Mr LITTLEPROUD (Maranoa—Leader of the Nationals) (15:24): Today, we saw out the front of the Australian parliament farmers forced to travel from Western Australia, from right across this country, to protest against the government, something they have not done for 40 years. Such is the siege that they have been under since the Albanese government was elected 2½ years ago. They feel as though their livelihoods and their future have been torn up because of the ideology of some that want to save the world but forget about their important place in producing the food and fibre of this country—those Western Australian farmers that have come across the Nullarbor, that have had their livelihoods taken away, the live sheep export industry, without an explanation. If this government has the courage of its conviction and says that it wants to shut this down because it's an inhumane industry, then go to Katanning and face these people. Look them in the eye and explain the science. Let me explain the science for them. I was the agriculture minister when there was a mistake. The Awassi boat and the horrific incident there was fixed, and we fixed it with reform. We are the only country in the world that measures our boats in success from animal welfare standards and not through mortality. We actually measure, to the millimetre, the length of wool on each sheep before we put them on a boat and, to the kilogram, the weight of those sheep. We independently score each boat for the air flow that goes through that boat to be able to give them the carrying capacity that they can have. We've also put independent observers that actually count the pants per minute of a sheep on those boats. Once they hit a certain number, then there are measures taken to ensure that that heat stress is taken away. That is science. That is leading the world. Instead, what the Albanese government has done is cut and run. And what that will do is see the perverse and horrific death of millions of sheep from other parts of the world, from those parts of the world that will take this market up—from Sudan, Ethiopia and South Africa. Let me tell you: they don't work on animal welfare. They don't work even on mortality numbers, in measuring any success of a shipment. They simply put as many sheep as they possibly can on a boat, and they get paid for what's left over. Those that want to shut Australia out of this industry are morally bankrupt. Those that sit there and say Australia cannot do this and Western Australians can't do this are morally bankrupt. We will see horrific animal welfare outcomes. We will see 3,000 livelihoods in Western Australia torn up all because of ideology, all because animal activists did a deal with the Albanese government to get their preferences in the last federal election. Where is the courage of their conviction to stand up and face these people and explain that science? They won't, because they can't. For the Prime Minister to quote numbers in here that the industry is in decline—it is actually in incline. For those years that the Prime Minister talked about, where there was a steep decline, what he might want to understand is that there was this little thing called the drought. On the eastern seaboard, we de-stocked. We had nothing left because we didn't have the water and we didn't have the feed. If it weren't for Western Australian sheep producers, we wouldn't have got the two million sheep that were brought across when it started raining. They got east coast farmers up off their knees and gave them a livelihood. That's why they weren't put on a boat—because they were sent across the Nullarbor to save us. Western Australia saved the east coast straight after the drought. But to sit there and arbitrarily say, 'Bad luck, it's all over,' without even the courage to turn up to Katanning, to have meetings at the back of Parliament House here—he didn't even have the courage to walk out here and explain the science. If you want to lead this country and you're going to take away someone's livelihood and you're going to change their lives, then have the courage to stand up there, look them in the eye and explain the science. But that's before you even get to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, a plan that these people put in place. The Labor Party put this plan in place in 2012. That plan they have now walked away from. And what they are saying to every Australian is that they are going to take an extra 450 gigalitres off farmers and they're going to shove it down a river where they can't even physically get it down—taking away livelihoods, taking away your food security and driving up your food prices. This is the insanity of a plan that they implemented. The member for Riverina, who's sitting here next to me, proudly stood against that and voted against that, and I acknowledge him for that. But we, when we were in government, made sure that we implemented a plan that didn't go towards buybacks. They are a brutal instrument on the communities that are left behind, because the farmer takes the money and runs to the coast. It's the machinery dealer. It's the irrigation shop. It's the local CRT. It's the local hairdresser. They're the ones that are left behind with nothing. They're the ones who are left to pick up the pieces, without the jobs and without the income. They're the ones that are being destroyed by a change in the government's very own plan to take another 450 gigalitres in buybacks. Buybacks will destroy regional Australia, but they're also going to destroy Australia's food security and push up your food prices. We stand committed to making sure that the plan that is put through here is common sense. We'll return water to the environment through infrastructure—with the smarts—backing a country with technology and science. We'll use infrastructure to give it back to the environment, not take it out of communities. That's common sense and that's what we intend to do. We're going to bring back the ag visa that was ripped away by those opposite, the ag visa that the Vietnam government had signed up to. Subsequently, we learnt in Senate estimates that Senator Wong, the foreign minister— Mr Gosling interjecting— The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Claydon ): Member for Solomon— Mr LITTLEPROUD: I think he's gone. The DEPUTY SPEAKER: He'll be called back in to withdraw that. Mr LITTLEPROUD: Thank you, Deputy Speaker. The DEPUTY SPEAKER: That was highly disorderly. You have the call, Leader of the Nationals. Mr LITTLEPROUD: Senator Wong subsequently had requests from other ASEAN countries to take up the ag visa, and this government has turned its back on them. I actually went to their job summit, to be constructive and to say what regional Australia's issues were. I told them we needed workers out there. The NFF and COSBOA said we needed another 172,000 workers to get food from the paddock to Australians' plates—and all we got was the Pacific scheme, at best 42,000 people. All they did was change the Pacific scheme. That was unworkable. When you take away the ag visa farmers have nothing. What they do is make investment decisions. You don't plan a crop or spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to plan a crop if you can't pick it. That's economics. So what we have seen is farmers lose their confidence in investing, which is driving up food prices because they don't have the tools. Now this government wants to take away the 88-day rule for backpackers. What happens when you come to Australia as a backpacker is if you go and work in the bush for 88 days you get another 12 months to stay in Australia. The unions want this taken out. They've got a paper out there at the moment, wanting to rip this away from country towns—not only farmers, but country pubs. You won't have pubs if you take it away. That's what we'll get back to—it's common sense and it will give certainty back to Australian farmers. It's also about the bill that was passed yesterday, the financial market infrastructure bill, which not too many people have heard about. What it means is that the government is going to force the reporting of scope 3 emissions. Now, some might say, 'What does it mean?' What it means is that if you've got a turnover of over $500 million—that is, a bank—and you've got customers, what you've got to be able to do is report the scope 3 emissions of all of your customers. That means a little old cocky in western Queensland in my electorate who runs 5,000 sheep and probably 5,000 acres of grain has to be able to give his emissions profile to his bank. Even from the Treasury's own numbers, that is going to cost the Australian taxpayer $2.3 billion in administrative costs, which has to be passed on to you. We saw in Blayney last week that they're shutting down a gold mine, and the environment minister is saying, 'They can still do it.' She might want to go out there and have a look at it. If you stand on that mine site and see where you can actually place a dam, there's this thing called topography. Water runs a certain way. You can't just whack a dam in any part of that, particularly a tailing dam. For a company that spent $300 million and five years of investment in 800 jobs in Blayney—it has been cut out. The local Indigenous representative group that is recognised by law said that while it didn't support the mine they didn't oppose it. The New South Wales environment department, the New South Wales EPA, approved it. Even Minister Plibersek's environment department approved it. But for some reason she has listened to some other Indigenous group, and she will not release the statement of reasons. I would have thought that that's owed to Regis. It's owed to the people of the Central West of New South Wales so that they have certainty and an understanding of why the minister has declined an 800-job mine and a billion dollars of investment. That is what regional Australians are cranky about and that is what has brought them to Canberra. When the Prime Minister was elected he made this grand statement: 'No-one held back. No-one left behind.' Well, that's unless you live in regional Australia. That's what they're feeling and that's why they were out there today.