Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker Sharkie, I know that you're very aware, coming from a rural area, of how important rural produce is. It sits at the cornerstone of the economy. I know that the member beside me, from the tomato industry, is very aware of how industries such as these work. We try to do so much. We go in the paddocks—I'm in the cattle industry—we manage the stock, we try to manage the weeds, we manage the wages that are involved and we pay our levies. When we go through the saleyards we have to pay a levy. We're just sick of people lumbering new costs onto us! We're actually delivering to the nation's profit and loss; we're putting things on the 'P' side of profit and loss. We're actually making the nation wealthier. We're feeding and clothing people, and now it looks like we're going to pick up another tab—for $153 million, as put forward in the budget. We're price takers; we can't do anything about that and it's just going to come straight out of our pockets.

One of the frustrating things for so many people in regional areas is that they can pick out so many other things the government does and ask about wasting money on things like the Environmental Defenders Office or subsidisation of wind farms. These are swindle factories; there are secret agreements and we don't know exactly what these Chinese, Singaporean, Dutch or French companies are being paid. But I bet it's a lot more than $153 million for the taxpayers who are paying for it! I can assure you of that. And, for that, we get ripped off at the power point. These are costs.

Biosecurity is incredibly important. My father was a vet and I remember growing up through the brucellosis eradication campaign and the bovine tuberculosis eradication campaign—which we were successful at, by the way; we actually eradicated those diseases. As the ag minister I was responsible for getting rid of white spot in prawns, which got into Australia—and we were successful, with a great team. So I know all about biosecurity: cactoblastis to get rid of prickly pear; calicivirus and myxoma virus to get rid of rabbits. And I'm very aware of the threats; if foot-and-mouth disease got in here, and it's right next door, there would be an immediate stop. People think, 'Oh, it's about the cattle industry.' No! It goes beyond that. It's any earthworks, anywhere—things that have moved across soil all stop. It's a complete shutdown. It would be disastrous for Australia and would cost us tens to hundreds of billions of dollars. So I understand how important biosecurity is.

Might I say, just as a tangential issue to that: now that we have people arriving by boat on our shores, in the north-west of Western Australia, rather than being found at sea and arriving at Christmas Island, God help us if they decide to bring a pig with them or something like that. We're opening ourselves right up to foot-and-mouth coming into Australia. Away from whatever people's views are on immigration and refugees, we have to be very, very careful about that issue.

What I can't work out with this bill, the Agriculture (Biosecurity Protection) Levies Bill 2024, coming forward is that it's yet another cost. It's the easy way out. Seeing that the farming industry is basically putting the money on the plate for Australia—just like the coalminers are and the gas exporters are—then actually help us to do our job and we'll earn you more money. Don't just come in and put your hands back in our pockets to take more money out. This is an isolating industry, and a biosecurity levy is something which is incredibly clumsy. I know that it's biosecurity on us sending things out, but is it coming in from the other direction? Are things coming into Australia going to be hit with this levy? Is it going to hit them, or just us? Of course the answer to that is that it's pretty crook: the competition doesn't get the levy but we do. We have to make sure that what we do for our nation assists our nation to become stronger.

We're also now having to deal with the 30 per cent environmental restoration act that's coming in. That's 30 per cent of the countryside—how's that going to work? This will be dynamically bad. If we look at it in its purest form and say that 30 per cent of the countryside will now revert to scrub, then that's exactly what it will become. It won't become pristine rainforest; it will become scrub. If you want a biosecurity problem then you'll have a massive one there. The countryside will be full of feral pigs and feral goats; that's exactly what happened in our area. Once you lock up an area for a national park, it just becomes infested with feral animals and weeds. So we've got to do this in a different way. The coalition has said that they don't support this. From the most recent discussions—and I say this on the record—if we get into government, it will be removed; it will be reversed. I'm saying that clearly on the record so that, even on our side, there's no walking away from this at a later date. It will be removed.

When I was the ag minister, this was bowled up to me so many times, over and over and over again, and the answer was always the same: 'Go back to your department and absorb it.' I will sit down as a parliamentarian, as the member for Dawson would and as so many others would, and say: 'Open your books and I will show you $153 million. I will show you an alternate place to get $153 million. If you're looking for $153 million, I will find it for you!' In support of land rights claims and legal fees on Indigenous land rights claims, we spend well in excess of a billion—$1.3 or $1.4 billion. We support farmers who have to go to court on these things. I think that's at about $40 million. We're even getting rid of that minor support. So there's some fat in that budget; you could trim it off that. You could look at some of the so-called arts projects, as marvellous as they are, and I bet you could find $153 million in that portfolio.

