FEDERAL Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce said he wanted to avoid “wild oscillations” in agricultural policy and generate more long-term consistency through bipartisanship between the key political players.
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He said the best way to test that bipartisan theory was to measure the alternative government’s policy but potentially 12 months out from the next federal election, “we haven’t seen anything yet”.
Mr Joyce said the political process had arrived at a point now where Australian voters, and those in the agricultural sector, were entitled to know where the ALP stood on agriculture and what the Shadow Minister Joel Fitzgibbon had to offer.
“They know what our plan is,” he said.
“They’ve seen it in the Agricultural White Paper, they’ve seen it in the three FTAs; they’ve seen it in work from the department in making sure we execute seven new live animal export destinations including the biggest one to China; and they’ve seen it in the fact we’ll stand by our record of record high prices for sheep and cattle.
“All this is bringing a substantial return back to farmers back through the farm-gate.
“They know what our plan is and they’ve seen the action of our plan and now I believe they have every right to know what Labor’s plan is.”
Mr Joyce said his political opponent had to declare what aspects of the Agricultural White Paper Labor would be supported and extended or removed, if they came into office.
Those measures include country of origin labelling, biosecurity funding, the $500 water infrastructure fun and the 100 per cent tax write-offs for farmers through fencing, fodder storage, and water reticulation.
“Remember these initiatives have been very hard fought for and were driven by farmers throughout Australia who made a thousand responses to the White Paper and Green Paper processes,” he said.
“These people have every right to know, if Labor is going to decide to get rid of these initiatives and if so, why are they doing that.
“We’ve got to see a process through (Mr Fitzgibbon), and confirmed through his shadow treasury spokesman, of what he’s going to do and how he’s going to pay for it, otherwise we can only assume the next Labor Agriculture Minister will be like the last ones we’ve had, and they were very dark times for Australian agriculture.”
