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

I thank the honourable member for his question. When we came to government, we came with a promise of a better future of strength and prosperity and a better return through the farm gate. We have been delivering on that—record cattle prices, record sheep prices, record almond prices, record chickpea prices and a strong turnaround in citrus, tropical fruits and wine prices. We have delivered on a stronger country-of-origin labelling system and on a new ACCC commissioner, Mick Keogh. We are making made sure that the Rural Financial Counselling Service and concessional loans are being rolled out across the nation. We are making sure that we look after people with the new farm household allowance criteria—that it is actually delivered to the people who are doing it tough.

We have delivered with the stronger rollout of mobile phone towers—in fact, more mobile phone towers than the previous Labor government, the previous Labor-Green-independent chaos, ever delivered. We have delivered on a stronger NBN rollout that has actually been done with a budget and to a plan. We have upgraded highways and we have duplicated highways—the Pacific Highway, the Bruce Highway and the New England Highway—with $100 million to be spent on new beef roads in the North. We have delivered $2½ billion in the budget and previously towards building new dams and water infrastructure. This goes on the back of the 100 per cent write-off on water infrastructure and the $2.5 million we spend a day on the upgrade and refurbishment of the Murray-Darling Basin.

We have delivered on three new free trade agreements—

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