Fiona Nash (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you very much, Senator Mason. What a Christmas present that is—‘By the way, we’ll just whack up your charges’!

And for what? The CEO of the Food and Grocery Council, Kate Carnell, has said that people are going to move to cheaper imports because the price of food on the shelves is going to go up. Do we really want to become a nation of importers? Is that what we want, with all of the quality assurance issues—look at melamine in China—and all of the issues of security of supply? The only reason we get security of supply at the moment is that we have a domestic productive capacity. The minute we lose that we will be at the mercy of those overseas countries in terms of supply. I do not think there is a single Australian that wants to go down that road. If we do not do everything we can to ensure that rural Australia has a productive, sustainable future then our food security becomes tenuous. This is not just a scaremongering tactic; this is dead serious. If we do not have a sustainable rural Australia, we do not have a sustainable domestic production capacity.

It is not only our own people we need to feed in this world. The world population is going to go to nine billion by about 2050. How are we planning on feeding them? It is this country that has the ability to do that, and yet we have a government that at every turn is ripping the guts out of rural Australia, which is there to provide for this nation. It is not fair, it is not right and it is not on. I know that my Nationals colleagues and many of my regional and metro Liberal colleagues recognise how important this is and what sort of impact this is going to have.

We know there are some amendments being discussed at the moment to the ETS. I will put my position very clearly on the record: my view is that those amendments will not change anything. They will not change those three key things: that it is a massive new tax; it is going to hit regional Australia harder than anywhere else; and, if the rest of the world is not on board, it is not going to make the slightest bit of difference to the climate—not any.

My position has not changed and I will absolutely maintain my position. I say to any of my colleagues who truly understand the impact of this—and I think they all do—that if we truly believe we are representing people in our communities right across Australia, none of us should support this bill. If we do, we will be selling out regional Australia. I will not be supporting these bills.