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

All we can do is put before the chamber Senator Boswell’s amendment to protect food production industries, specifically the dairy industry, the abattoir industry and the canning industry. The numbers in the Senate will determine what happens to it.

I clearly put before the chamber before we vote that, if we do not support this amendment, we will leave the dairy industry especially, because it has a huge carbon footprint, and behind that the abattoir industry out there. I do not believe that there are numbers present in this chamber for the support of the government’s ETS or CPRS, or whatever acronym they want to devise for it next time; therefore, there will not be capacity for a so-called climate change action fund to exist which would be able to sponsor or assist with the cost impost of the renewable energy target on these industries.

I do acknowledge that the Australian community in general has a view about renewable energy and that it wants to progress that issue. If you are trying to be conciliatory, it is in the nature of trying to be conciliatory that you move towards something even though you might not totally agree with it. In some instances you might not agree with it at all but you still try, for the benefit of what is desired, to move in that direction. But you try to do that in a form that will alleviate the unnecessary consequences for other sections of the economy.

We cannot put any more pressure on the production of Australian food. We cannot put any more pressure on the food-processing sector. You cannot have a farm if you do not have somewhere to process what you produce. This chamber can pass this amendment, and if it passes the amendment we can excise food production from the renewable energy target and give some confidence to the food production sector that their future is important. We talk about what is terribly important. The minister talks about what is extremely important for kids, and I agree with that. But I will tell you what is really important to families: affordable food. It is very important for working families in Australia to be able to put food on the table that they can pay for and not to have the whole dietary component of their lives changed by government policy and regulation. That will happen if you keep putting these imposts on. This is a common-sense amendment that takes food production out of this legislation. As time progresses, other things can happen, but at the moment it is a huge slug to the food production industry—and I draw your attention specifically to the issues in the dairy industry.