Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Road Safety) Share this | Hansard source

I will not apologise for being embarrassed. I haven't even met the farmers—I don't know if they were irrigators or dairy farmers; I have no idea—but you could see the anger in the people in the gallery. And what did we have here? The Minister for Agriculture was on her feet; she had been asked a question from Senator Davey. The people in the gallery stormed out. They all left while all of you over there were trying to defend or whatever, let's not forget. For those in the gallery, may I remind the government: you have been in government seven years. This issue just hasn't popped up in the last couple of sitting weeks. These issues, these challenges, have been here many, many times.

Senator Davey, I know you're trying your best to defend your part of the world, as you may do, but you don't realise how silly and how condescending you sounded when you had a go at Senator Green because she quoted that Senator McDonald had written about Queensland dairy farmers. Your response was—I can't quite remember your exact words, because I was shaking my head so hard it nearly fell off—that the minister has to look after all farmers, not just Queensland. I think Senator McDonald has the right to look after her farmers and have her concerns, the same as Senator Hanson had the right to protect and defend and represent her farmers—the dairy farmers who are the same as Senator McDonald's. And I'm very, very well aware of the bullying tactics from the top of the supply chain. I think Lion is one that we've invited, as well as Coles and Woolworths—and, I think, Aldi—to come here next week and have a chat to us. That is because, I'm told, Scenic Rim dairy farmers are actually getting their feet nailed to the floor now, because, they are being forced, and bullied, into signing contracts on 9 December, which is only about four or five days away, that will lock them in—I believe; don't quote me—to 69 cents a litre. I said to Senator McDonald: can't they just tell them, 'Stop, we don't want to sign it while we're waiting for the mandatory code that eventually is going to get here one day, we're told'? And do you know what the answer was, Senator Davey? Because, if they do, they lose their bonuses and they're down to 50 cents a litre. As someone who has had to fight for years in my work life to get my rates when I was a self-employed truck driver, I know the power of negotiation from the top down.

How condescending and disgraceful the behaviour has been here today! Politicians think they know everything; sadly, they don't. But they could say at times, when they listen to the Australian people, 'Well, I was going to do this, but, you know what? Maybe I'm not the gatekeeper of all intelligence. Maybe I haven't got it right. Maybe I should consult further.' If people are angry enough to come down here—and, with all due respect to Canberra, which is a lovely place to visit, I think farmers have got better things to do and would rather be somewhere else—the least we can do is have the decency to sit down with them. We are not the be-all and the end-all, and we don't have the fix-all. We don't have the magic bullet, but I've got to tell you, from what I'm hearing here, we could be doing a hell of a lot more as a nation. We're very good at collecting taxes and we're very good at having photographs taken when we cut a ribbon and open another piece of infrastructure that's been around for 30 years, but if you dare to come to us with a really serious problem such as people being driven off the land—and I don't know how many dairy farmers we're losing. I'm told that it's one a day in Queensland. Is throwing insults and barbs at other senators across the side of the table the best that senators on that side can do? Seriously? Do we pride ourselves on going into the last week of our sitting year thinking we have done the Australian people a major justice by defending very poor legislation and by defending statements that are now a year old? (Time expired)

Question agreed to.