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

Zero interest, so it's not more debt. It's about consolidating existing debt. It's two years of zero interest, three years of very low interest and then a five-year period of P&I.

That is what many of our people on the land want. None of them are asking for a floor price. There's a very real, very straight-up-and-down reason why they are not calling for a floor price: it's impossible to put a floor price in when the cost of production varies so much from farm business to farm business. One farmer may own his own water; one farmer may own thousands of hectares of property where they are able to grow their dry matter, their hay and fodder; other farmers have incredible scale; other farmers are crippled by debt; and some farmers have very little debt. The cost of production and the cost of labour varies greatly depending on the scale of your operation. It's the cost of production that varies so dramatically from farming business to farming business that makes it impossible to put a floor price in at a level that is not going to enable some people to make trillions while other people barely cover costs.

When the Labor Party put this hoax forward, they refused to allow any finances or funding to go with their pledge of a floor price. They wanted a floor price that somehow or other wasn't going to cost government any money at all but was going to be above the cost of production, yet they failed to point out what that was. Not only that, in the last weeks before the election in May this year the Labor Party put out their water policy. Their water policy was all about making water more expensive. The biggest input cost right now is feed and/or water to grow your own feed. The Labor Party's answer to this was: 'Let's make water more expensive. If we win this election in May, we're going to go out and start buybacks. We're going to start buying back water from farmers, forcing the water up'—the most destructive and damaging water policy that you could ever design. This is what the Labor Party's answer to the dairy industry was: get some mythical floor price that was somehow or other going to re-regulate the industry

These 900 farmers in the Goulburn Valley region are predominantly producing milk for products such as milk powder and cheese. Very little of what they produce, but a growing percentage, is going to fresh milk. What happens with the supermarket is important to us, but it's not as important as what our trade delegations can achieve by getting product into Asia and getting our milk powder a higher price. Right now, the price of milk is very, very reasonable. What's crippling people is the drought, water policy, the fact that our water— (Time expired)

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