And rightly so.
The Government recently released its white paper on the National Food Plan. It is a large and detailed document and if you wish to see all the details, you can find the publication here.
Government documents can be long, uninspiring reads, even if the ideas and the initiatives they contain are much more interesting, so we'll summarise some of them here on the blog.
In short the plan has 5 key components:
- Growing Exports - including $28.5M to research what our regional customers need and how we can meet that, $5.6M to build trading relationships and networks, $2M for brand development
- Ensuring a Thriving industry - $23M for food related research, $9B for training of workers in the sector, over $96B in infrastructure spending to support the industry,
- Supporting people - over $1B in healthy eating programs (including a focus on obesity and Indigenous health), $411M in improving global food security, $1.5M for commiunity gardens and farmer's markets, $1.5M for teaching about food and agriculture in schools
- Sustainable food production - $600M for sustainable agriculture initiatives, $15B for water initiatives, $429M for Carbon farming, $44M to plan for and manage Climate change impacts, $1.5M for community food initiatives
- Measuring success - establish the Australian Council for Foods, transparency through the publishing of periodic reports, and regular reviews of the plan.
Looking to the other side:
☺ Build Some Dams
And
☺ Grow it in the North.
While you might laugh at the brevity and simplicity of their plan (and the associated lack of detail)... they had to do it, otherwise it wouldn't have fitted in their pamphlet.
What is interesting is that Abbott in particular seem to have stopped waving it about. It seems most people have looked through this ridiculous document and found it to be completely lacking in substance.
As much as the Coalition tries to maintain a small target approach... the differences are appearing and they are both stark and growing.