Bill Heffernan (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is the greatest display of hypocrisy that I have ever seen, I think. The guys over there do not have the guts to have a position on whether Australia ought to enter into the complete alteration of Australia’s farming culture to one of lurk farming. I will come to what they propose in a minute. Their Mr Bowen has been going around saying what they propose. They do not need an inquiry to work that out. The proposition is that in the same capital market you can have people farming with what I call tax minimisation farming methods—lurk farmers. On Landline on Sunday a developer owned up and said: ‘Yeah, we can make a profit without any production. We can make a profit from our management fees, with no regard at all to the market and supply and demand.’ Why the hell would you want people putting in more grapes now, when the grape market is glutted? Tell me that.

So you have people competing in the same capital market that can make a profit without any production. I will give almonds as an example. The almond guys are charging $40,000 a hectare for something that costs $10. So they are competing in the same capital market as farmers who have to make a profit from production with full regard to the market and supply and demand. It totally corrupts both the water market and the land market.

Senator O’Brien, you want to have an inquiry into all this because you do not have the guts to have a position. Your leader does not have a position and you do not have a position, because you want to go to the election saying: ‘We’ll have an inquiry. We’ll look into it.’ You will not take a position because either way you might have a political downside. Guess what: Mr Bowen, your shadow Assistant Treasurer, has been going around to the promoters of MISs—and I hope everyone is listening to this—saying, ‘If we get into government, we’ll reverse this and open the market again to the lurk farmers unfettered.’ That is what he is saying. You probably do not even know that, but that is what he is saying.