Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Hansard source

I haven't run out of content and I never will, but I won't be like you, Minister Rishworth, and just read from the notes. I will speak from the heart because I know what this means to my community. I know what this means to regional Australia. I know what this means to our nation and our exporters, to those people who went to those desert plains and turned them into gardens of Eden. I know what it means to them. I know how important it is to them, and I know how much this will affect them if this plan goes through unaltered in this place and over there in the Senate because, quite frankly, some of those country communities will just have to close their doors. That will be it for them. Yes, we'll get in all the foreign food, and our grocery prices will go up and the cost-of-living crisis will get even worse. Will those members opposite care about that? I don't think they will. But they will get pats on the head when they go to the Labor dirt unit: 'Well done, you read the notes well. Good on you, excellent, good job.' That is what we face.

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