Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party, Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the senator for his question. The Nationals have stood up for our farming families and communities for 100 years and we unashamedly want to see a prosperous and sustainable dairy industry going forward. That means opening up markets, fighting on competition policies and decreasing regulation for our farmers.

At the election, there were two plans for the dairy industry put forward. One was the Labor Party's position to reregulate the dairy industry. The other was a suite of initiatives that went to the heart of the issues, which, for one, were going to put in a mandatory code of conduct to regulate the relationships between processors and farmers to make sure farmers get a fair deal after they'd been suffering from egregious behaviour from processors for many years and to make sure we put downward pressure on energy prices for our farmers, because it is one of the high input costs. So we have—