address to parliament - BILLS - Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2023-2024, Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2023-2024, Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 2) 2023-2024 - Second Reading

Prior to the election, the Prime Minister and Labor candidates, members and senators made a lot of promises and pledges. They said they were going to do politics better. They said they were going to be accountable and transparent. Unfortunately, they haven't been.

I'm pleased to be able to rise to speak on this appropriations bill No. 3 because many of us weren't permitted to speak on appropriations bill No.1 because Labor guillotined the debate. They gagged the debate—wanted to rush it through. Appropriation bills are important because they allow the proper financing of the government's functions, and this bill, as well as others, provides the legislative authority for additional funding for government agencies to allow, as it were, the government to do what it needs to do. So that's important. And the government is doing what it needs to do insofar as the various departments et cetera will have the appropriate amount of money for the fiscal year ahead. But the government is not doing what it needs to do when it comes to regional Australia. There are many examples which are a blight on what the government is rolling out—on what the government is doing.

Just this week the government announced changes made by the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Senator Murray Watt. I feel for the senator. It's a difficult job, being an agriculture minister in a Labor government, because they don't have the capacity to really have a vision for regional Australia, let alone farming in those areas. They have so many competing interests in cabinet, and the regions usually aren't one of them. Farming and agriculture certainly are not part of the mix when the caucus get together and decide where they're going to spend money, where they will have a focus and where they will do what's right—or what they think is right—for and on behalf of Australians.

If the biosecurity levy model put in place by this government were not so disgraceful, it would be laughable. In no other country would farmers be expected to pay the biosecurity levies of imported foods from another nation, but in this country they are! Our hardworking farmers, already under siege because of the policies of those opposite, are being asked to pay a biosecurity protection levy for goods that are coming in from their competitors—imported products from other countries—which are going to sit alongside our farmers' products on the same supermarket shelves in Australian cities and towns. How ridiculous! How nonsensical! How embarrassing! I am aghast at this.

Minister Watt has announced that there will be a 30 per cent reduction of this proposed biosecurity protection levy, but it's already too high. The levy shouldn't be there at all, yet farmers are expected to say, 'Alleluia! Let the sunshine in,' because there's been a 30 per cent reduction in what they were going to have to pay. We should be so lucky! The levy shouldn't be there at all. There should be no levy. Why should Australian farmers pay the biosecurity levy for their competitors? I would love to know the answer to that question. I would love to know why it should be paid by our farmers, who are doing it so tough and who largely propped up this country, with their friends in mining, through COVID. They still put food on our tables. They still put food on ships and in the bellies of planes to go overseas to help our balance of payments. Our farmers feed our nation and many others besides, and yet what do they cop from the Labor government? They cop kicks in the guts all the time, like these biosecurity charges.

Don't just take my word for it. The Chief Executive Officer of Grain Producers Australia, Colin Bettles—I know him well—said:

Our view is that we spend enough on levies already and that the government should spend what they have better.

I couldn't have said it better myself. He continued:

We already pay 1.02 per cent of our bottom line in compulsory levies that go to research and development and biosecurity and global market access.

That's good, because we need R&D. We need to improve what we're doing. I admire the work being done at Charles Sturt University at Wagga Wagga, particularly in the space of chickpeas and other products. They have a world-class equine laboratory there, where they're doing research not just into horses but into veterinary science. The work that they're doing for agriculture and through the drought hub and everything else is second to none.

Labor members opposite should know that part of that research and development is at the Graham Centre, named after a former Labor state agriculture minister, Eddie Graham, who was a very good man. But that was back in the fifties, when Labor actually cared about the regions. They have long since stopped caring about the regions and certainly about farming.

Mr Bettles was quite right when he added:

It's ridiculous for the government to call us the only beneficiaries of biosecurity, it's fundamentally flawed logic … enough is enough.

People like Mr Bettles would now be expected to bow and scrape at the feet of the Labor cabinet because they have reduced the biosecurity levy. He should be so thankful that they have reduced what is an unnecessary charge! It defies logic. There was another interesting quote, from Terry O'Leary. He raises watermelons in the Queensland town of Chinchilla, in the Western Downs of that fine state, in the seat of Maranoa. He said:

I think it's disgusting the way they are treating us as a cash cow—

This is a fascinating quote—

You wouldn't go to the State of Origin and expect players to pay for security at the front gate out of their own pockets. So why should farmers?

