Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Yes. What has to happen at the very least is to have some consideration of the farming communities who have made a financial investment in this industry. They need to be given some sort of position in this whole debate and be given some sort of sense of, ‘We know we could have changed that with a regulatory instrument a couple of years ago and saved you the trouble of developing that industry, and that would have avoided the whole problem. We had the power as the government to change that with a regulatory instrument years ago. We chose not to. You got halfway up on your feet, you went to your bank manager, you borrowed a heap of money, you mortgaged your place, you committed yourself to this process and you spent a couple of years of your life doing it, but we know that it was a bit of our mistake’—that is, the government, and I am part of the government—‘We made a bit of a blue on this one. What we’ve got to do is fix it up, so we’re going to go hand-in-hand with this piece of legislation that we’re about to vote on.’

We should say, ‘We know we’ve made a blue, but what we’re going to do is have some sort of program that’s going to get you from here to over there, to a couple of years down the track, to deal with this issue.’ It would be something that you could take to your bank manager and then say: ‘Stop ringing me up. I’ve got a solution here. I’ve got something that can fix it.’ But we do not have that. We have to think about those people when we are dealing with this legislation. You have to have a bit of a think about it. If you do not, it might be green curry and a can of beer after you leave here and everything is fine, but it will not be fine for those people.