Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans’ Affairs) | Hansard source

Australia is home to world-class farmers, and one of the reasons our 85,000 farmers are world class is that they know how to manage risk. They can manage the risk of seasonal conditions. They can manage the risk of commodity prices. More recently, they've had to manage the risk around fuel and fertiliser prices, related to the war in Iran. But how is an Australian farming family meant to manage the risk of a prime minister who deliberately misleads them prior to the election and does something completely different only 12 months later? How is a farming family meant to manage the risk of having a prime minister promising no changes to capital gains tax, no changes to trust arrangements and no changes to negative gearing and then, 12 months later, changing his mind? How are farming families meant to manage that risk?

This is precisely the wrong time for the government to be making it harder for our farming families. Just yesterday ABARES released a forecast that indicates quite a concerning picture for Australian agriculture. Production is forecast to decline. Export earnings are forecast to decline. Winter crop production is forecast to fall significantly from recent highs. Most concerningly, the average broadacre farm business profits are forecast to fall dramatically in 2026-27. These are tough times for a lot of our farming families, and this prime minister has just made it tougher. At precisely the moment when farm profitability is falling and under pressure, there is little—if not nothing—in this budget that directly addresses declining farm incomes. If the government's own forecasters are warning about tougher conditions ahead, you'd expect a positive budget response. Instead, like always, the answer from the Labor Party is more punitive tax measures.

The complex issue that we need to deal with here—

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