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

You have to make a call whether you want to feed 10 billion people by 2050 or whether you want some of them to die. That's the call you've got to make. Stop living in this dream world where you can somehow feed the population that now exists in the world without the technology and the research to do it; it just won't happen. You won't see the people who starve to death in this nation but they'll exist in North Africa, they'll live in deprivation on the Pacific Islands and they will die in South America and other nations. In the general food stock, the people at the bottom will starve first but they don't live in Australia, so we don't care about them. Therefore, you've got to understand that if we have to work with Roundup then we have to work with Roundup because the alternative is somebody somewhere else—this becomes the zeitgeist we follow—dies.

If you want to see a great example, there is one near London. There is a trial plot where you see no Roundup, no chemicals, right up to proper management, all using the same form of wheat. The first hectare gets a tonne to the hectare. That's very poor for England but probably not too bad here. The best plot had 10 times what the plot with nothing had. We have to realise the calorific curve in the world now is bending down; we can't feed the people we've got. We have to take the next step—appropriations. Statements of the Prime Minister about soil science, glyphosates and how we actually make sure that we get the return off the land are about being realists, and not just for Australia. We must not go on our own little bender about what we want to do but actually reflect on where the globe actually is and what our moral job, our moral responsibility is in a global context.

The thing Australia can do is assist. It will never be the food basket of the world or South East Asia—impossible—but it must do more than its share in feeding and clothing people. That is one of our moral jobs. To do that, we are going to need the dams, we are going to need the science, and we are going to need to understand that we've got to hold our noses and continue to use glyphosates and the things that give a better yield. If we don't want to do it, we've got to come up with the alternative that takes its place. You can't say, 'I want the same from less'. It's not possible.

Mr Husic interjecting—

I will take the interjection. He's just said glyphosates are the same as asbestos—or thereabouts. That is a ridiculous analogy. It is absolutely—

Mr Husic interjecting—

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