3 Aug 2016
Investment, domestic and foreign, is attracted to industry sectors with stable business environments that can provide a satisfactory return on capital. The investment and growth potential of Queensland’s agriculture sector, particularly for the intensive industries that QFF represents, is currently the envy of many other sectors. With strong domestic demand and ever increasing global demand for our high quality agricultural products, attractive returns on invested capital are on offer.
However, there is currently a degree of political risk at both levels of government in Queensland that is challenging investment in agriculture. Ongoing uncertainty around issues such as vegetation management, regional planning and the management of social license are hindering responsible and sustainable growth opportunities for intensive agriculture industries.
At the state level, vegetation management has become less about good policy based on science and risk and more about its effectiveness as a political wedge. In its recent draft report, the Productivity Commission used vegetation management in Queensland as an example to highlight how ongoing changes to regulation creates instability that unnecessarily restricts good farm management decisions and reduces investment.
The review of the South East Queensland Regional Plan currently underway again proposes an expansion of the rural living area footprint. It is essential that within regional planning, agriculture stops being considered as something that needs to be either ‘moved’ or ‘managed’ and acknowledged as the major growing regional economic contributor that it is.
At the local level, the Scenic Rim Regional Council is explicitly targeting poultry meat farmers by deliberately increasing infrastructure and rates charges on individual businesses with little warning or consultation. The council has targeted a growing industry that on face value, could be seen as a poorly conceived revenue raising exercise that may end up having the opposite effect on the district.
Why does all this matter? Regional economic growth and jobs. Agriculture is the mainstay for jobs and local economies in regional Queensland. The May 2016 unemployment rate by labour force region reported unemployment rates of 13.2% and 13% in the Townsville region and outback Queensland respectively. This compares with unemployment rates of 3.6% to 5% across Brisbane.
Agriculture has a unique window of opportunity to attract new investment that will enable the sector to realise its potential through responsible and sustainable growth, providing much needed jobs in regional Queensland. To attract investment there needs to be foresight and certainty within government frameworks that enable short, medium and long term business planning.
It is incumbent on governments to foster a business environment that encourages investment and where industry can work constructively and proactively within the confines of community expectation. Responsible governments can lay the foundations for social license so that farmers can exercise their right to farm, and where wealth, employment and shared opportunity is generated to benefit the community as a whole.
The current situation where fundamental industry frameworks continue to be kicked around as political footballs constraining the ability of our farmer members to make sound long term business decisions must change. Governments choosing politics over good policy undermines investment confidence.
QFF is the united voice of intensive agriculture in Queensland representing the interests of 17 of Queensland’s peak rural industry organisations, which in turn collectively represent more than 13,000 primary producers across the state.
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