I've sat down with public works in the past, and I've seen some of the defence costings. I remember there was a kilometre-and-a-half of road, and they built it out of $3 million—to grade it! You can find the money. But this is a very clumsy way to find yourself $153 million, because you're actually going to the people you want to make as much money as possible. For example, take our operation: it's a small operation. We pay the levies when the cattle go in. We pay McDonald Bros Transport for moving the cattle. We pay for the seal posts. All of these things have GST. We pay for the drenches. We pay wages. They pay their pay-as-you-go taxes. We pay the tax rate at the end of the year. It's not as if you're not making money out of it. There's excise on the petrol. With the diesel fuel rebate, we get the excise back. But we don't have those vehicles on the road, that's why they don't pay the excise. But every way we go, we're paying money to the government. And when you've got hopeless roads, no doctors, no local post office, no local hospital within easy reach and no public transport, the question that gets asked by so many people is: why do we get hit with a new levy?

If you looked into the lives of those in regional areas, you'd see the price per person of support that a person in a city gets, with child care, multiple hospitals, better roads, public transport and arts precincts, is vastly in excess of what we get in country areas. That is another reason to look deeper when you come up with levies and say: 'What is the actual government support for these people in these areas? Are we putting a levy on people who are at the bottom end of support from the taxpayer?' Why are we hitting them with a levy?

We all understand how important biosecurity is, whether its screw-worm fly, rabies or foot-and-mouth disease. There are the boring insects and the decimators. There are so many other issues around. We were the only country without varroa mite and now it's here. We do need to be protected from these issues, but that is an investment from the government, just like they have an investment in the Defence Force. Do we have a levy for the Defence Force? Do people have to pay a levy in regional areas? Should we go to Sydney and say, 'Well, you've got the naval base there, so we're going to have a certain levy just because you've got the benefit of that there'? Should we go up to Newcastle and say, 'Williamstown is there, so we're going to put a levy on you'? Should we go to Perth and say, 'Well, you've got HMAS Stirling, so we're going to put a naval levy on you for protection'? You'd say: 'Hang on. It's the role of the nation to protect our nation's sovereignty if someone attacks us.' This is another sovereign protection, and it seems peculiar that you'd go back to the farmers and ask them to pay for it. When you think about it, even in another form, it's a biosecurity levy.

On our places, we're not going to give anybody foot-and-mouth disease or anything like that, because it's not here. If it's going to arrive here, it's going to arrive from overseas. So why am I paying for a problem that I can't possibly deliver to anybody? Why am I paying the levy for something that I can't cause? The things that are going to cause the problem are the products coming in, not the products going out. It's a levy to protect us from diseases coming in; it's not a levy to stop diseases going out. So you're even going to the wrong person and charging them for this outcome.

It also fundamentally goes to this question: is the Labor Party going out and actually talking to people in regional areas? I've got no problem when people say, 'There are hardly any farming seats or farmers in the Labor Party.' That's not an issue at all for me. The issue is when a government member in that portfolio has a lack of interest and actually doesn't spend time on the road checking things out.

Senator Murray Watt is the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. I'd imagine, if Senator Watt's doing his job, he would have a lot of delegations of people saying to him that they don't want to pay a levy on what they produce in order to subsidise something coming into the country and not going out of the country. If it's the biosecurity defence foundation, it should be absorbed and it shouldn't be putting a levy on anybody. It should be paid for by your taxes—that's how you pay for it. But I don't think that Senator Watt is actually going around the countryside. I can't remember him being in New England. He might have dropped in there or walked through there, but there wasn't an intense interest. I don't know whether he's been down to Bowen or if he's had an intense interest in what's going on there.

Unfortunately, what I have noticed about the government, at this stage, is that they have an intense interest in taking money away from us. There's the Bowen pipeline, Urannah dam, Dungowan dam, Hells Gate dam and Emu Swamp dam. The Inland Rail is now basically in mothballs. They've stopped that. So many of our beef roads and the Black Spot Program, the Roads to Recovery Program and the Bridges Renewal Program—in these things, when we do see the government acting, it's usually to take money away from them, not to invest in them.

It's not as if we're a cot case. We're actually putting money on the table for Australia and we're doing our very best not only to feed Australia but to feed our very small section of the world. We're not the food basket of the world, but we feed a very small section. We assist in stopping people from starving to death. We assist in clothing people. It's an honourable profession, and we do our very best.

But what this says to farmers is, 'For your labours and your endeavours in the job that you do'—which is an inherently moral and good occupation, one of feeding and clothing people—'we're going to find another arbitrary tax and flick it your way.' When really, if you gave some diligent thought about how to do it, you would find so many better alternatives that would be able to fund the $153 million.

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