Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Hansard source

What a pleasure, as always, to follow Senator Sterle from the capital city of Perth in Western Australia, particularly on a motion dealing with the Labor government's abject failure to support Australia's agriculture, fisheries and forestry industries. I will start by demonstrating why the Labor Party has absolutely no interest in agriculture or fisheries and little interest in forestry. It comes down to simple mathematics. The number of rural seats held by the Labor Party in this parliament you could count on one hand—and I will count them shortly. Every other rural seat in Australia is represented by either the Liberal Party or the National Party—and why? It is because they do support our primary industries—our agriculture, our fisheries and our forestry industries. The electors of rural and regional Australia—the electorates that provide the food and fibre for our country and for export—decide themselves that the people they want to represent them in this parliament are not members of the Labor Party; they are members of the Liberal and National parties. That is because they understand that the Liberal and National parties have a genuine interest, commitment and understanding for agriculture, fisheries and forestry, whilst the Labor Party has little interest whatsoever.

I said I could count on one hand the number of seats in rural and regional Australia held by the Labor Party. They are Capricornia and Blair in my state of Queensland and Eden-Monaro, Richmond and Page in Senator Williams's state of New South Wales.

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I will come to Tasmania. There are five seats in Tasmania. I have a special interest in Tasmania, which I will elaborate on very shortly. On the five mainland states the seats are Capricornia and Blair in Queensland and Eden-Monaro, Richmond and Page in New South Wales. As opposed to that, there would be 30 or 40 other rural seats in Australia—all represented well by Liberal and National party members.

Let us have a look at Capricornia, held by the Labor Party—mainly on the strength of what used to be a supportive railway vote in Rockhampton. Even the railway men detest the Labor Party now, after the previous Labor government sold Queensland's railways after promising not to do so. Capricornia is called the beef capital of Australia—Rockhampton; the beef capital of Australia—and is represented by a member in this parliament who destroyed the beef cattle industry in Northern Australia by supporting the quite outrageously ridiculous decision of the agriculture minister, Senator Ludwig, to ban live cattle exports to Indonesia. In so doing, they put pressure on all of the northern beef industry and, by attrition, the southern parts of Australia, thus putting pressure on every element of the beef industry. What a great representative the member for Capricornia is for agricultural Australia!

The member for Blair—the temporary member for Blair, I might say—represents an agricultural area. But Labor, by supporting things like the carbon tax, by removing diesel fuel rebates, have added to the costs for every farmer in his electorate. But does he stick up for his farmers? No, he toes the Labor Party line and votes against the farmers. It is a similar situation in Eden-Monaro.

The member for Richmond has an electorate which has big fishing, beef and sugar industries. And what have the Labor Party done to those three industries? As I have already mentioned, they have destroyed the beef industry; they are about to destroy what is left of Australia's fishing industry; and our sugar industry will continue to struggle under a Labor administration. I will come back to that. In Page, the member actually led the charge to destroy live cattle exports from Australia and in so doing destroyed the live cattle industry.

Then there are the five seats in Tasmania that are currently, regrettably, held by Labor members, or at least until the next election—