Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to talk about this apple I am holding. It is an apple that was grown in my electorate. It's healthy, it's clean, it's Australian grown and we should be proud of it. Apple growers are telling me that it's getting harder to produce this product because of the policies of the Labor government.

IR laws, including the changes to the PALM scheme, are making it incredibly difficult to run an orchard and grow healthy, clean Australian fruit. And the government's plan to rip a further 450 gigalitres out of the productive water pool that grows clean Australian food threatens the viability of orchards and dairy farms in the food bowl of Australia.

I've written to the Minister for the Environment and Water asking for a briefing and an explanation, and I haven't had a personal response. She hasn't met with the shadow minister since August. She won't meet with the constituents whose lives this effect—that is, the fruit growers, the dairy farmers and everyone else in the basin communities. Do we want our kids eating clean, healthy, Australian apples or do we want them imported from China? Get this policy right, Labor!