot go ahead and do what nearly all these schemes always do. The bureaucrats get hold of it. There is a tree scheme of the state government’s, and I think they offer $10 a hectare or something like that. I know it is a joke, but it is what happens all the time.