Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for his question. I note that we have had great success in agriculture. It's been a great honour. I will soon have been the minister for four years, so it's a great honour. And we've seen the results this year, with agriculture growing by 22.6 per cent in the last year. In fact, agriculture was the fastest-growing sector in the GDP figures. That goes to show you what a difference a good government makes. If you want to see that in a more anecdotal form, you can see it in such things at table grapes, which grew by 370 per cent from 2015 to 2016. Or you can see it in chickpeas to India, which grew by 90 per cent from 2016 to 2017. Or you could see it in the increase in live cattle volumes—something the Labor Party shut down. They're good at shutting down things—shut down coal-fired power, shut down the live cattle trade. To Indonesia, since 2013, live cattle volumes have grown by 94 per cent; to Vietnam, since 2013, by 1,673 per cent; and to China, since 2013, by 106 per cent.

But it's not just in those areas where we've seen a change in agriculture. We've seen $724 million lent out in concessional loans and 4,000 km of dog fences built to bring sheep back into the western districts. We have put legislation together to build a $4 billion Regional Investment Corporation in Orange. In the last round of applications for APVMA in Armidale there were 450 applicants. We're rolling out country-of-origin labelling, so people in this nation know where their food comes from and the proportions from each country of destination their food comes from and they can back in Australian workers. The wine equalisation tax reforms and the wine industry reforms will see our wine industry go from $2.3 billion to $3.5 billion by 2020. We have set out a process of making sure we deal with invasive species, such as parthenium, prickly acacia and blackberries. In Tasmania we're seeing water infrastructure rolled out. There is the Macalister Irrigation District in Victoria, the Loddon-Wimmera pipeline and the Northern Adelaide Irrigation Scheme, using recycled water.

There is one threat, of course, and that's power prices. The people of Australia know that they cannot trust the shifty member for Maribyrnong. They couldn't trust him with the figures yesterday; they can't trust him today. The blue-collar workers can't trust the member for Maribyrnong. Mr Rudd could not trust the member for Maribyrnong. Ms Gillard could not trust the member for Maribyrnong. Labor can't trust the member for Maribyrnong. We can't trust the member for Maribyrnong. The Australian people can no longer trust the member for Maribyrnong.

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