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

A shrubbery! It worries us, because we see this coming down. I was having my discussion with the member for Hunter at that so-called press conference the other day, which he decided to crash. He said that we can fix the methane emissions from cattle by some magical process. I tell you what the IPCC have said in their latest meeting in Korea—that they're going to do it by a global reduction in the cattle herd. That's us again. It'll be inflicted on us. I know how they'll do it. They'll have a licence agreement of how many cattle you can run on your place. They won't be taking the load off you; they'll just have a licence agreement, and you'll have to comply with that licence and over time that licence be will be reduced. That will be yet another infliction on regional people on our capacity to carry on our life to get ahead, for money for our communities, for money for people in the weatherboard and iron house, because we've seen this movie before. We know where it ends up. That is why it's so important that we put down a marker, quite clearly, and say: 'Not on. Just not on. We're not doing this, because it's not merely our concern for what might happen in the future, it's our very clear memory of what has happened in the past.'

The farm household allowance is a good idea. Net zero emissions is another infliction on our rights, our property rights and income rights, in regional Australia, which we will fight tooth and claw against. The Regional Investment Corporation is something that everyone poo-pooed and thought was ridiculous, and now we've created it. We need the Labor Party to come out, even now, and say they support it and that they won't get rid of it after the next election. Inland Rail is a massive investment that's going to be hugely important. And for water security—and I'll close on this—as a nation let's start on a nation-building project: the movement of water from the wet areas of the tropics to the parched areas of the south.

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