Kylie Stretton to chair NFF telecommunications committee

Announced this week, the new role will complement Kylie’s work as a member of the AgForce telecommunications committee, and the Cattle Council marketing, market access and trade consultation committee she sits on as the 2017 NAB Agribusiness Rising Champion.

Kylie said she was excited to be working in a role that advocated for farmers and communities to have fair access to modern digital communications, and for policies in support of healthy farm communities.

The young landholder first came to prominence when she began the Ask An Aussie Farmer social media platform that allows members of the public to have questions about farming answered by farmers themselves, which she said in 2012 was driven by increasing community hunger for more information about how food and fibre was produced.

“All the committees I’m sitting on are really interesting,” she said.

“From the telecommunications point of view, our messages are getting out there.

“For example, the Sky Muster Plus announcement was due to a massive amount of work done by a lot of people.”

Kylie said while the NFF committee had necessarily focused on telecommunications in the last few years, its other social policy issues were also close to her heart.

“I feel I’ll get as much from it as I’ll give, and I’m looking forward to growing into the role of chairman – it’s a new challenge for me,” she said.

The former chairwoman of the committee was Georgie Somerset, who is the new AgForce president.

According to the NFF committees page, the skillset required for the committee includes practical experience in communications connectivity issues and/or interest and some working knowledge of rural sector social policy issues.

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