Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Acting Prime Minister. Yesterday, when speaking about the Acting Prime Minister's plan to dismantle the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, Senator Xenophon said, 'Barnaby was free-raging the other day. It does not reflect whole-of-government policy.' Is the Acting Prime Minister aware who in the government communicated this message to Senator Xenophon and was the senator correct? Was it fair to describe the Acting Prime Minister as free-ranging?

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

I thank the honourable member for Maribyrnong for his question. Obviously, it has an agricultural slant with his reference to free-ranging. But I would just like to quote to him the legislation as actually written by your member for Watson. Have a drink of water and have a listen to this: 'The efficiency contributions'—that is what the 450 gigalitres is about—'to the proposed adjustments have to achieve lesson'—listen!—'neutral or improved socioeconomic outcomes.' Now, the person who wrote that is just sitting behind you; he is the member for Watson. So what we are actually talking about is what is in the plan. It is actually the reality of the plan.

What we are trying to do is work our way through this maze that has been set by you. And in working our way through this maze to finalise the plan, we have to have negotiations, civil negotiations. We had a crack at these civil negotiations and we went down and met a rather interesting chap, Mr Hunter. He had a few things to say—most of them old Saxon terms. We tried to actually continue on the discussion, but after he had filled the room with blue and got stuck into one of your colleagues, he then slammed the door—he had a couple of goes at slamming the door because he did not quite get it the first time—and then proceeded out into a public restaurant where he continued his profanities until we made it to the door and started eating an ice cream. If that is what we call Labor Party negotiation, the Labor Party dealing with the problem, then I think somebody had something to answer for.

And might I remind you, the member for Maribyrnong, you have made statements about what you believe is appropriate and inappropriate, but you have been remarkably silent since this has been occupying every paper in the nation. Remarkably silent—we have not heard boo from you about what your views are on how a senior minister would treat other people's staff and just people of the public in general. Why on earth are you not saying something about this? Or is it the case that the member for Maribyrnong, the Leader of the Opposition, is one thing on one day, when he is in front of—I do not know—Fran Kelly, and something entirely different when it is one of his colleagues. So we will continue to work as hard as we can. We have invested billions upon billions of dollars in making sure that we finalise the plan. We are working towards it. We are making sure that we do everything we can to maintain the social and economic balance, in equivalence with the environment, so that we can actually provide the outcome.

And we would appreciate it if—my humble request is that—when we go to South Australia, to actually talk to the Labor Party minister, he stays for more than, like, 10 minutes in the meeting before he fills the room with profanity and charges down the street to eat an ice cream. (Time expired)