Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

What a load of nonsense. What a load of prattle and nonsense. I don't know where to start with such a load of nonsense. Let's start with the fact that there was no extension on Chaffey Dam when Labor, the Greens and Independents—that lot was a merry little bunch—left government. We had to get the approval through. They didn't have an approval. They were bent over backwards looking after the Booroolong frogs.

You have listened, ladies and gentlemen out there in radio land, to the shadow minister for agriculture. Did you hear one thing that could even vaguely relate to a policy by the Labor Party? Of course not. Oh, hang on—they have to do something about carbon emissions! They said that, before they do anything, they've got to do something about carbon emissions first. The member for Hunter is going to cool the planet and, after he's done that, he'll come back and give you a drought policy! If there's anybody still here when that happens, good luck to you. There will be nothing left. Those opposite never have the gumption, they never have the motivation and they never have the muscle to come in here and nominate something that they will actually do. What they do is say: 'Well, you know, we're going to first of all reduce carbon emissions. We'll then look after the farmers who have no money. We'll then look after the fact that there is no fodder.' They don't even mention that. There's no plan.

I'm going to give you a plan. We'll start by moving 6,500 tonnes of fodder over to Parkes. We're talking about that today. There's another 500 tonnes just up the road; that's going to join up with it as well. We're also talking about what we're going to do with the crop. There's a crop over in Western Australia that's just had to deal with a frost, and that frost means that there is a great capacity for wheat and hay to be moved to the east. We've been having discussions this morning with the Prime Minister about how we can get further stimulus into regional towns on top of the $1 million that we've put into every council in the drought areas to help them out. Ladies and gentlemen, these are policies.

Here, today, we are talking about a 100 per cent write-off for fodder storage assets. That's huge. If you spend $10 million on new silos, you can write them off straightaway. If it's associated with the drought, you can do that. That's real policy, just like we have the 100 per cent write-off for water reticulation, which is part of a white paper; just like we have the 100 per cent write-off for fencing, which is part of a white paper; and just like we've changed the farm management deposits from $400,000 to $800,000, which is part of a white paper.

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