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

Thank you. This will not take long. What we had—we always had an inspector-general. Then during Senate estimates, Michael Bond, the inspector-general himself, acknowledged that under this bill he would have greater powers than he formerly had. But, to placate the variant spirits of the shadow minister for agriculture and his desire for statutory powers, we gave him the statutory powers. And then the shadow minister came up with an amendment, which he had obviously cut and pasted from 2012 which was completely unable to be dealt with in this bill. It was like saying I am now going to put the renovations with the previous plan of the house for the new bathroom on the side of the house that does not have any pipes. It did not work. It was complete laziness by the shadow minister. So we came up with an amendment that actually worked, that delivered what he wanted. It has been agreed. It passed through. I am afraid the problem is we have to not only do our work; we have to do his.

See this speech in context