Peter McGauran (Gippsland, National Party, Deputy Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Braddon for his question and acknowledge his championing of all things agriculture. I have visited his electorate. I know how highly regarded he is by primary producers. He is an indefatigable champion on their part. The recent budget provided $2.4 billion in new funding for Australian agriculture. This funding built on the government’s strong record of policies and programs that help our farmers and rural industries manage the many complex issues they confront on a daily basis. In addition to providing funding for many successful quarantine, natural resource and food industry programs already in place, an additional $50 million was provided for the first ever Environmental Stewardship Program, which will establish contracts of up to 15 years with farmers and other landholders to preserve and restore high-value environmental assets.

The member for Braddon asked whether I was aware of alternative policies. As members of the government and indeed the farming community well know, the Labor Party is bereft of ideas, let alone policies different from the government’s when it comes to agriculture. You have to dig very deep to even find any reference, passing as it might be, to primary production. But I did find an interesting doorstop transcript on the ALP website. I went looking for it; it does not come out and hit you between the eyes. It was a doorstop interview, dated 15 May 2007, by the shadow minister, whose name I will reveal for the first time in this place and, I suspect, in rural Australia—Senator Kerry O’Brien. I read the transcript—

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