Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities representing the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. Would the minister update the House on recent developments in the government's plan to deregulate bulk wheat exports? What are the next steps on this?

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Fremantle for her question. She is one of the Western Australian members of parliament who was able to be in the chamber when the vote happened on this issue last night. There are opportunities that have already come as a result of deregulation of wheat that have made an extraordinary benefit for our wheat growers in Australia.

For a long time the beef industry was able to start getting better prices in Asian markets in particular by offering traceability, by allowing the people who were selling to say exactly which farm the meat their customers were buying had come from. Bulk handling and only being able to work through a single exporter had prevented the wheat industry from being able to access this. Yet it is now true that there are wheat growers in Western Australia who have worked on deals where restaurants using noodle wheat in Japan are able to advertise exactly where their wheat is coming from. There is a wheat grower in New South Wales who has webcams that are live in South Korea where people are able to see the product that they wish to purchase being grown. It is way of engaging directly with those Asian markets in a way that only has benefit for those innovative growers. We have a situation where that sort of business innovation is being denied to those growers to go to the final stage of a fully deregulated market by members of the Liberal Party.

There were two great speeches of Liberal Party principles given when this issue was dealt with last night. One of the speeches of Liberal Party principles was given by a member of this House who is no longer a member of the Liberal Party, yet we had a better assessment of Liberal Party free-market principles from the member for Fisher than the changes in policy that we heard from those holding the line of how the Liberal Party has changed under this leader of the opposition. Does anybody actually believe that the Liberal Party of John Howard would have voted against deregulation?

John Howard stood at this dispatch box proclaiming a need for Murray-Darling reform. We still do not know if the party is going to support the Murray-Darling plan notwithstanding that it was foreshadowed in legislation moved by the water minister, who sits as a member of their front bench. We have a party now that is not willing to stand up for something as radical as what you might call free enterprise. You realise very quickly that the Liberal Party, which was able to maintain a true principle of free market under John Howard, under Brendan Nelson, and under the member for Wentworth, has become a very different Liberal Party under this Leader of the Opposition. Every grower that is being told that this opposition wants to be able to tell them who they are allowed to sell to and who they are not knows how much it has changed. (Time expired)