Rick Wilson (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Agriculture. I remind the minister of the importance of the live export trade in my electorate of O'Connor and to the economy of the Western Australia. What is the government doing to support Western Australian livestock producers and to reduce excessive regulation?

Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for O'Connor for his question. Member for O'Connor, correct me if I am wrong: you are a fourth-generation farmer, and O'Connor, being a seat 9,008 square kilometres, is the third-largest seat in Australia. It is also extremely important that the people in that area who are in the live sheep trade and in the live cattle trade understand that we are taking fundamental steps towards getting more money back to the mums and dads and back to the kitchen tables of O'Connor and Durack, and to all the people across Australia, by opening up the trade again. The Labor Party today might not have scrapped the carbon tax, but in the past they did scrap the live cattle trade. Remember that they could scrap the live cattle trade; they could do that. They are very good at stopping things. It is important to understand that as we open up the trade into Egypt we are giving more opportunity, more market space and more potential for more money to come back to the good people of Western Australia. I can see a whole range of Western Australians here who are going to be standing behind their candidates at the Senate election reminding them that it is the coalition that stands behind the live cattle trade and got it going again.

It is also important that we understand something else—today the Labor Party and the Greens, who are back together joined at the hip, have decided that from 1 July the people of O'Connor and Durack are going to have to start paying the carbon tax on diesel. That equates to 7c a litre on diesel. If someone picks up a truck at Warburton and goes down to Mount Barker, around 1,660 kilometres, that person is going to be paying the carbon tax because of the people in the Senate who apparently can change the temperature of the globe single-handedly. We will have to see how they are going, because they have reinvested in the carbon tax. Bucko, go outside and check-out how the weather is going—because they can change it! If they can change the weather, why don't they make it rain!

It is good to see that Labor has put itself back on the hook—back with the Greens and back with the carbon tax. The member for Blair is back to tell his meat workers that he believes he can change the temperature of the globe. It is all there. We thought they had got rid of their previous Prime Minister. But, no, she is back. They are back. They are back where they belong—back with the carbon tax!

Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seek leave to table the comments of Western Australian agriculture minister Ken Baston, who yesterday said that Western Australian farmers will wait months for drought assistance.

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Leave is not granted.