Sam McMahon (NT, Country Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak about the recently announced agriculture visa—announced this week, in fact, by my colleague Minister David Littleproud. I congratulate him and everyone who has worked on this. This visa, which is to be in place by 30 September, is something that has been a long-held CLP policy and something that I have advocated for since coming to this place.

We in the Northern Territory rely heavily on seasonal workers and struggle to get agricultural workers. We have used the Pacific labour solution and will continue to do so—it is a very, very important part of our seasonal workforce—but this visa will give us much more flexibility for our farmers and producers who cannot get the skilled Australian labour that they need. We, on this side, care about agriculture. We look after our farmers and our producers and those in the regions, while those on the other side, and their cronies in the Northern Territory Labor government, do not care about agriculture at all. What have they done for agriculture? I'll tell you: they have done absolutely nothing for agriculture.

Why do we need this visa? We need it because we have a lot of unique agricultural enterprises in the Northern Territory, such as crocodile farming. This occurs in the Northern Territory and nowhere else in Australia, so we have no access to labourers who are used to working with crocodiles. Let me tell you: if you're not used to working with crocodiles and you suddenly start to try to farm them, accidents will happen and digits will be lost.