Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Wakefield for the question and for his strong engagement with the farmers in his electorate. The budget, as it has been described, is about nation building for recovery. It is about supporting jobs today by building the infrastructure Australia needs for the future. It is also about tough savings to deliver the lowest net debt of all major advanced economies. And there are savings within the department of agriculture; there is no doubt about that, and the government has been upfront about that.

I was interested to hear among the interjections that came from the member for Murray that she asked why we got rid of the dairy money that was there, when the only way of keeping that was to continue to charge consumers 11c a litre every time they wanted milk. If it is the position of the opposition that that should be brought back in, that 11c a litre should continue on milk, then perhaps we will hear that in the speech tonight. It clearly has support from one of the rural members of the Liberal Party.

But what was more extraordinary was the claim from the National Party that there had been a $1 billion cut—a $1 billion cut—to agriculture, fisheries and forestry. Now, there have been cuts, and those cuts are real: $13 million from Land and Water Australia, a $3 million reduction in the rural issues program from the Rural Industries RDC and a $3.4 million reduction in funding for DAFF. But only the National Party could say $13 million plus $3 million plus $3.4 million equals $1 billion! National Party mathematics have created this extraordinary situation where they can get those figures and then run around regional radio across the country claiming that there have been $1 billion in cuts. It is not surprising they have come up with their own form of mathematics; they are only used to counting to nine in this room! We then also had the shadow minister for agriculture describing it as—

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