Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party, Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Hansard source

We want to see more dairy farmers exporting milk to a whole lot of foreign countries. Milk underpins so much of our regional communities, our food processing jobs—our yoghurt and our milk powder, not just fresh milk and UHT, go to markets right across the world. We want to increase market access for fabulous, clean, green dairy products produced here in Australia. So I don't see the exporting of our product as a bad thing, and opening of new markets. I think it actually leads to an increase in jobs in regional communities and gives our dairy farmers more options as to where to send their products. And, when you have more options, you can have more choice and therefore you can claim a higher price.

In terms of foreign ownership of dairy farms and agricultural land more broadly, the National Party and indeed the coalition government, when we first came to power many years ago, implemented change to the FIRB arrangements to ensure that we have oversight of foreign ownership of agricultural land.