Tuesday, 24 May 2022

Agriculture Victoria

Mrs McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (17:43): (1924) My adjournment debate is for the Minister for Agriculture and concerns the impact which short-sighted cuts to Agriculture Victoria will have on regional Victoria, specifically in the south-west. The danger with Melbourne-based bureaucracies is that even those which operate satellite offices or—in the case of Agriculture Victoria—a hub-and-spoke approach will always retreat to the centre when cuts are made. At the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee last week I pointed out that the Andrews government has slashed more than 100 jobs from agriculture research and development, and the minister refused to rule out further losses. At the same time the Premier’s personal department has increased from 370 staff when Labor came to power in 2014 to 966 last year. This is a terrible contrast and speaks volumes about the government’s attitude to regional Victoria and its most important industry. So I want to take this opportunity to explain why it should be HQ in Melbourne which bears the brunt of these cuts, not out in the field where real and valuable work is done.

As members here should be well aware, the south-west is a fabulously rich, fertile and productive farming area. The dairy industry is particularly important, with hundreds of dairy farmers, thousands in the workforce and tens of thousands of animals. It is the region’s most important industry, producing 1.9 billion litres of milk last year, generating $4 billion per year across the whole supply chain and representing 30 per cent of the region’s economy. Importantly, in recent years half of the dairy farms in the south-west have increased production, and 80 per cent are currently minded to maintain or increase herd size. This is why the Warrnambool office of Agriculture Victoria is so well situated and why its work has been so important to local farmers. Their work is not theoretical or academic, it is seriously practical. They work with the region’s dairy farmers and have built a strong and mutually beneficial relationship, keeping Victoria at the cutting edge of agricultural science and ever-increasing productivity levels.

A few of these hands-on projects with real outcomes for the dairy industry include the wet soils project in Terang; alternative forage trials; the phosphorus nitrogen project at Ballangeich, Toolong and Terang; the feed to milk project at Nullawarre; the genetic gains project; the irrigation project at Grassmere and Mepunga; the forage assemblies at DemoDAIRY; the pasture persistence project at Illowa; the forage value index trial at Timboon—and I could go on. This work just does not happen inside the tram tracks. The action I seek is for the minister to visit these researchers with me to recognise the importance of regional relationships and to reverse these damaging cuts.