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

At its core, that is all this debate is about. Those opposite are actually wanting to go back to a period where farmers are not allowed to choose who they sell their own wheat to. What has happened to the economic policies of those opposite if we are in a situation now where the simplicity of being able to sell your own product to whoever you want to is something they will stand in the way of? Imagine if instead the argument was a farmer saying, 'I want to treat my workers however I want to.' They would be clambering over themselves to say, 'It's your business; do what you want.' They will provide a level of respect to wheat that they would never dare apply to workers, and that, at its heart, goes to what has happened here. Once again, when there is a divide between the economic principles that the Liberal Party used to always stand for and the demands that are put down by Barnaby Joyce and those from the National Party, those opposite, on every economic principle, will let the Nationals run the show, even at the expense of farmers being allowed to do what they want with their own wheat.

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