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

I think this is incredibly important. The member for Kennedy and I clearly understand that in some instances we do need regulation. We need to make sure that we do not just have a monopoly reign supreme over the welfare of canegrowers. We heard what these canegrowers said. I went to North Queensland. I went and had meetings with the canegrowers. I went to a meeting where they expected 20 to turn up; we had 450. At the next one we had 450. What goes wrong in this place is that so often people go out and listen to the concerns and then come down here and do something else. We heard the concerns and we acted on those concerns. I know they are the same concerns held by the member for Kennedy and rightly so; we are on the same page.

The Productivity Commission tells us in this report that they believe in more regulation in the live cattle trade. That is another thing the member for Kennedy and I are on a unity ticket about—we do not want further regulation on the live cattle trade after the Labor Party absolutely decimated it. There is not one of them here. There is not one person from the Labor Party here. That is the sort of respect they have for the farming community.

We on this side have turned the farming community around. There has been 23.7 per cent growth in agriculture to December 2016. We made sure that we looked after these farmers, made sure they did not have a foot on their throat and made sure they had a choice in who they could sell to so they got a fair deal through the farm gate and a better return for them. We made sure the live cattle trade was open so those people doing it tough up in the Gulf got a fair return. But the Labor Party person cannot even sit on the benches. They are not even here. They desert the working men and women of Australia.

And here we have this ridiculous scenario as well where the Labor Party with the Greens moved a motion that there is no future for the coal industry in Australia—no future for those AWU workers, no future for those CFMEU workers. The Labor Party have forgotten about a group of people. They have forgotten about labourers. They have forgotten about the group that they were initially formed to serve. No, they have evolved. They have evolved into St Kilda. They have evolved into Paddington. They have evolved and moved away from what was started at Barcaldine. No, that was in the dim dark past. There is not a labourer amongst them, not one person who has actually gone out and done a day's work. Have you gone out and done a day's work, Member for Rankin?

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