Mary Aldred (Monash, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm proud to represent a region that grows, makes and manufactures things the rest of our country rely on. From protein to pellets, our products—and they are world-leading products made by world-leading people—are sought after from the Middle East to South-East Asia. I'm proud that our region produces 23 per cent of Australia's milk output. I'm proud that our region produces about 26 per cent of Victoria's beef production. These are very high-quality products. I also believe that opening access to international markets is good for my region because it gives it access to countries around the world.

We just can't eat everything we produce in my region. We export about two-thirds of what we produce in this country, and that's a good thing. I belong to a coalition that have a proud record of winning free trade agreements, from India to Japan, Korea, China and the United States. I commend Prime Ministers Howard, Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison.

In fact, before entering this place, I was in New Zealand and I listened to a speech by the then opposition leader and now prime minister of New Zealand, Christopher Luxon. He said that, through COVID, what Australia did so well was go around the world—and that was under a coalition government—and sign up to free trade agreements. He said to the audience I was in that, if he were elected to government, that is something he would very much want to do on behalf of New Zealand, and I note that he's going ahead and doing that very, very well.

But I have a few issues with this free trade agreement. I was at Farm World on the weekend, which is one of Australia's best agricultural field days, and I said to my dairy farmers, 'What do you think of this free trade agreement?' They said: 'Mary, it's no good for us. Mary, we've been sold a pup.' It is no good for dairy farmers in Monash. It's no good for dairy farmers in the Gippsland region, and I dare say it's no good for dairy farmers across Australia. For regions like ours, dairy is the backbone of industry and it really matters. It's not just an industry, though; it's jobs, it's families, it's small businesses—it is an ecosystem that's interconnected, and they are all relying on our dairy farmers to do their very best.

This free trade deal is a bad deal dressed up as progress. I've got a number of issues with it. A lot of dairy farmers will say to me, 'We are not price-makers; we are price-takers on the international market,' and this deal puts them at a significant disadvantage. The government are calling this a win for beef, but for Monash farmers it doesn't stack up. The 35,000-tonne beef quota falls well short of expectations and is less than what other countries have secured. I've got to ask: Why has the Prime Minister allowed that to happen? Why has he put dairy and beef farmers at a disadvantage to other farmers around the world who seem to have gotten a far better deal?

This is a big issue for my electorate. It's a big issue for South Gippsland, where there are seven dairy cows to every one resident, so you can see just how much of a significant issue this is. But I did speak to my dairy farmers at Farm World on the weekend, and they are dealing with rising fuel costs, with fertiliser pressures and with increasing imports that are squeezing margins that were already compressed. Their concerns go to farm profitability, processors and regional jobs. On fertiliser, I've got to say that we had the opportunity to have a coal-to-fertiliser project in the Latrobe Valley, but what has taken six years to get up in Victoria, under the Victorian state Labor government, took six months in New Zealand. That project proponent said: 'You know what? Victoria and Australia are just too hard to do business with, so we'll go somewhere else that will welcome us with open arms and that wants to welcome jobs and investment and sovereign capability.' They've just done that in New Zealand.

When we're looking at free trade, sovereign capability or jobs and investment in Australia, it is not a good deal that the government have cut here with the EU, and on a day-to-day basis they are not doing a good deal in the interests of dairy farmers, beef producers and small businesses right across our economy. Australians deserve better.

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