Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Hansard source

on all transport costs. It is amazing how they get themselves completely in a flux about an excise of less than a cent but they still stand behind a tax of 6.85c a litre on all transport so that anybody transporting tomatoes out of the Mallee, transporting grapes, transporting milk, transporting beef has to pay a transport tax. Who pays the transport tax? It is the gentleman pushing the shopping trolley.

The perverseness does not stop there. If we take a bullock from the seat of Mallee and we take it to an abattoir and on processing that bullock, on breaking it down, we take the carbon emissions of that abattoir over 25,000 tonnes then that bullock is responsible for the crystallisation of a tax of 25,000 tonnes by $25.40, $635,000 for the processing of that bullock. Who pays that? It goes all the way through the cold store, all the way through the butcher's shop and lands on the family pushing the shopping trolley. Why are they paying this tax? They are paying this tax because of the Green-Labor Party solidarity, but they do not respect the mandate of the Australian people, they do not respect the views of the Australian public. The only thing they respect is the Green-Labor alliance.

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