Well thanks, Shane, and to the President, congratulations on a great speech. But to you, Shane, and the courage of your conviction in what you've just demonstrated, there is a real vision for the people of Western Australia, there's a real alternative, common sense policies that go to the heart of what will unlock the potential of Western Australians.


That is the common sense that every Australian wants, but Western Australia has been deprived for so long. So Shane, congratulations, mate, to you and the team between now and the eighth of March, I can assure you that your Federal colleagues will be here, not just, as we'll talk about Mia very soon, but we'll be here supporting you in making sure that message, the clarity of opportunity that The Nationals will provide, not just to those in regional Western Australia, but to those living in metropolitan WA as well, that we can provide those solutions, those common sense solutions. So congratulations, mate.


To my federal colleagues who are here today as well. Can I thank you for coming across the Nullarbor and being here. Obviously, we've made it very clear since I became Leader, the culture of the party that I enjoyed growing up is one that I wanted to see and instil right across this country, we are a movement, and we are a family. And the fact that while at this stage, you don't have a Federal Member of Parliament, just at this stage, that we didn't want to ignore you, that we wanted to show Western Australians the respect that they deserve, the part that they play in our nation's economy, in driving our nation forward and paying the bills.



I made it very clear to our parliamentary team that Western Australia was to be invested in and was to be respected, and I'm proud of all our team that have made that trip consistently over the last two years to show that respect of our family in Western Australia. And that will continue. It will continue a lot more as we get closer to a federal election, now that we have Mia Davies as The Nationals candidate in Bullwinkel.


And that respect is one that I wanted to show from the very first moment, not only in being here, but in real actions, in making sure that there were clear lines put down in a Coalition, a Coalition that we will only be part of if live sheep exports is reinstated. There were elements within the Liberal Party that don't support that view. I made it very clear to Peter Dutton, I made that very clear on the steps of Parliament House here in Perth, made it very clear that we will not be part of any Coalition that does not support the live sheep export industry out of Western Australia, and that stands.


My first action as the next Agriculture Minister and Deputy Prime Minister will be to reinstate the live sheep export industry through legislation straight away. We will put that through the House immediately. And my second step, and my first international trip, will be to our trading partners. They'll be to Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and show them the respect that this Government hasn't, that they are trusted trading partners, that they can have trust in the Australian people to give them the food security and respect their cultural beliefs the way that we have in the past.


Now, many have sat here today and Shane talked about the Regis decision in Orange, in Blayney, and the fact that now the Labor Government is prepared to repeal the decision to oppose that dam to save 600 jobs in the little town of Blayney in New South Wales, why won't they have the courage to repeal their own legislation on live sheep to save the livelihoods of 3000 Western Australians?


Western Australians handed the keys to the Lodge to Anthony Albanese, but he has shown nothing but absolute contempt for the livelihoods of Western Australians. There is a standard that he can now set. If he's prepared to have the courage for those 600 people in Blayney, then have that for the 3000 Western Australians that are about to lose their livelihoods because of this ideological decision. It is ideological.


Make no mistake, if they proceed with this, there will be the horrific and brutal death of millions of sheep from countries like Sudan, South Africa, Ethiopia, because they don't uphold the standards, animal welfare standards that we put in place. And the animal activists like RSPCA and Animals Australia are morally bankrupt. They are valuing the life and the welfare of a sheep from Australia above that from one of those countries, we measure it to the millimetre the length of wool on a sheep before we put it on that boat and to the kilogram, how heavy it is, we independently score the airflow through each boat to understand the stocking density rates that we can put in place. Those countries don't do that. They put as many sheep as they possibly can on those boats, and they get paid for what's left over at the end.


Where is the moral compass of those animal activists and Anthony Albanese? Where are they?


All he wants to do is cut and run. That's not the Australian way. The last time they were in government, they made a monumental mistake with live cattle exports. And in my home state, we felt that in Queensland, and instead of facing up to the scientific challenges and getting it right, they are cutting and running and they were prepared to give the cattle industry a second chance, but aren't prepared to give Western Australians a second chance.


Where's the contempt for the people of Western Australia in that? So make no mistake, our Federal Party has made very clear, this is an ironclad guarantee. We will reinstate the live sheep industry full stop.


We've also, as a federal team, set the agenda, as journalists in the gallery, who don't normally give gratuitous advice in a complimentary way, made it very clear to us as The National Party, that we are the ones that have set the agenda, rather than the Government.