Good point! It's a very good point.

When you look at horticulture, 32 per cent of the industry is considering leaving.

That's almost a third. That's not just because of the biosecurity levies but also because of the changes to the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme, where farmers are expected to pay workers for a minimum 30 hours a week, every week—even during unseasonable conditions when there possibly might not be any work.

All farmers know that you should be paid a fair day's pay for a fair day's work. Those people who use foreign labour, who do not do that—who exploit the systems—should be reported, should be charged and have the full force of authorities brought against them. But, in the main—the absolute extreme main—our farmers rely on Pacific workers. They do the right thing by Pacific workers; they pay Pacific workers the right amount. Yet, under the union conspired laws put in by those opposite, they're now going to get whacked again. They're going to get whacked for having their competitors' products. They're going to be charged for the biosecurity for overseas competitors. They're going to get whacked and have to pay workers to sit around and do nothing when there's no work to be done, under the new union conspired, union inspired, union led rules that are taking over PALM. We have Mr O'Leary saying it is ridiculous that Labor is putting a tax on an industry that is shrinking, and this will affect our food security.

The members here, who represent the electorates of O'Connor, Nicholls and Casey, know how important food security is, particularly my regional colleagues. The member for O'Connor is very upset about how his sheep farmers are being treated with the live export nonsense that is going on through this parliament and through this nation. No other country in the world has an Exporter Supply Chain Assurance System in place, where animal welfare is placed at No.1—and it should be. But we are now facing the prospect that we will just outsource animal welfare to other countries who couldn't give two hoots about sheep, cattle or anything else they are exporting live. But we do. Our farmers do. They take exception to the fact they get accused by the member for Clark, and many others besides, who say that they don't put animal welfare as their No.1 priority. I'll tell you what else they put down as a priority, and that's making a quid. Farmers shouldn't have to do something for nothing. Farmers shouldn't have to be hit all the time by charges and levies, whether it's for biosecurity or to be told they aren't animal welfare conscious. This is just nonsense!

It's hard enough to farm in this nation now without the Labor government putting on all these imposts and impositions. When they do—as they probably will—ban all animal exports, those export trades and routes will be taken up by countries who don't care at all about animal welfare! Suffer, the poor sheep, as they will. That is what will happen. But they'll go to their little NIMBY meetings, they'll have their tofu, they'll sit around drinking their chamomile tea and they'll say: 'Aren't we good? We stopped the sheep trade. Aren't we good?' But they won't even care about the sheep that will be on the ships, that won't be having their pant score measured, that won't have airflow on the ships, like we do, and when they die they'll just get thrown overboard. It's a disgrace. We in this country outsource so much these days to countries that just don't care. It is a nonsense.

Then, as the member for Nicholls will rightly say, we have the changes to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. My goodness! We in the Nationals, and regional Liberals too, fought so hard against the draft Basin Plan back in 2010. There we were with Labor wanting just about every available drop of water sent out the mouth of the Murray. The mouth of the Murray was not even put on the early maps of Australia because it was banked up by sand. But never let the historical facts get in the way of a good environmental story. The Murray, before man-made interventions such as weirs, locks and dams, dried up often. It did. People had picnics in the dry creek beds and the riverbeds of our various ephemeral streams.

Yet what do Labor want to do? They want to take the water away. They want to buy it out of our communities. What happens when a farmer in stress and distress sells their water? The price of water goes through the roof because the government has just intervened and that farmer takes their money and they leave the community. It leaves the community literally high and dry. It is not just the farming community that suffers. It is the hairdresser, the motor mechanic and the school.

The decision by this government to fund Foodbank to the tune of $14 million today and the decision to fund an advertising campaign for its stage 3 tax cuts to the tune of $40 million says just about everything about this government and its priorities. What a disgrace—how shameful that is! That is $14 million for those hardworking charities who do so much, particularly in our regional communities. People are going to Foodbank and people going to St Vincent de Paul and other charitable organisations—people who've never had to present themselves before but have to because of the cost-of-living crisis—and here we have a government spending $40 million on advertising, on spin doctors, on marketing. What a disgrace! Those Labor members who were in that caucus who made that decision should take a good long hard look at themselves tonight. The public know. They will remember, and they will vote accordingly at the next election.