Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Hansard source

I will tell the member for Riverina how I can stand here and say that. The former Labor government spent six years developing these agreements. They do not appear overnight.

Mr Marles interjecting—

I see the member for Corio nodding. He was the last minister to be working on them. Those opposite know that we were so close to securing those deals. Maybe another month or two might have got the set. Of course, it was not so difficult for those opposite, because they were prepared to sign at any cost. They just wanted to take the trophy. That is what it was all about for them, and that is why, sadly, we are having a debate about the China free trade agreement, a wonderful opportunity for Australian agriculture. There is only one group of people putting any of that at risk: those who sit opposite, who are not prepared to concede that there are deficiencies that can easily be fixed with the stroke of a pen without in any way offending the agreement which has been reached with our friends in China. It is about time they got out of the way and allowed those benefits to flow to Australian agriculture.

I close by accepting the invitation of the member for Riverina and simply ending where I began. That is to say that in our determination to maintain the longstanding, bipartisan approach to the development of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan we will be supporting this bill, and certainly from my perspective we also do so in the interests of those basin communities which have been seeking such change.

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