Senator McKENZIE (Victoria—Minister for Agriculture and Leader of the Nationals in the Senate) (14:19): 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— The PRESIDENT: Order! Senator Ayres, on a point of order? Senator Ayres: On relevance. The question was very specific: why has the minister watered down the draft code released by the former agriculture minister, David Littleproud? I would ask you to draw her to that question. The PRESIDENT: The minister is allowed to be directly relevant to the preamble as well. At this point, I do consider the minister to be directly relevant. The minister doesn't have to accept the premise of a question. I'm listening carefully. I call Senator McKenzie to continue. Senator McKENZIE: I absolutely categorically reject the suggestion that there is a watering down of the treatment of processors and the relationship between farmers and processors with the code. I'm happy to go through, for the senator, the process our government has undertaken since the ACCC report recommended that we have a mandatory dairy code. In April 2018, on the back of Murray Goulburn and Fonterra clawbacks and step-downs, the ACCC released a recommendation that we implement a mandatory dairy code, which we agreed to do. In October 2018, we announced the first round of consultation with industry, and this was the very first opportunity for a dairy industry that is quite fractured to come together around what measures they could agree on that could be part of a mandatory code. In January 2019, a set of draft clauses for the code was released, and a second round of consultation was commenced. The PRESIDENT: Senator Ayres, a supplementary question?