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

I agree with the previous speaker that they have some wonderful women on their side of the chamber, and they take up the debate. But, unfortunately for them, when it comes to our agriculture sector, what our farmers want is action. When it comes to truly helping our farming communities, they look to see the actions, they look to see what you're actually doing when you go to Canberra, they look to see what your policy actually is and what it is going to do for their business and their sector. If they looked at us recently, they would have said, 'Here they are working as hard as they possibly can to get that free trade agreement signed with Britain.' The impacts of that are going to flow through to the farmers in the next few years.

If we happen to be talking about the Murray-Darling Basin, what is the most important thing they could do for those farmers? They could correct the inaccuracies around the Murray-Darling Basin. They could correct the overtake of water away from agriculture towards the environment. They could correct that if they wanted to, but, unfortunately, those on the opposition side, from Labor, don't want to. They don't want to correct the damage that has been done by the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. They just don't want to change it. If anything, they want to make it worse. So, you've got to be very, very careful when you come in here and start being critical of the people who are truly arguing for agriculture, who are truly arguing for the betterment of the people on the land.

Only yesterday we were in this chamber talking about how we could make the farm household allowance more fit for purpose for our farmers. If anybody, because of the calculations about future earnings, had somehow or other accrued a debt, we were going to waive that debt with the bill that went through the House yesterday. When the dairy farming crisis hit in May 2016, it was this government that ran to support the dairy sector. And those people who understand what happened in 2016—when milk companies had been overpaying for the majority of the year and then, all of a sudden, were trying to claw back hundreds of thousands of dollars from farming families—would understand exactly what happens when a certain sector needs some support. When we saw Batlow Apples go up in flames, it was this government, in conjunction with the New South Wales government, that put hundreds of thousands of dollars on the table, to be matched by the farmers, to get production up and running again, even though we all know it's going to take some five to six years for that fruit to start bearing once again. This government doesn't just do the talk; it actually backs itself up with the actions. And that's what I'm saying—

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