Wednesday, 5 February 2025

Environment and Planning Committee

Inquiry into Securing the Victorian Food Supply

Daniela DE MARTINO (Monbulk) (10:13): I am proud to rise to talk about the Environment and Planning Committee’s report into securing the Victorian food supply. As the chair of the committee stated when she was speaking on this report towards the end of last year, food supply is an existential issue for our state now and into the future, and our committee undertook the important task of looking at what may threaten the surety of this supply, because short of access to water, there is no more critical issue than food security.

Our report contains 29 findings and 33 recommendations, all with a view to improving Victoria’s food supply. It is a critical issue which I am very proud we took the better part of a year to study in-depth. I would like to thank the secretariat Igor Dosen, Samantha Leahy and Helen Ross-Soden for their tireless efforts with this report. Their hard work made it possible. I would also like to thank our committee members – our chair the member for Wendouree, the deputy chair the member for Morwell and the members for Bass, Croydon, Ripon and Warrandyte for their collegiate approach to this task. A curious mind is a wonderful thing, and it is fair to say were all very open to learning about this issue.

It was a very productive committee in more ways than one. Three babies were born not long after the conclusion of this report, two to members and one to a member of the secretariat, and I hope that the fecundity of our committee bodes well for our future food supply.

The regional hearings we held and the site visits we embarked upon were eye-opening and thought-provoking, and it behoves me to thank everyone who gave evidence at all of our hearings or made themselves available for us to visit them at their farms. Farmers’ time is precious, so those who gave up some of that time to write to us, to speak with us or to show us around their sites are truly deserving of our praise and thanks. We are grateful for their candour and their willingness to educate us on the issues before them. I was particularly pleased that several of my Monbulk constituents and those of neighbouring electorates came and gave evidence, and I managed to have the opportunity to go and visit one of my constituents at his nursery, Hamish Mitchell in Narre Warren East.

To say that our growers, the people who produce the food we eat, are facing tough challenges is an understatement. Victoria’s food system is experiencing more frequent shocks and stressors and that impacts all aspects of food supply, from farm to fork. These include the changing climate – it is already here and it is going to continue changing, and that will affect all elements of our food system, including production, transportation and consumption.

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the vulnerability of long and complex just-in-time supply chains. That shook our major supermarkets. I owned a grocery store at the time. There was panic in people’s faces because they were worried about whether or not they could get the food they needed. We enforced restrictions within the first day on how many items people could buy long before – I do not even know if the supermarkets actually did it because I did not go to any supermarkets during that time; I had my own on tap. But we ensured that there was no panic, shelves were full and we could assure people that every time they entered our store they would be able to walk out with food. I cannot tell you the impact pf that and how important it is psychologically to know that there is food available.

Geopolitical events like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused spikes in fertiliser and wheat prices, and that also contributed to increasing the cost of food. I do not know if anyone in here remembers, but there was an AdBlue shortage, and that needs to go into several diesel trucks. There was a time when we were stockpiling three months worth of food because we were not sure if trucks were going to be able to get access to that product to transport food around the country. Environmental degradation, biodiversity loss and urban encroachment are also increasing pressure on our farms. Biosecurity events are causing temporary closure of farms – just look at the recent outbreak of avian influenza in Victoria, New South Wales and the ACT, leading to nationwide egg shortages.

It is upon us all to ameliorate and mitigate for the impacts of the shocks and stressors on our current and future food supply, and I am proud to say that this report here – it is very heavy, which is why I have not held it the whole time – makes for an excellent blueprint to do just that. As I mentioned before, 29 findings, 33 recommendations. I do not have time to address each and every one in this contribution, but rest assured, I will be speaking on this several times in the future because I am committed to the importance of us securing food supply for each and every Victorian not only today but long, long into the future. It is incumbent upon all of us here on all sides of the chamber to ensure that this occurs.