Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would be glad to. As I mentioned, I was in Darwin last week for our third and final Beef Roads forum. I have also previously attended one in Rockhampton and we had a second forum in Kununurra late last year. The Beef Roads program is incredibly important for our beef industry, an incredibly important industry for our country but also a very important one for the north specifically. Up to a third of the cost of livestock can be accounted for in transport costs, particularly those from the north of our country given their distance from markets. Currently, the cost of transporting cattle across Australia is estimated at $262 million and that can be as high as almost $500 million when you account for return trips. We have to bring down those costs if we are going to have a strong beef sector and that is why we are investing $100 million to do so across our north in Beef Roads.