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

Senator O'Neill, we took to the election to put in a mandatory code for the dairy industry should we win the election. We did. The Labor Party put forward a floor price. Joel had a whole suite of initiatives that he was going to do. They didn't want that. They wanted the mandatory dairy code of conduct and a whole raft of measures that we committed to: legal and financial advice within the ACCC, support for energy efficiency grants et cetera. And I've run through them publicly several times. That code was not to be delivered until 1 July next year.

On winning the election we, as a government, as a party, took every step to actually bring forward the release of the dairy code. I actually wrote to my department in August seeking, on the back of the lobbying from my own party members, to bring forward the code. So the department and the Office of Parliamentary Counsel were doing everything they could to turn the nine principles that were agreed by industry into a legal document, and the exposure draft that's out for consultation now with the industry was produced.