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

They are sanctimonious, Member for Mallee. They're dressed-up Greens. They're Greens with trust funds. The member for Parkes called them that. He sounded them out really easily and really quickly and really early. He summed them up. They want to stand and talk about what renewables we need in this country, yet they couldn't care less whether regional Australia is just covered with renewable energy projects, and they don't give a jot that what is being sacrificed is prime agricultural land. I will always defend our farmers, and I'll always defend their right to grow the very best food in all of the world. The teals just think that that wonderful clean, green, fresh food comes from a supermarket fridge or aisle. It does not. It comes from—wait for it—a farm! They go around and they call these projects wind farms. Well, they're not wind farms. You can't farm wind; you can farm food. It should be known to those teals and the Greens.

We heard the member for Melbourne, the Greens leader, bell the cat in the 90-second statements just before question time. He wants a governance-sharing arrangement with Labor, and God help Australia if that is the case. God help farmers if the Greens get their hands on the treasury benches, and woe betide regional Australians—regional Australians who carried this country during COVID; regional Australians who bent their backs and whose brows sweated to make sure that we grew the food and the fibre and had the mining resources to keep the lights on, to keep the export balance of payments and to keep this country going when all those teals, all those city types and all those Greens pulled up the doona and pretended nothing was happening. That is the Greens way. That is the teals way. That is the Labor way.

It is the Liberals and the Nationals who have a plan to get this nation back on track. It is the Liberals and Nationals who understand farmers, who appreciate farmers, who applaud farmers and who will back regional Australians to make this country the best it can be.

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