Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources. Will the Deputy Prime Minister update the House on the benefits to Australia's meat industry and economy from our export trade deal with China? Is the Deputy Prime Minister aware of any threats to this industry and the thousands of hardworking Australians that it employs?

Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for his question. He more than most understands the huge benefits we get from our agreements with China and he would understand more than most how we are turning around the agricultural sector. In fact, in the 12 months to December 2016, there was 23.7 per cent growth—no other sector, in percentage growth, came even close. None of them were even within about a quarter of it. No other sector added more to our GDP than agriculture, and this was a substantial turnaround from previous government. Under Labor, I remember we actually went backwards in the last quarter by 0.5 per cent.

Agricultural production in Australia will exceed $60 billion, and this is a first for that, and $12½ billion of that is in beef cattle. The member for Parkes will understand that, with a substantial beef area and, of course, the selling centre at Gunnedah—one of the most substantial selling centres in New South Wales and in our nation. In the member's electorate alone beef cattle—to give you an anecdotal figure—accounted for about $300 million. This is for beef cattle and calves across 876 farms in northwest New South Wales.

On Friday, Australian and China signed the Joint Statement on Enhancing Inspection and Quarantine Cooperation between Australia and the People's Republic of China. This agreement allows us to our export more chilled beef. What it is with chilled beef is that now that we are capping out our volumes we are increasing our values; we are getting more for the price of what we sell. In fact, it will be worth about $400 million a year. We are finding more processing plants so that we can actually export beef into China and we are getting more capacity for ourselves to be part of the approval mechanism of exporting chilled beef to China.

I know the agreement means that the 4,000 red meat processors employed in one organisation alone, Teys, will get more work, because we are always trying to make sure that we get more work for the working men and women of Australia. There are 13,000 supporting jobs in rural Australia just for Teys alone. Teys processes about 1½ million cattle, and this allows us to get meat works such as in Rockhampton, in Capricornia; in Beenleigh, in Forde; in Biloela, in the seat of Flynn; in my own seat, in Tamworth; in Wagga; in Naracoorte; in Barker; in feedlots. This is how we actually get our economy to turn around.

One of the big impediments, though, is the price of power. The price of power has been going through the roof. For Teys alone it is $39 million a year, and in Naracoorte it has gone up by around 60 per cent since 2015. The member for Parkes will understand that it is time to the Labor Party—I heard the member for Gorton talk about hairdressers and beauticians, and they are a very important part of the workforce, no doubt—started worrying about the meatworkers. It is time they started worrying about the timber workers down in Heyfield. It is time they started worried about the shearers and making sure that those who were their original constituency are actually looked after. It is time they started looking after the blue-collar workers of Australia and stopped worrying about Annandale. (Time expired)