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

The issue is, of course, that they believe it is not a problem. Even though we could go from Melbourne, through to your electorate, up the Pacific Highway, up the Bruce Highway, back and forth, they say it is not a problem. So I do not know what is a problem. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse turning up for dinner—maybe that is a problem. Who would know? Vikings on your pond—maybe that is a problem.

What we do know is that Pascal Lamy, who is a socialist, said quite clearly the other day that what we have to do, because we are a commodity based economy, is move commodities. If we do not move commodities we have got a real problem. That is why Pascal Lamy says our debt problem is vastly different to the debt problem of Japan or Germany—because we are basically relying on commodities. So, in relying on commodities, it is agriculture that is really putting its shoulder to the wheel, and I am happy to inform the House that we have moved over 585,000 head of cattle in the last week and in excess of 1.3 million sheep in the live trade. About three weeks ago, we loaded 4,000 litres of milk—

Opposition members interjecting—

you should be interested in this—and we sent it to Shanghai. We are getting paid between $7 and $9 a litre, and it was only costing us about $1.26 to move it there. That is a good way to make a dollar. That is agriculture. We have also moved in excess of four million tonnes of barley. We have moved more than 671 tonnes of veal and beef. All of these things—

Opposition members: More! More! We want more!

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