Barry O'Sullivan (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thought it was a good pun, and it actually came to me spontaneously, Senator, so I'm very proud of it. We need to beef up the peak industry body that represents these producers. The advent of new technologies and legislation passed here—I think we all were involved in supporting the legislation—allow the peak body to find out who those levy payers are that, collectively, pay about $50 million plus a year into the Meat & Livestock Australia for the support to the industry in research and development. This is about getting a peak industry body. I said at one of the inquiries: 'We'll know when we've arrived when members of the Meat & Livestock Australia, and senators and other politicians in this place, break into a sweat when they hear that this peak body has arrived in the building to come and see them.'

I want it to be a powerful body. I want it to get its way on behalf of producers around the country. It needs to be a very transparent body. It needs to have its strength and its power embedded in a grass-roots movement within the industry. It needs to have a skills-based board that I personally believe needs to be renumerated. I don't care how much they have to pay the members of the board and the chairperson to administer this very important industry in agriculture and, indeed, to our whole national economy. It needs to make sure that its structure allows it to represent and reflect the ideals and the ambitions of producers all around the nation.

I want to commend the report and, in the last moments, I want to pay great tribute to the secretariat under Dr Jane Thomson. This was a difficult report to structure. There was a lot of work and effort, and there were a lot of amendments and restructuring of the report as we got towards this tabling date. Their work, as is always the case, was first class.