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

We are business people and we get the business done. What did the Labor Party do for agriculture? There was a decline in employment in agricultural jobs of 50,000. I just want to quote to you what CommSec says about what has happened in the last year of this government. CommSec says:

Jobs in agriculture have posted the biggest annual gain on record.

That is what we are doing. We are actually creating people's jobs. We got them back the equivalent of the town of Ballarat in terms of job numbers—that is basically what is happening. What I am very proud about is that in those jobs we know that there was a massive increase in people employed in the meat sector—and you did the live cattle job, didn't you?

There is also an increase in the mushroom sector. You know a fair bit about what happened to jobs in the mushroom sector, don't you? Absolutely, and you might like to tell us about jobs in the mushroom sector one day soon, because we are reading about it in the paper. We will keep on expanding markets into China—dairy exports to China last year went up by 100 per cent.

Mr Shorten interjecting—

So while you were lighting candles in front of wind chimes and we were reading your obituary on the credit card, we were doing the business and building the economy.

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