Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Hansard source

We have just had 10 minutes from the CV of the modern National Party. We can actually see why there are problems with the National Party. 'We've got bankers, we've got journalists, we've got footballers and we've got police officers in the National Party. But we've got no farmers.' They're all noble professions, but there are no longer farmers in the National Party. And you can see why they are deserting the dairy farmers of Australia. It's a disgrace.

We've just had a banker standing up there talking for 10 minutes about the Labor Party. Just before I got up to speak today, I spoke to Joe Paronella, the mayor of the Tablelands Regional Council in the member for Kennedy's electorate—I will catch up with Joe at Christmas; all my in-laws live up in the tablelands—to get some insight into what's going on. They've actually had rain and they've got fodder. But fodder prices have gone up. He was saying the costs have gone up significantly, from $350 a bale up to $500 a bale. They have had a bit of rain, but they will still see 43 dairy farmers in that region that cannot produce milk at a profit because, as the member for Hunter has outlined, of some of the market forces.

We need a National Party, the fair dinkum National Party of my childhood, that believes in the bush, that actually has people who are focused on agricultural production. As we see in this letter from Joe Paronella, the mayor of the Tablelands Regional Council, these farmers are doing it incredibly tough. We've seen a Queensland senator say today that we're losing a dairy farmer a week from the industry in Queensland. We're down 311, and it has to stop today. And what's the suggestion from the Minister for Water Resources, Drought, Rural Finance, Natural Disaster and Emergency Management? Cheap capital. Well, capital is the cheapest it's been for 5,000 years, since the Sumerians first hung up a shingle. That's their solution. They're not prepared to actually step in. They're happy to spend $300 million on a stunt in Christmas Island to keep some poor Biloela family in prison; they're happy to throw money anywhere except at farmers. What happened to the National Party? Who put the muzzle on the mouth of the National Party? What has happened to the party of Black Jack? What has happened to that National Party of my childhood?

I know there has been rationalisation in the dairy industry; it started when I was a boy. When I grew up in St George, there were four dairy farms. That changed with refrigeration, and now there are no dairy farms in St George. We have a situation in the tablelands. Apart from Gallo, which has a chocolate business, the mayor says the dairy farms up there will be flat out lasting six or 12 months. They're down here at the moment trying to talk to the government, trying to make sure they can get as much support as possible.

I would say to those opposite: if we get to the stage where we can no longer access fresh drinking milk in Australia, that would be reprehensible. We have seen this on the Liberal Party's watch and, more importantly, on the National Party's watch. We have seen a merger in Queensland where the Liberals and Nationals have come together, and what it has created is a coalescence of Liberal Party thinking rather than National Party thinking—that National Party of my youth. I'm happy to finish early so that the member for Kennedy can have some input into this debate, and I'm sure he'll have plenty to say as well.

Mr Katter interjecting—

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