Michael is joined by Michael Rogers, Chief executive of the Australian Fresh Produce Alliance, regarding the impact of COVID-19 on seasonal labour together with stalled airfreight which poses a rising threat to the nation’s spring and summer harvests forcing growers to seek measures to stop crops rotting.

 

“We have some real practical challenges about moving people around,” says Mr Rogers. “Health remains a priority but also we need to make sure we can put fruit and vegetables on shelves ... If we don’t get the ­people, we won’t have the produce.”

 

Growers urge greater effort to retain backpackers still in Australia and to facilitate new arrivals, and also cash incentives for city-based jobless Australians to travel to ­regions for harvesting work.

 

Those sending fresh fruit to Asia, meanwhile, are concerned that not enough passenger jets are flying to accommodate sufficient volume of freight in cargo holds for their summer fruit exports.

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Michael is joined by Melissa Conley Tyler, Director of Diplomacy at Melbourne University’s Asia Institute & former National Executive Director of the Australian Institute of International Affairs, who agrees with Liberal MP and former diplomat Dave Sharma that DFAT (Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade) has to position itself better by offering solutions to government challenges if it is to benefit from a budget to match the nations step-up in defence.

“Cuts over the past five years had gone well beyond trimming fat”, she says.

Ms Conley Tyler  says the latest Defence Strategic Update continued the trend of viewing international issues through a security lens, which wasn't playing to Australia's strengths.

"Whatever Australia spends, it is not going to have the largest military in the region," she said. "But it is realistic to have the most effective diplomats promoting our interests and we can be the most trusted development partner, if not the largest spender, showing off positive Australian traits like pragmatism and problem solving."

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Michael is joined by Nicholas Proud, Chief Executive Officer of PowerHousing Australia - the nation’s largest community housing advocacy group - that urges the Federal Government to build more community housing during the COVID recession.

Their research reveals that housing construction could drop by as much as 50 per cent from its recent peak in 2018 which could see thousands of tradies and contractors left without work.

"That's a lot of jobs," says Mr Proud.

"The small economies around the country that rely on homes being built are very much understated."

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Joel Fitzgibbon, Shadow Minister for Agriculture & Resources & Federal Member for Hunter, joins Michael to discuss his opinion piece that was featured in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph

Re:  To protect our food security, we need to come to terms with our vulnerabilities

 

Mr Fitzgibbon writes, ‘If we are to protect our food security, we need to come to terms with our vulnerabilities. Farmers can’t grow food without seeds, fertilisers, pesticides, and veterinary medicines. Yet over recent decades Australia’s reliance on other countries for these on-farm inputs has grown substantially.’

 

‘China has become our primary provider of crop protection products. Most alarmingly, Australia is about to lose its only remaining manufacturer of the key active ingredients necessary for the production of our crop protection products.’

 

‘Nufarm will close its Laverton plant in Victoria in part because it can’t compete with imported product from China. The high cost of energy is another factor forcing Nufarm’s hand, yet the Morrison Government refuses to act.’ 

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Chris Uhlmann, Nine News Political Editor, who wrote in the SMH that if we are to live with COVID-19 then Australia’s leaders need to tell us what that means.

 

‘The longer the battle with this virus goes the more obvious it is that Australia’s governments do not agree on what “living with COVID 19” looks like.  Failing to settle on a definition risks levelling the economy as we shunt in and out of lockdowns in the hunt for a diabolically elusive disease.’

 

‘The resurgence of coronavirus in Victoria has rebooted the argument that Australia should be shooting for eliminating the coronavirus, rather than suppressing it. The hopeful argue this is still possible if we go hard enough for long enough.

 

‘Elimination is an arguable idea if that’s the plan. So is accepting some risk and some deaths. What won’t work is ricocheting between the two.’

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