Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture and Resources) Share this | Hansard source

Or Labor. I thank the member for Fremantle. Yes, or Labor: 'Labor, Labor, Labor' was the refrain from the member for New England. Well, I have a message for the Prime Minister and for the member for New England, the member for Riverina, and the member for Maranoa, the current Minister for Agriculture, who I have a deal of respect for. Of course, he lost his job, temporarily, but has come back now after the loss of Minister McKenzie. He lost his job because he was departing from the National Party textbook. He was thinking too much! He was talking about climate change. He was tough on the live sheep exporters. He was talking about building resilience in our farming communities. In the National Party room they said, 'What! We don't talk about that. What about our preselectors over the other side of the Great Dividing Range? What are they going to say about all that?' So, he was history. But given the dearth of talent on the other side, he is back. I actually welcome him back, because what a disaster it would have been to get the member for New England's hands all over the agriculture portfolio again—a portfolio, by the way, that lost its departmental secretary. Why? Because the member for New England doctored his Hansard, got found out. And when the secretary insisted upon his tidying it up because his professional public servants were being drawn into the mire—just because Mr Grimes stood up to the member for New England—he lost his job. An outstanding well-regarded public servant lost his job because the member for New England doctored his Hansard, wouldn't correct it, wouldn't fess up, and the rest is history. And, by the way, he doctored his Hansard because he misled the House, and he's never corrected that. The mislead on farmhouse household stands in the parliamentary Hansard. Members will recall: 'Oh, you don't have to apply for it, you just get. You just sign up and it's magically in the bank account,' which, of course, was patently untrue.

But the point I was going to was the message to the Prime Minister. The people are onto them. You can't try to take hold of an issue as the Prime Minister tried to do on drought. When he came to the position, he said farmers and the drought would be his priority. But when it got too hard, when he realised that doing something meaningful on drought took some tough decisions and some conviction and courage of leadership, he said, 'It's all a matter for the states.' Remember that back in 2002 a historic thing happened—a new intergovernmental agreement on drought began, was signed, and that was the beginning of drought reform. But when the current government came to office in 2013, the first thing the member for New England did was abolish the COAG committee charged with progressing the reform. And here we are. We still don't have a drought policy. We are still in the worst drought in history. We do not have an overarching strategic drought policy, still. We have a loan here and a loan there and a grant here and all these things, but there is no plan.

See this speech in context