Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The chair of the committee, the Nationals Senator for New South Wales, Senator Nash, can come across as though butter would not melt in her mouth, but, my goodness, she was just a little better behaved than Senator Heffernan—I will give you that, Senator Nash. But I spoke to Mr Brown the other day. I do not think he would mind me saying that he rang me, very upset, on the Friday after the hearing, to tell me that he wished he could have the opportunity to turn the attack back onto those National and Liberal senators, given the way they conducted themselves in the hearing. He also said that he had had phone calls from Senator Boswell and from Mr Cobb, the shadow minister for agriculture and food security, and another person—I think it might have been the member for Maranoa, Mr Scott, and if not I will apologise to him—who were very concerned that industry had worked closely with the government and yet come under such a virulent attack from certain National and Liberal senators.

Once again, the government, in all fairness—and I take my hat off to congratulate Minister Crean—negotiated with industry. There are some senators on that side who are very badly suffering relevance deprivation syndrome. They just could not handle it that the beef industry had spoken. They did not like what was being said, so they ran the scare campaign. With the greatest of respect, I would also like to congratulate Minister Burke. Minister Burke has listened, and we as a government have listened, to concerns raised.