We were the first ones to make a position on the Voice. We did that in a respectful way. We didn't rush into that. We actually made sure that we listened to both sides, and we understood what the actual principles were and whether it actually would shift the dial for helping Indigenous Australians for mostly the people that we represent, but we felt it was repeating the mistakes of the past, ATSIC mark two. It was different. It was a different model.


Maybe we could look at it, but not enshrined in a Constitution, and we made it very clear that this was not about anything other than getting better outcomes from Indigenous Australians, not repeating the mistakes of the past. But it was also by one guiding principle that all 27 million of us in this country are equal, no matter your race, no matter your religion, and proudly, proudly, our nation elects 227 politicians to the Senate and the House of Representatives, no matter their race, no matter their religion.


And proudly, our nation has elected 11 Indigenous Australians to represent their country, not Indigenous Australians, but all of us. That's the proud nation that we are. And when we're going to close the gap, we need to empower local Elders, local Elders in local communities, not on big regions, but at local communities. They're the ones that should be invested in to ensure that the outcomes in those communities are achieved.


Bureaucrats out of Canberra and sitting around campfires and town halls in remote communities to make sure that the money, the $4.3 billion that we're spending is spent wisely. It gets the outcomes that we all expect. That's the fair and generous nation that I live in and I want to preserve. And so we took that principal position when only 32 per cent of Australians supported our position, and many said to me in the Gallery, how would it feel being on the wrong side of history?


We not only changed history, we made history because we had the courage of our conviction, and we prosecuted our case in a cogent way, one of which many Indigenous Australians also supported. That was the courage that we had as a national Federal Party team when it was against the grain.


We took the position on nuclear energy. We've had one for over a decade. And yes, the reports are right about Scott Morrison not supporting nuclear energy. The polls were not great on nuclear energy, and so we ran from it.


But I made it clear when I became Leader, not only did I write to Anthony Albanese, let's have a National Energy Summit, let's bring the experts together, whether they be nuclear, coal, gas, renewables, unions, Premiers, and understand the opportunities of owning our sovereign resources in this country, of having an energy mix, not having concentration risk, not putting all our energy eggs in one basket.


No country of the industrial scale, the size of Australia, has gone all-renewables. It is not possible. And what you are feeling at the moment is that reckless race to an all-renewables approach, 82 per cent renewables by 2030 there is a pathway to achieve net zero, but it is not a linear pathway.


It should be a uniquely Australian one that lives up to the international commitment. But does it our way, in our time, using our resources? That's the common sense solution. And make no mistake, we are committed to net zero by 2050 because if we don't, then you as primary producers, or you that export will have a border adjustment mechanism placed on everything you send out over this country. It's called a tariff. You and every one of you that borrow money, and also as governments, both private and public capital markets, will wait somewhere between one and a half and 3 per cent on your on your borrowings in the cost of living crisis.


How can anyone put that on you? We can achieve this, but we do it our way, and we shouldn't be bullied into doing it a way that the world wants. We should do it our way, and that's the sensible policy that you're going to see.


Very soon, we'll be announcing not only the costings for the nuclear power plants in the seven locations that we've identified. Let me make this clearly we've done this in a staged approach to ensure we showed respect, respect to those seven locations, one of which is in my own electorate, we had to have a social licence to operate.


Understand 77 per cent of those working at coal fired power station, those coal fired power stations today, will transition across to a nuclear power plant. And there are more jobs and higher paying jobs, and the capacity of these plants will be constrained by the existing water entitlements that exist for those existing coal fired power stations. We have no intention to take more water out of the consumptive pool, but we're going to have an energy mix that gives us a common sense solution of keeping manufacturing going in this country, you can't keep subsidizing manufacturing in this country, ultimately your money runs out. You've got to fix the fundamentals. The fundamentals are clear, reliable base load, power and proper industrial relations policies.


So don’t underestimate the determination of a Dutton Littleproud Government to build nuclear power plants. We will do it. We're going to back Australia. This is safe technology. We're about to sleep our Submariners next to a nuclear reactor. We can do this. The culture in this country needs a change of finding reasons why not to do things, rather than one to back ourselves, back ourselves as a nation and back ourselves as a people, to do it better than anyone else in the world. And I do, and so does Peter Dutton.


Can I also say we've been very clear as a federal team about impacts that supermarkets have had? In fact, there's a long history in the federal team, Ron Boswell championed it for 17 years, but it's your federal team that has finally, finally achieved a divestiture power and a competition policy in a Coalition government.


