David Littleproud (Maranoa, National Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Wong subsequently had requests from other ASEAN countries to take up the ag visa, and this government has turned its back on them. I actually went to their job summit, to be constructive and to say what regional Australia's issues were. I told them we needed workers out there. The NFF and COSBOA said we needed another 172,000 workers to get food from the paddock to Australians' plates—and all we got was the Pacific scheme, at best 42,000 people. All they did was change the Pacific scheme. That was unworkable. When you take away the ag visa farmers have nothing. What they do is make investment decisions. You don't plan a crop or spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to plan a crop if you can't pick it. That's economics. So what we have seen is farmers lose their confidence in investing, which is driving up food prices because they don't have the tools.

Now this government wants to take away the 88-day rule for backpackers. What happens when you come to Australia as a backpacker is if you go and work in the bush for 88 days you get another 12 months to stay in Australia. The unions want this taken out. They've got a paper out there at the moment, wanting to rip this away from country towns—not only farmers, but country pubs. You won't have pubs if you take it away. That's what we'll get back to—it's common sense and it will give certainty back to Australian farmers.

It's also about the bill that was passed yesterday, the financial market infrastructure bill, which not too many people have heard about. What it means is that the government is going to force the reporting of scope 3 emissions. Now, some might say, 'What does it mean?' What it means is that if you've got a turnover of over $500 million—that is, a bank—and you've got customers, what you've got to be able to do is report the scope 3 emissions of all of your customers. That means a little old cocky in western Queensland in my electorate who runs 5,000 sheep and probably 5,000 acres of grain has to be able to give his emissions profile to his bank. Even from the Treasury's own numbers, that is going to cost the Australian taxpayer $2.3 billion in administrative costs, which has to be passed on to you.

We saw in Blayney last week that they're shutting down a gold mine, and the environment minister is saying, 'They can still do it.' She might want to go out there and have a look at it. If you stand on that mine site and see where you can actually place a dam, there's this thing called topography. Water runs a certain way. You can't just whack a dam in any part of that, particularly a tailing dam. For a company that spent $300 million and five years of investment in 800 jobs in Blayney—it has been cut out. The local Indigenous representative group that is recognised by law said that while it didn't support the mine they didn't oppose it. The New South Wales environment department, the New South Wales EPA, approved it. Even Minister Plibersek's environment department approved it. But for some reason she has listened to some other Indigenous group, and she will not release the statement of reasons. I would have thought that that's owed to Regis. It's owed to the people of the Central West of New South Wales so that they have certainty and an understanding of why the minister has declined an 800-job mine and a billion dollars of investment.

That is what regional Australians are cranky about and that is what has brought them to Canberra. When the Prime Minister was elected he made this grand statement: 'No-one held back. No-one left behind.' Well, that's unless you live in regional Australia. That's what they're feeling and that's why they were out there today.

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