25 May 2009
DAFF09/117T

Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Tony Burke
Address to the Australian RIRDC Rural Women’s Award 2009

(E&OE)

SUBJECT: Rural Women’s Award 

I won’t name you all again, I’ll just say Parliamentary colleagues, ladies and gentlemen.

I don’t have every page of the speech numbered but there’s a page that says, ‘And now the moment you’ve all been waiting for.’ Which I would love to think is meant to be at the beginning of the speech but I’m guessing that’s where we finish up, at the award part.

Tonight is a night that I think is incredibly important and I want to start by thanking RIRDC for the work they do in putting this together. The utter professionalism of the whole team led by Mary Bowdell and Peter O’Brien is something that is second-to-none.

They have gone through a difficult time in recent weeks with different budgetary pressures and the utter professionalism in which they have moved forward is an absolute credit to everyone involved.

I was very pleased to hear tonight the announcement that Peter was able to make about their determination that this award continues well beyond another ten years. That is a determination that I share as a minister and is shared by the Australian Government.

In part, it’s because of what this award does with the leadership that it pushes and proposes, it fills a gap. Peter made a very generous reference earlier to the figures on the research and development councils that have changed in the course of 18 months, where 18 months ago, at that point, we were at 20% female representation. 18 months later we were at 43% female representation and that’s actually been done by one key change. A key change that happened after one time I sat down with my partner after another selection committee had recommended the next lot of boards that was meant to be 80-90% blokes or something like that. I looked back and said how one earth can this be merit? How on earth, if we’re basing decisions on merit can we have committees that keep recommending that merit somehow uniquely resides in blokes. It just didn’t add up. The selection committees changed one thing, they didn’t put in a mandate that you had to have this number of women. They did one simple thing, they took away previous board experience as a selection criteria. That’s all it was.

I think it comes back to what advisory boards are meant to be. Advisory boards are not meant to be a mirror image of other lobbying organisations. Advisory boards aren’t meant to be a club of people, all of whom keep reappointing each other. What advisory borads are meant to be is a window for the Government to get the best possible advice of what’s happening on the ground. That’s what they’re meant to do. You look at the presentation that we have here tonight. What we have is a group of women leaders who have every right to be providing advice to the Government about what’s happening on the ground.

If you go through the business figures more than 52,000 women define themselves as farmers or farm managers that’s not defining themselves as farmers wives. 52,000 women define themselves as farmers or farm managers. Their contribution to the overall viability of farming enterprises is worth an estimated $1.1 billion dollars a year. If we’re going to get the best advice then we’re going to get the advice from the women already showing that leadership there on the ground.

Women occupy less than 20% of paid management and board positions in the agricultural sector and it’s something we have been determined to change. It’s something that our determination to change it has been shared for more than a decade by the people represented here.

What you see on the board behind me, well you don’t see anything while I’m talking. There were logo’s there earlier, and the different logos up there was a wonderful collaboration that RIRDC has brought together. For almost the entire history of that, all but one year has involved the sponsorship of the Australian Women’s Weekly which I would like to acknowledge.

Let me give you one example of how we are celebrating not just the award winners here tonight but the history that’s got us here and what can come of it. Take for example Sue McGinney. Sue’s from Belmore river, not the Belmore in my electorate in Sydney, she was a NSW finalist in 2000. In 1994 she married Brett and went from being a Brisbane window dresser who’d never even set foot on a farm to being a full time dairy farmer. She entered the RIRDC Rural Women’s Award in the hope that it would help her to fund the first international forum for women in dairy which was then held in Sydney in the year 2000. Achieving her position of NSW finalist gave her the profile needed to successfully stand for the board of Dairy Farmers in the year 2000. Sue went on to sit on that board for 8 years. The first, but unfortunately still at this point the only woman to sit on the board in it’s 108 years of existence.

This year’s state winners and runners up have followed Sue’s example. Each of you are leaders in your communities and leaders in your industries. By virtue of doing that you are leaders of the sector in Australia. Don’t think, and I heard Ros’ comment earlier, about why would I be eligible for being on the advisory board on horticulture? The leadership you are already doing by virtue of even making it in to this program makes you significant leaders in our nation.

Please, when the phone call comes and you are asked to serve in some capacity or another in providing advice. Please don’t ask why is the phone ringing? Although you may want to ask, why did it take so long to ring?

I am pleased that as well as tonight’s program we’ve also tried to fix the balance a bit on our funding of conferences. From time to time when I first got the job I would see recommendations come to me about different conferences that we should fund.

Overwhelmingly the conferences that we were funding were important gatherings of, largely blokes, and through the Recognising Women Farmers grants been able now to announce funding for more than $1 million dollars which goes to a whole series of gatherings of women farmers. Some are through the formal gathering processes others through industry associations who are running different courses. A whole range of programs from the industry side through to the community side. But it would (inaudible) how we are funding programs and I’m pleased to say that we managed to finally dip one toe in the water of being able to select that (inaudible).

As part of the commitment to tonight’s program I was very impressed that in that same round there was a program put forward for a further $50,000 for new rural women’s mentoring. A new project which will have strong links to this award, and there is an application for $50,000 (inaudible) by RIRDC that is among the applications that have been approved today.

Before I announce the winner, let me just say something about who everybody here represents. Australia is one of the only countries in the world where pretty much the whole first verse of it’s national anthem is about the land. The people who work the land have a very special place in our nation. Always have, always will. About 50% of them, to this day, probably still don’t get anything like the recognition that they deserve and the vast majority of women will never find their way into a project like the RIRDC Rural Womens’ Leadership Program although hopefully as a result of today’s announcements there will be other more local gatherings that they will be able to access. But we must never forget that no matter how many times a radio or tv commercial will have an image of 50% of the population being the image of the person who works the land.

I’ve visited, in the short time that I’ve had this job, enough properties to have a better concept than that as to how it works. So tonight, let’s not just celebrate the winners’ here this evening, let’s not just celebrate the extraordinary dedication over the last ten years. Let’s celebrate…both in the commercial terms, the economic terms, and the community terms the fact that so much of this nation has been built because of the dedication and the leadership of rural women.

And now the moment you’ve all been waiting for…the problem is this paper doesn’t have a name attached to it so there must an envelope coming somewhere.

The 2009 Australian runner up of the RIRDC Rural Women’s Award is Queensland beef feedlot operator Barb Madden… (applause).

The winner of the RIRDC Rural Womens Award is Victorian dairy industry leader Roma Britnell…(applause).

ENDS