Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Deputy Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for his question. He would know better than most, especially with the students here from Grafton, about the work that has been done with this free-trade agreement and with previous free-trade agreements in making sure that we have greater security for jobs in places such as Casino, which employs 1,400 people at its meatworks—70 per cent of that beef is exported. It is a pleasure to see that Norco had a 520-per cent increase in its profits this year to the previous year, which goes to show that a change in government actually brings about a change in outcomes.

We can see with the China free-trade agreement whether it is the meat and offal reduction in tariffs, the dairy reduction in tariffs, the hide and skin reduction in tariffs, the horticultural reduction in tariffs, the wine reduction in tariffs, the seafood reduction in tariffs, the cottonseed reduction in tariffs, the wool increase in volumes, the wool tops that also will give us greater access too, the barley reduction in tariffs or the sorghum reduction in tariffs, that they are all part and parcel of why this nation should be doing everything in its power to increase the capacity to get further employment for Casino, further employment for Grafton, further employment for Lismore and further employment throughout regional Australia.

It is also good to see that we are a government that is actually delivering on our promises. We set about making targets and we hit them. We said that we would open live trade into China and today the first shipment has arrived in China. We have the capacity over time to export live up to a million head of cattle and, with slaughter and breeding cattle, the capacity in a decade to get to around $2 billion in exports just for that industry alone, equivalent to what our exports are in motor vehicles.

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