Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Territories) Share this | Hansard source

I just cannot start this speech without responding to the member for Wills and his extraordinary narrative there, particularly his point that the coalition are basically whipping up the panic buying. I take absolute exception to that. It is complete rubbish. What we have is farmers who need 20,000 litres of fuel in order to spray their hectares and 30,000 litres of fuel to seed their crops. They need fuel and they need urea. These are facts that the minister did not refer to. This is not about the coalition whipping up panic buying. People need fuel to live their lives.

'Nobody held back, nobody left behind'—that's what the Prime Minister has said over and over again. Do you know what? If it was true and that was actually happening, we would be very supportive, but the fact of the matter is that that is not what is happening. People in regional centres in particular are being left behind every day, and because I have the Minister for Health and Ageing sitting right here I have to begin with health. We still have workforce shortages in regional areas. We have urgent care clinics—the member for Lyne is constantly talking about Taree. What about Taree? We still don't have an answer from the minister about that. We have people who cannot get the care they need and people who cannot get the aged care they need. Now we're in a fuel crisis, and we heard today in question time from the Minister for Aged Care and Seniors: 'Look, we've kind of got a plan to get workers out to see people who need home-care packages. We just haven't really got any boots on the ground yet. We haven't got any actual solutions.' People are being left behind every day. We've got childcare deserts, we've got terrible roads and we've got shire councils struggling to stay afloat—in fact, they're not staying afloat. It is a cost-of-living crisis that is worse out in the regions. There are mobile black spots and grey spots. Honestly, I could go through almost every portfolio represented by the government. In every one of them, we are being let down in the regions, but I particularly want to focus on the EU trade deal.

Yesterday the government was spruiking the EU trade deal as being the best thing since sliced bread. Newsflash: it's not. It's absolutely not, and, as the shadow minister for agriculture mentioned earlier, people out in the regions know it. The primary producers know it. The sector is standing up—every member of the ag sector, whether it's the NFF, whether it's the VFF, whether it's the cattle people. I have a farmer in Mallee, Andrew Weidemann, who has said this:

… exactly what I thought might happen. It's trading away—

that's the government—

our right to farm and we, as grain growers, livestock producers will just be taxed more to meet the green economy.

Now, why would that be so? It's because this EU trade agreement is actually connected to the Paris Agreement, and it's connected to the EU standards, which, frankly, don't work in Australia, and to the renewable rollout in Australia, which is harming our farmers already. In regional Australia, we cop the brunt of these great ideological dreams that Labor have thought up and the EU are part of, and now they're going to be trading away farmers' opportunity to farm. Brett Hosking, Mallee farmer and VFF president, said:

At a time when farmers are getting smashed by devastating water buybacks and skyrocketing fuel and fertiliser costs, we've been hung out to dry for the sake of getting the deal done.

That says everything about this EU trade deal. Garry Edwards from Cattle Australia said:

The deal that has been struck is simply appalling for agriculture and regional Australia and delivers nothing to address the trade imbalance to the EU.

When have you heard a peak body call a deal 'appalling'? It's that bad.

Farmers are smart. Farmers are very smart. They have got a handle on trade. They have got a handle on their own businesses. They know what this fuel crisis and this trade deal—and every other idea that comes out of Labor—is actually doing to their industries.

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