John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, exactly. I had to laugh at Mr McKim's speech when he said that there are all these wealthy people who do not own stores and do their business on the internet. How many hotels and how many motels did Mr Graeme Wood own? I would guess: zero. But he was smart—he got on the internet and set up a business, and, when he had made all the money, what did he do? He palmed off the biggest donation in political history in Australia since Federation—and to who? To the Australian Greens, for the 2010 election. That is why Mr McKim's maiden speech was so ironic when he looked at how the Greens were treated.

But I will come back to the subject of answers to questions. We are an exporting nation: 70 per cent of our beef is exported. I have mentioned Bindaree Beef in Inverell. They were telling me that, in December 2012, they sent six containers of beef to China. In December 2013, they sent 60 containers of beef to China—a 10-fold growth in 12 months. And it just keeps coming, as people want to buy our products.

I was critical about Australia when we removed our barriers and tariffs. I was a pig farmer. My brother and I worked pretty hard to build our piggery. We mixed 120 tonnes of cement—and in cement mixers, mind you, instead of bringing a truck in; we could not afford it. We set up our piggery. And then the Labor Party in government allowed the importing of pig meat. It did not do us a lot of good. I was critical, because we had removed all our barriers to trade—there were no quotas and virtually no tariffs—and now we are going around the world and picking them off one by one.

Opposition senators interjecting—

I will just disregard the interjections from the other side, Mr Deputy President; I can hear where they are coming from, so they are worth disregarding totally.

So the situation is: we are getting them to remove their barriers, their tariffs and their quotas, and that is getting us back to a more level playing field. And I do welcome the low Australian dollar, which is also making us more competitive and bringing in more money, especially into the wealth-creating sector of our nation: rural and regional Australia, where the wealth—the primary product—actually originates from. I cannot understand why those opposite are against this. Bob Hawke is not. Bob Carr, the former senator and former trades minister, is not. All the Labor premiers are not. So who has got it wrong? Just the mouthpiece of the CFMEU—that is what Mr Bill Shorten is. You are just the mouthpieces of the trade union movement.