Author: Andrew Robb
Event: Northern Food Futures Conference
Eighty five percent of Australians live in 5 capital cities. This means that 85 percent of our politicians live in these 5 capital cities.
When push comes to shove the priorities of 85 percent of our politicians lie in those capital cities. Regional issues struggle to ever get the necessary attention, much less financial support.
In Northern Australia, despite its vast geographic size, this political disadvantage is further compounded by a population of one million people, less that five percent of Australia’s total population.
From 2010 to 2013 the Federal Coalition was in Opposition. I had the Shadow Finance portfolio, and I was also responsible for co-ordinating the Coalition’s policy platform across all portfolios, to ensure consistency, proper focus and appropriate funding.
Most of the actual policy work was prepared by my Shadow Ministerial colleagues, but I took the opportunity to do a bit of policy freelancing.
In particular, I researched, wrote and produced a 46-page booklet titled “Developing Northern Australia: A 2030 Vision”.
The booklet was subsequently adopted as Coalition policy, but it was given minimum public promotion and attention because of the political realities I alluded to at the beginning of my address this morning.
This lack of attention continued through the first twenty-three days of the 2013 election campaign. However, 10 days out from the election our Parliamentary Leader, Tony Abbott, received a couple of negative political attacks which were distracting public attention away from our positive campaign messages.
The campaign team were looking for a visionary, substantial initiative to get our election campaign back on track.
I was fortunately helping out in the campaign headquarters and suggested that a day be devoted to the Northern Australia policy; and so, it happened.
To the surprise of many we got nearly three days of positive media attention which set up our successful run to the line in the last week of the campaign. This important public response also helped lock in Tony Abbott’s commitment to the Northern Australia policy when he won the Prime Ministership.
In government this Prime Ministerial commitment led to:
• the Northern Australia White Paper;
• the formation of the CRC for Northern Australia;
• the formation of the $5billion Northern Australia Infrastructure Fund (NAIF);
• the creation of the Office of Northern Australia; and among other things
• a raft of CSIRO long-term research programs.
Most importantly it provided a focus for the nation to work collectively for better development in Northern Australia. And importantly, these range of initiatives broadly enjoy bi-partisan political support.
But the battle to gain long term political commitment is never won; it requires constant major national efforts to capture and sustain the political and public push for developing the potential of the north; national efforts such as this Food Futures conference we are all participating in this week.
In this regard, I warmly congratulate all those responsible for putting together this practical yet visionary conference.
Yet, many Australians would still be unaware of the extraordinary potential in Australia’s north, the top 45 per cent of Australia’s land mass.
This potential owes much to the fact that Australia’s north means we are the only developed country in the world, other than Singapore, which has a significant component in the tropics.
The tropical region accounts for more than 40 percent of the world’s population today, projected to grow to 50 percent by 2050.
Everyone is seeing the Asian opportunity. Fewer are seeing the tropics, and therein lies a tremendous opportunity for Northern Australia which, being a first world region, positioned in the tropics, conducts its business, delivers services, and regulates issues particularly related to the tropics each and everyday in terms of health, construction, education and many and varied businesses.
Furthermore, it is often not properly recognised or understood that Northern Australia is integral to Australia’s economy, long-term security and regional engagement.
Investments in resources and energy over the last 20 years in particular, have driven economic growth for Northern Australia and Australia more broadly.
While this resources and energy sector remains the primary generator of wealth for the north, Northern Australia possesses world-class and growing strengths in agriculture, energy and resources, tourism and hospitality, tropical health and medical research and education, and in the services, the infrastructure, logistics, training, innovation, and research and development that cluster around these strengths.
The 2015 White Paper on Northern Australia laid down a 20-year agenda to properly realise Northern Australia’s potential.
The White Paper recognised that across the north, there are 17 million hectares of arable soil in a mosaic taking in Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia, typically in many parts running one beast to 10 hectares. This arable land mass is the size of Cambodia.
In this regard the White Paper immediately identifies areas totalling 180,000 hectares suitable for irrigated agriculture.
The White Paper saw that adding water to many parts of this arable land mass would lead to amazing productively improvements. Sixty percent of Australia’s yearly rainfall falls in the North, and we currently capture two percent of that water. River diversion and on-farm water storage, sufficient for annual use, is one sensible way forward in developing key parts of this arable land.
Any reasonable examination of the White Paper’s long list of initiatives for Government actions would conclude that many have been or are being actively addressed. It is a commendable start.
However, the White Paper also emphasised that governments alone cannot develop Northern Australia; they can only set the right environment for businesses to profitably invest and communities to flourish.
In this regard, a major critical area that must be further addressed is the need for government to be a greater catalyst for major and minor industry investment.
The relative isolation and small population numbers in the north means that investment can invariably be more costly and more uncertain than comparable investment in Australia’s southern states.
Government financial loan support, even in small proportions, can often be the difference in providing the confidence for investors to invest.
The Northern Australia Infrastructure Fund (NAIF) was developed to address this area of investment disadvantage.
In this regard NAIF appears to have had its hands tied over the last four years by certain restrictions imposed on its modus operandi.
To his credit, the Federal Minister for Northern Australia, the Hon. Keith Pitt, has acted strongly as recently as last week to successfully introduce legislation to provide the NAIF with the necessary mandate and personnel to enable the NAIF to free up investment options for the north by:
• increasing NAIF’s risk appetite to back more job creating projects;
• by enabling NAIF to commit up to half a billion dollars to equity investments;
• by collaborating with lending institutions to support smaller $1m to $10m projects;
• by streamlining the approval process for the NAIF;
• by expanding the definition of public benefit to include such factors as jobs, regional income and opportunities for local suppliers, including indigenous.
This enhanced investment focus is central to realising the opportunities that we will discuss all this week.
For my part, post politics, I am proudly a Board member of the Kidman cattle enterprise, an investment advisor to the Seafarms project which aims to breed up to 100 million juvenile tiger prawns a week in the Northern Territory, I’m a policy and investment advisor to a new age insurance company which is creating 21st century insurance mutuals, beginning in Northern Australia, which provide insurance at a 30 percent discount to their competitors; I’m a Board member of a fruit and vegetable company using 21st century manufacturing technology to produce fruit juice, nectar, shots, fresh cut, bulk HPP, powders and other complimentary offerings within the growing districts, not 1000 km from the growers; and I’m an investment advisor to a new multi-billion dollar clean fuel project in Darwin, utilising gas condensate.
There are endless opportunities in Northern Australia; the trick is to have government truly engaged as a partner in attracting the critical investment dollars.