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

We're telling those farmers: 'We don't want your business. We don't want you to do what you've done well for decades.' One of the great tragedies of the budget before last was when the member for Rankin went to that dispatch box and gave his speech. The biggest contribution and allocation to agriculture was to shut down the live sheep trade. The biggest allocation that the Labor government gave to agriculture was to shut a trade down—$107 million of compensation to stop doing what the farmers had done for years. That's the way Labor treats our farmers, thumbing their nose and telling the farmers that they are doing a good job. That's the Labor way.

When it comes to critical minerals, we've got the Greens—and God help us all if they end up in a governance-sharing arrangement with Labor after the election—trying to stop mining. As a coalition, we are the ones who promote mining, and we will always do so. Labor is the complete opposite.

See this speech in context