Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

With the election of the Albanese government and the backing of the Greens, Labor has relaunched its war on Australia's farmers. Kevin Rudd took away their water in the Murray-Darling Basin. Julia Gillard slapped a kneejerk ban on live cattle exports over a heavily biased ABC report about slaughtering practices in another country, thousands of miles from Canberra. Under Greens-Labor climate policies, farmers, energy, fuel and fertiliser costs have all skyrocketed. It's said you shouldn't bite the hand that—quite literally—feeds you, but Labor is doing it all over again with its clear intention to destroy the live sheep export industry in Western Australia. This industry supports thousands of jobs and hundreds of businesses along the supply chain and is a mainstay of regional economies. Labor does not have a mandate to destroy sheep farming in this country, but Labor, of course, does not care about jobs in the bush or regional communities and the money sheep farming brings into the country.

Mark my words: this is just the beginning of a strategic attack on all livestock industries in Australia. Unfairly demonising livestock producers as climate polluters, the ultimate aim of Labor and the Greens is to force us all to become vegetarians. Their first step is to ban live exports. Then they will take away the rest of the water needed to irrigate pastures and water stock—we've already seen them abandon dams in Queensland. After that, they will force crippling emissions reduction targets on producers. By then, meat and fresh milk will be in such short supply that most Australians won't be able to afford them. I mention milk because Labor has done nothing about the labour industry and is continuing to put the nail in the coffin of dairy farmers. We won't be able to afford fresh milk; we'll be importing it from New Zealand as powdered milk.