Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party, Minister for Resources and Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

What we have is a positive vision for the future of farming in this country. What we want to see is us grow as a farming country from the $60-odd billion we produce today to $100 billion in years to come. We want to increase the number of people we feed from about 75 million people now—over double and nearly triple our own population—to over 100 million people around the world. The way you do that is you build dams. You have to store water. The way you do that is to allow people to develop land. Sometimes they have to clear trees to put in new crops—to grow food that is good for the world, not just for us. Over there on that side, they don't want any of that. They don't want to build dams, they certainly don't want to let farmers manage their own lands and they are insulting our farming communities in this country by adopting Greens-Left policies that are going to lock up the land and not let our country progress to growing more food and developing more local economies in our country.