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

Thank you, Member for Whitlam. I've never seen a minister dig in like this minister. I've never seen a bloke dig in like this bloke, at the expense of his government. At some point, the friends come up and say: 'We love you, mate, but, you're just too of much a drain on this government. This is too big of a distraction. It's time to go. We're sorry, but it's time to go. You can't keep doing this to your government.' But not this bloke: he's going to dig in, and he doesn't care how much he destroys the joint. The Deputy Prime Minister's interests will come first—the ego writ large, unfailing in his confidence in his capacity to do the job for the Australian people. I've seen no sign of that.

In the four years he's been agriculture minister, I can't name more than one thing he's done for the sector. We hear lots of talk, 'Money on the table, beef prices are up'—as if he somehow had anything to do with that. He's going to build a dam here, a dam here and a dam everywhere. He'll never build a dam; I'll bet my house on it. Labor in government built water infrastructure projects, the Tasmanian Midlands project being the finest example, but in four years, the now agriculture minister has built no dam. He doesn't even have a dam plan; he doesn't have anything. He has money on the table he knows will never be picked up, because he knows the other parties, including the states, don't have the capacity to match the funds, but he rolls on with the rhetoric: 'Beef prices are up and we're going to build a dam, and we'd have it built by now if the Queensland government had come into line.' Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish!

The fact that the Senate is poised to reject this is a sign that people are waking up to that fact. As I said in the House the other day, this bloke is all hat and no cowboy. He doesn't have any vision for agriculture. He doesn't have any strategic plan. He has no view about sustainable profitability, no view about the efficient allocation of our natural resources, no plan to build up the value curve in the previous markets—nothing at all. It's all spin to his base. He's spending all of his time worried about what One Nation's going to say next.

I say to all those out there working so hard in Australia's agriculture sector and in agribusiness: you are right to start waking up. This guy doesn't have your interests at heart. He thinks about one thing and one thing only, and that's himself, his political interests and the prospects of what I now call his 'dual National Party'. The sooner he pulls the pin and does the right thing, the better for all concerned, including those in the agriculture sector.

Debate interrupted.

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