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

This is socialism again. One of the things that drove me into this side of the political fence is the belief of the individual having primacy over the state—that the state is there only for service to the individual, and the individual resides above the state. Over and over again, you get socialism in a George Armani suit: It turns up. It's always the same—it's the belief that we don't know what we're doing and that we need the state! We need the state to come in once more with its fingers into the rights of private ownership. It's just like the other day, in getting rid of the live sheep trade—these incursions into your capacity to earn income. Now it comes in on what you own, it comes in on how you earn your money and it comes in on what you can say! Every day the state takes another step to diminish the individual's rights.

Then we have the silly dance where we all come out, and one side says, 'We love farmers; farmers are alright, we love farmers.' Then we come out and say, 'We love the environment; we'd never hurt the environment.' And maybe both of them are correct. But what happens in the meantime is that it doesn't come down to free choice, it comes down to laws: 'You're not allowed to do that anymore. You're not allowed to touch that anymore.' It's hard when you're trying to understand that the centralisation of the state is very close—

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