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

My God! Can I just correct the previous speaker? As Senator Back would know, the market has actually collapsed. The price now, Senator Bishop, is about $1.40 or $1.50, when it was $2.15. Do not come in here and say the market has recovered; it has collapsed. I point out to the Senate with great care that the reason we are in this trouble is that that mob over there do not get it. There is not one solitary soul in the government in this parliament, with the exception of my good friend Ursula Stephens, who actually lives or makes a living in the bush. They have no bloody idea.

I will go to a few facts. Sure, we have had a conflation of events. The agenda of Animals Australia is not to kill any stock. They do not actually think we should kill stock—and certainly you should not eat them. That is their final agenda. Then you ask them, as I have done: 'All right, so we don't kill them; what do we do with them, unless we castrate them all?' I have to declare an interest. This pocketknife is the knife which I have castrated thousands of calves with. It is a beautiful knife. That is what you would have to do to millions of cattle to stop them from breeding.