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

I thank the honourable member for his question. He is a fellow CPA and he understands business perfectly well. He understands business because he has worked in businesses and understands how important it is, especially around the aspects of private ownership.

It is with quite some dismay that we see the Labor Party, and the member for Adelaide Ports—

A government member: Port Adelaide.

Port Adelaide, has suggested that they bring forward a new form of federal policeman into the private lives of people on the land. We have a position now where they are quite proudly announcing that not only will we have state vegetation management laws we will now also have federal vegetation management laws enforced by the Australian Labor Party, and no doubt supported by the Greens and their Independent friends. This will lead to the scenario where if you have a tree on your place you have to pay the rates for where it is, you have to pay the public liability insurance for where it is and you also have to pay the bank back for the land which it is on but you do not own it. If you touch it you will end up, I imagine, with not only a state criminal conviction but a federal criminal conviction. This is the new world order that the Labor Party is proposing.

They have form on this. We saw Labor, the Greens and the Independents in the last period of their government more than double the power prices. We know that power prices hurt. We know that power prices hurt in Kurri Kurri, they hurt in Aberdeen, they hurt in Willow Tree, they hurt in the seat of Cowper and they hurt in Cunnamulla, because people who are doing it tough do not need the price of their power to be increased. But that is their policy. It is the policy of Labor, the Greens and the Independents that they want to make people poorer. That is the policy they are taking to the Australian people, that they will make people poorer if they win, because they believe, even by their own analysis, it was by 20, 30 or a 78 per cent increase in power prices, if they take it up to 45 per cent—and they have form, because they more than doubled it in their previous term of government.

Their economic analysis sometimes leaves something to be desired. We saw recently that they were left just one item, a packet of cigarettes, to analyse. They were more than $3.25 billion out over the forward estimates. The member for Jagajaga put it down to a rounding error. The member for Cowper would know that in accountancy when you just do not quite know where to put things you put them under 000 for suspense—put them in suspense. You will find all manner of things—paper clips, coffee mugs, tea, sugar—but you will not find $3,250 million with the Labor Party mistakes. That is not a rounding error; it is a complete and utter cock-up of their capacity to have fervent economic oversight over the affairs of the nation, which leads us to one thing. We had the former Treasurer: 'The four surpluses I deliver tonight.' What a load of rubbish! What an absolute load of rubbish. And their economic policy is a load of rubbish. (Time expired)

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