Slade Brockman (WA, Deputy-President) Share this | Hansard source

Just before I start speaking on what I'm planning to speak on tonight, I would just point out that, in Collie, at the last federal election, there were swings of up to 20 per cent to my good friend the MP Rick Wilson, the member for O'Connor, in various Collie booths. And, at the state election, there was a uniform swing of 20 per cent to the Liberal Party. So that's something to bear in mind when you talk about the future of Collie.

But I stand here tonight to speak about the EU free trade agreement, and what a misnamed thing—a failure of negotiation—we have seen in the EU free trade agreement. You only have to glance for 30 seconds at the voices from the farming industry to see what poor negotiators Senator Farrell—Minister Farrell—and this government have been in dealing with the EU. They wanted a headline, not a free trade agreement.

So what have we seen? The Red Meat Market Access Taskforce chair described this as an 'outrageous discrepancy', in terms of the quota for the meat sector, profoundly let down by this outcome. 'To land a deal so far below what other suppliers have secured is genuinely bewildering,' he said. The Australian Meat Industry Council CEO said:

An FTA cannot be in the national interest if it does not correct the disproportionately low quota volumes currently applied to Australian beef, sheepmeat and goatmeat entering the EU.

The National Farmers Federation—what did they have to say? They said:

What the Australian government has accepted today appears to offer no material change for key agricultural commodities as what the government rightly rejected in October 2023.

And that's what I want to go through here tonight. In particular, I want to talk about the Australian beef and sheep- and goatmeat quotas.

Minister Farrell walked away from a deal and said it was completely unacceptable when, in 2023, what was on the table was 30,000 tonnes of beef and 25,000 tonnes of sheep- and goatmeat. In 2026—just three short years after 30,000 tonnes had been unacceptable—35,000 tonnes apparently was the greatest deal ever! Now, let's see what that increase of 5,000 tonnes actually means in the European market. For beef, it means 0.0006 of the European market. I'll say that again: 0.0006. It's extraordinary that the government is trying to claim this as a win. In terms of sheep- and goatmeat, 25,000 tonnes was completely unacceptable three years ago; 31,000 tonnes is a victory today! That's an extra 6,000 tonnes—0.006 per cent of the European market.

This has been a complete failure of negotiations and a complete betrayal of our agricultural exporters. It shows this government for what it is: a government that does not understand agriculture, that does not care about agriculture, that cannot negotiate on behalf of agriculture, and that, in fact, is willing to leave agriculture in the dirt. It is a government that has completely failed agricultural producers, across so many sectors, whilst not even getting adequate protection for our producers here who wish to export. There's no protection for producers who wish to use the term 'feta'. There's questionable protection for the use of 'prosecco' as it applies to the grape variety, not the product. Disgraceful!