Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to agree with some of that speech. Regional Australia is the heart of Australia, I agree with you. Hear, hear! Well done! And I agree that the GDP of this nation would disappear were it not for the contribution of regional Australia from dairy, from wheat, from grains, from sugar, from beef and from mining, which the Labor Party does not support, bringing in the mining tax and the carbon tax.

But there are other parts of that speech that are just factually incorrect. At this point we have approved over 1,179 applications for the interim farm family payment, which is direct assistance, so when they say that not a dollar has gone out that is factually incorrect. On the second issue, we have had two iterations of the drought package. The first was the realignment of the farm finance package, which went through, with $10 million also for water. The second iteration includes $280 million of concessional loans at four per cent, which is great, and we have now got the agreement signed off. I said that would be done by June and it will be done in June. So the money is going out. In fact, we have got $420 million going out at 4½ per cent, we have over 1,100 payments of the interim farm family payment and we have approved $20 million to go towards water infrastructure. While I was here in the chamber I have already got a thankyou from a former member, Sandy Macdonald, who has managed to get access to some of that money—

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