Damian Drum (Murray, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

The minister for agriculture has been able to put this issue of the wine equalisation tax to bed and has seen enormous benefits because of that. Now we have an industry that will continue to grow, with the confidence that everybody is paying the right amount of tax. When the sugar industry was having its internal troubles, they didn't run to Joel Fitzgibbon, the member for Hunter, to see if he could help; they simply came to Barnaby Joyce, the Deputy Prime Minister, the leader of the National Party, and he was able to put the pressure on the industry to fix this. Again, these are the types of actions that are needed when you are in the industry and looking for genuine leadership and an understanding of the industry and the industry's concerns so that you can fix the problem when the commercialities of the industry are caught between the processors and the providers of the primary produce.

One of the biggest things we have been able to do is put some genuine stewardship around the Murray-Darling Basin and the plan for a balance between environmental water and water for active and productive agriculture. This is an area where we have a whole raft of competing elements. Certainly we have the environmental group, who want unspecified quantities of water returned to the river system so that the Murray mouth can be flushed out. The lakes down around Adelaide are estuarine by nature, but the environmental movement wants to keep these estuarine lakes as freshwater lakes. They want to keep the Murray mouth open, even though historically it has always closed over in times of low flow. These unnatural environmental outcomes are somehow or other the Labor Party's policies. They would have the Murray River doing unnatural things because it suits their green constituency.

The free trade agreements with Korea and with China and Japan have seen incredible results recently in beef, table grapes, macadamias and a whole range of horticultural produce, and these are further benefits we are finding from the leadership of this minister. What we're also talking about is projects that are needed within the irrigation regions, such as the work that Rubicon Water are doing, and not just throughout northern Victoria. They are a Shepparton based company but they are now working in China, India and North America. They are creating thousands and thousands of megalitres of available water because they are creating all these water savings.

There are a whole raft of on-farm efficiencies that are quite expensive, but there are productivity benefits to having your farm properly laser graded and properly channelled, with the most modern fittings and technology. This is where, again, we are going to be able to save literally billions of dollars in water, which can be used either for the environment or for further agricultural production. Although some of these on-farm improvements are very expensive, this is where an instrument like the Regional Investment Corporation will be able to offer businesses an opportunity to invest in agriculture at a lower interest rate. That is something that will be snapped up. It will be very well received. That's why when people look at what the Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources is doing they say: 'Here's a minister who's actually getting things done. He's giving us a chance.'

We have seen gene technology come to the fore in relation to the dairy cattle industry. Artificial insemination has been around for many a year, but it has got to the stage now where you can actually take the genes from a $250,000 heifer, mix them in a test tube with the semen of a $200,000 bull, and start rolling out a production line of dairy cattle. Where they were once only able to produce the heifers, the females, the ability that science is now offering agriculture in gene technology is unbelievable. Again, this type of work is expensive, and industry needs to have a vehicle such as the one the minister for agriculture is presenting to the Australian people.

If you want to make a difference in ag and you want to work your way through to the top, these technologies and advancements and this introduction of science into agriculture shouldn't be available just for those who have enough money to do all this themselves. And this is what Barnaby Joyce, the minister for agriculture, is doing. He is offering low-interest loans, offering finance to these businesses that have an opportunity to put food on our table and to increase productivity. He's the one who is actually getting this work done.

When you look at the Labor Party, they have no credibility when it comes to agriculture. The biggest decision the Labor Party made when they were last in government was that they stopped the live cattle export trade because of a Four Corners story. They just stopped it. They banned it for months, and then they decided they'd get it up and going again, and they were surprised to see that Indonesia wasn't quite so readily accessible anymore. That decision from the Labor Party cost beef producers in this country tens and hundreds of millions of dollars. No-one can find the minister who did this. No-one can find anybody who actually made this decision. It must have been made by someone who was invisible. Whenever you put the Labor Party in charge—we've seen what they will do with water; we've seen what they did with the live cattle exports, and they need to be protected— (Time expired)

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