Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

The climate change deniers within the National Party are out there in force even today when we are supposed to be engaged in substantive amendments for the future of a carbon pollution reduction scheme, which I thought was based on an agreement on the science. This is from ABARE. ABARE has produced these figures. ABARE projects that wheat production will fall 9.2 per cent by 2030 and 13 per cent by 2050, beef by 9.6 per cent by 2030 and 19 per cent by 2050, sheep meat down by 8.5 per cent by 2030 and 14 per cent down by 2050, dairy 9.5 per cent down by 2030 and 18 per cent by 2050, and sugar 10 per cent down by 2030 and 14 per cent down by 2050. That is why the NFF, for example, has said that it believes climate change to be ‘possibly the biggest risk facing Australian farmers in the coming century’. That is the National Farmers Federation. It would seem that the National Party do not support the view of the National Farmers Federation. I find it remarkable that, given that climate change represents such a direct threat to agriculture, the question then becomes one of why the National Party want to sell agriculture down the drain over climate change. That is exactly what they are doing. They may think that there is some short-term political advantage in this for themselves, but the strategic structural threats to agriculture caused by climate change are huge, particularly in south-eastern and south-western Australia and elsewhere.

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