Barwon MP Roy Butler returned to Australia 28 April after a 19-day world tour to bring back lessons that could help the Western Plains. 

Mr Butler began 9 April as part of a Commonwealth Parliamentary Association study tour and travelled across three continents, including in Singapore, Thailand, Italy and Canada.

He said he had little time to smell the roses, shuttling between ten countries to learn how housing, agriculture and manufacturing can be done different.

While in Malaysia he met with housing policy expert Dr Suraya Ismail. He said a chat lasting over one and a half hours made him a bigger fan of modular homes to help solve housing shortages in the Western Plains. 

Unlike traditional builds, modular houses have sections constructed away from the building site then installed into place on-site.

Mr Butler said using modular housing, also called panelised housing, would solve the issue of trying to find builders in areas like Coonamble.

“Panelised housing can be built in a factory, where there are people who can build these wall panels that already have the wiring conduit and pumping built into them.

“The idea is that people who aren’t tradespeople, people with some basic skills, can actually assemble these things.

“The complex stuff is done off the building site in a factory, and the panels just come out and get screwed together.”

Mr Butler said urban farms like this one in Singapore keep food sourced locally. IMAGE: Facebook/Roy Butler MP

Mr Butler also had the chance to see rooftop gardens producing food in Singapore.

“You can’t own farmland in Singapore, you have to lease it.”

“They’re reluctant to put massive investment into high-intensity agriculture because there’s no guarantee the lease will be renewed.

“What that means is food certainty comes with buildings because the buildings are likely to be there for decades. So, you’ve got this growth in community gardens in high-rise towers. They’ve got car parks that have been converted over to food-growing spaces.

There may not be high risers in Barwon, but Mr Butler said the concept is something the region could take up board.

“It means that in terms of food security, the food’s being produced locally, it’s right there, you’re not having to transport it a heap of kilometres, which is an issue for us in Barwon.”

“The car park garden, which was beside two really big residential towers, and there was a lot of well-aged people in them, is that there was a huge social benefit.

“A lot of people who otherwise had no reason to interact with each other would come down out of their tower and tend their garden and they’d end up interacting.

“I know Coonamble has community gardens. We’ve got the opportunity to really encourage, especially our well-aged people, to come out and get involved for the social benefits and for the health benefits.”

The Beretta factory in picturesque Brescia, Italy. IMAGE: facebook

In Italy, Mr Butler visited Brescia in the country’s north, where he executives of arms manufacturer Beretta and see it’s factory there.

“They typically produce 100 per cent of their own power, they use locally milled steel, which is their own blend of steel. They don’t ship it overseas for processing.

“They have government contracts many, many years where defence and police buy their stuff so even if you’ve got a world economic downturn, say the Global Financial Crisis for example, they still had a steady stream of income.

“And I think the lesson for us is wherever possible, our government should be buying domestically produced products. We shouldn’t be buying it in from overseas because it’s cheaper. We should be buying it locally and driving that money back into our

economy.”

Mr Butler said things didn’t all go smoothly, losing three days to flight issues. He made his last stop the G3 Grain Terminal in Vancouver, Canada, which he said ports in Newcastle could replicate to reduce transport costs, which are also worn by farmers.

“So, I wanted to go see it firsthand,” Mr Butler said.

“They get cereal off the trains at a rate of about 3000 tonnes an hour, they can load ships at a rate of up to 6000 tonnes an hour. Essentially, it is the world’s best practice in managing cereal crops for export.

“That’s the sort of technology that I’d love to see in Newcastle.

“From a freight cost pathway perspective, that would mean that we could get cereal crops for export off the transport onto a boat quickly at a lower cost, which means the farmers are not bearing as much cost.”