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

To say that there had been a cut of $1 billion to the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry was, I think, an extraordinary and dishonest thing to claim. There is no way in the world that anyone looking at it fairly could claim that there was a $1 billion cut. There were cuts and, at every point, I have been completely upfront about what those cuts were. Land and Water Australia was a real cut. It will be $13 million in the long term, and about half of that is because of the wind-up operations that we are currently involved with. There is a further cut of $3 million to the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation. That is a real cut. There is also a $3.4 million cut to the work of my own department. Those are real cuts and that does happen at a time when there is a collapse in government revenue across the forward estimates in the way that we have seen. But for those opposite to add that up and to claim that we are talking about a $1 billion cut is completely dishonest.

If, in a moment, the shadow minister wants to stand up and explain why $13 million plus $3 million plus $3.4 million equals $1 billion, he is welcome to do so. He is also welcome to say where the opposition would add $1 billion to the deficit for new spending programs that it would like to put in place. One of the major cuts that he refers to, when you get into the billion dollar figure—(Time expired)

See this speech in context