John Cobb's speech at the CANRI launch

Deputy Premier, Andrew Refshauge, Ministers Richard Amery and Eddie Obeid, ladies and gentlemen, I’ve been to a few presentations or launches in Parliament House, and I must say this is the biggest one I’ve ever seen. Except perhaps a new Parliament, and perhaps you don’t think of that as a launch. But some of us do.

I have to say that I think what’s happened is fantastic, in terms, even for a farmer this is fantastic, for quite a few reasons. I was highly excited when I was told about it, and on Monday before I left home, in anticipation I very excitedly asked my wife, who—I’m a little bit like Richard although he’s probably better at technology than I am—but my wife went to download what Currawalla Property might say about this, and I was still highly excited an hour later when I left to go to Parkes to catch the plane to come to Sydney because the bloody thing couldn’t download it, it’s not fast enough when you live west of the Blue Mountains. However one hopes that we’ll rectify that.

Look, farming today is like every other business, increasingly complex. And you have to be something of a mini-bureaucrat, you have to be something of, I guess, a technician—such as Richard and I are not—to do it. And it’s increasingly becoming that way, whether it’s doing a GST, whether it’s doing a BAS, or simply complying with all regulations that we seem to have to comply with. But, I think, New South Wales, let’s be honest, has a mood of compliance regulation, especially in the resource sector, and it’s not much fun being a farmer under that kind of a problem, being faced with it. And …obviously part of my job is to try to exert some control or some sanity in some of the things that we have to comply with. Anything that makes our job easier is to be applauded, and certainly CANRI will make it easier if farmers can access the information about their own resources, to allow them to comply with that regulation.

And we’ve known for years, for years... I couldn’t tell you how many committees I’ve sat down on, where we have to try and go through some resource factor, and the first thing the people on the committee say is, "Well, let’s spend the first twelve months doing a study, to get information". Now, we’d know, if you actually go to the individual department the information is there; to put it all together, I think, and to be able to actually activate some of these things is an incredible step forward because, in this whole equation, farmers are the people who actually want to do things, so nobody wants to come to resolution more than we do.

In actual fact my association, the New South Wales Farmers’ Association under Belinda McNeill, is putting together a kit for farmers to activate resource management. It will be ready to release in about a year—it will take that long, it is that detailed to put together—and certainly what we are looking at here today, where a farmer can go and access the information from all the different departments, means that the kit will be just so much easier for him to use. And it will be so much more relevant because, let me tell you something, farmers are the people who have the biggest interest in conservation around Australia, and in New South Wales, and I’m sure that this will help them to do that. Thank you very much.