Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

And, if it is a position of the opposition that they are irrelevant to farmers, then they can say that tonight too. The shadow minister for agriculture put out the position that this was a ‘horror budget’ for agriculture. He always makes a thing about his background with the New South Wales Farmers Association, so I thought: well, what did the New South Wales Farmers Association say about the budget in their media release? ‘Budget winners: infrastructure, water and drought assistance’. That was the headline on their media release, which I am very happy to table. I am very happy to table that, Mr Speaker.

The National Party have developed this concept of the bush where they just go looking for gloom—looking for gloom and looking for misery wherever they can find it. We saw it earlier with the question that was asked by the Leader of the Nationals, where he complained about the method of forward estimates on drought funding when it is identical to how it was done when he was the minister for agriculture. At first I thought, ‘How outrageous for him to do that; he would have known.’ Then I thought: ‘Well, he’s the leader of the Nats; maybe he never knew. Maybe he never understood that that’s how they work it.’ The way they go around looking for gloom, it is like they have become the political equivalent of the bogong moth that just wants to hug the mozzie zapper. They just want to keep going out there and looking to the most miserable stories they can find.

But we have a budget that is good to the bush. We have a budget that delivers infrastructure nationwide, that is community based and that goes all the way down to the farm—infrastructure for roads, rail, ports and broadband, all of it bringing farmers closer to their markets and closer to each other. There is community based infrastructure through local councils and local schools supporting rural communities, support for rural health including incentives to get GPs to the bush and infrastructure all the way back to the farm. There is the $300 million to provide on-farm irrigation—infrastructure on the farm. There is the increase in the small business tax break from 30 per cent to 50 per cent so that farmers can make their own choices about their own infrastructure on-farm.

The opposition need to detail which of these programs they would cut, which savings they would make or which measures they would abandon. We have got no idea what their direction is going to be on this, given the Leader of the Opposition has only asked four questions since budget night, keeping him off TV during that time. How long would it be since a Leader of the Opposition has asked so few questions following the budget? I thought it might be decades, but it was pretty similar to what we saw from Brendan towards the end.

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