This is what we will be bringing after the next federal election. And this isn't all about divestiture. Make no mistake. Divestiture is not about us walking in the first day of government and selling up supermarkets. This is about a deterrent. This is about making sure that if there is an abuse of market power at the very end of it, there is a big, big stick. And for Anthony Albanese to sit there and say that we are nationalising our supermarkets is nonsense to start with, but hypocritical in a second sense, because in 2019 our Parliament introduced divestiture laws in the energy sector, and one Anthony Albanese supported, he had the courage to stand up to the big energy CEOs in a time of an energy crisis, but in a time of a cost-of-living crisis, when there are Australian families tonight who won't have dinner because they can't afford it, he hasn't got the courage to stand up to the CEOs of Woolworths and Coles and say, we're going to hold you to account if you abuse your power.


The Big three supermarkets in this country control 74 per cent of the grocery market. In the UK and the US, they control somewhere between 30 and 40 per cent of the big three. So the market concentration of power and dominance here is one that they have used, and inquiry after inquiry has seen that abuse, not just in terms of their actions against farmers, but consumers. In June, July last year, cattle and sheep prices dropped by 60 to 70 per cent at the farm gate, but at the checkout, by only 8 per cent.


Now, if there's a drop at the farm gate, there should be a commensurate drop at the checkout, and conversely, if there's an increase at the farm gate, you should see that commensurate rise in a responsible time. But we're not seeing that.


And so what we want to make sure is there's transparency and fairness from the farm gate to your plate. And what we are introducing, which is far more important than the divestiture power at the end, we're also we're also introducing a supermarket Commissioner, because for so long, we have heard the harrowing evidence from farmers who fear retribution if they come forward and speak out about the behaviour of these supermarkets, if they make a complaint, they get their supply pulled and they lose their income.


So this Commissioner will be confidential that a farmer or supplier can come forward give evidence to the Commissioner, and if they want to conciliate that with the supermarket they feel comfortable, then they can, if they want it to remain confidential for the fear of retribution, then they can leave that with the Commissioner, who will arbitrate, and then escalate to the ACCC for investigation and the ACCC under Section 155, of the Consumer Competition Act will have the power, and already has the power, to investigate without acknowledging who the complaint has come from in a broader scale, to give that protection.


And what we've done it to give the ACCC more power is to give them bigger penalty, not just with the divestiture, but infringement notices. Infringement notices are the speeding tickets that change the culture straight away.


Under the Albanese inquiry that Labor wanted to impose, the biggest infringement notice is $187,800. They can pull that from a till in Perth and pay that as a cost of doing business.


Ours is $2 million. A $2 million infringement notice will change the culture pretty quick. But if they are more egregious, then it will escalate to a court where the penalty is ten million or 10 per cent of their turnover. And in the most egregious case, then a court can determine that divestiture powers could be invoked, where they are forced to sell one of their stores, but only with safeguards, safeguards that ensures that someone will take up that market with competition to take up that, so there still remains competition, and that's not necessarily worse, that's actually an IGA or a small independent and there are no job losses.


Divestiture powers have been used around the world, but they're used sparingly, and that's the idea. That's the whole idea. They're a deterrent. But we just want to make sure that that fairness and transparency is there. And when you've got families, families in this country who won't eat tonight, I've been given the privileged position to go to Parliament and to change Australian lives.


I'm not leaving until I do something about it, and I'm proud to say our National Party team has done something about it, and for the first time, we've got the Liberals to come with us on this. So that is a legacy item that I believe our great party in Canberra is so proud of, and one that I can assure you we will deliver on.


Your federal team has led on sensible policies, policy like vaping and protecting children. We want better regulations to protect children from the scourge of vaping, going back to a solution that's worked, one in which we've regulated on cigarettes through licenced retailers, selling them to only people 18 plus and getting the excise, not going to criminal, organized criminal gangs, but back to you, the Australian taxpayer, to be spent on better law enforcement and on better Regional Health.


Instead, this government wants to hand them over to the pharmacist, a pharmacist who doesn't even want this. They don't want to sell vapes, but yet they're being forced and there is no excise, because they are selling it through a pharmacy.


So you missing out on the billions of dollars, over $3 billion worth of excise that organized crime is cleaning up every day. We've got to get back to the common sense solution. We've had the courage, and we have now got the Coalition to sign up to a policy that will protect our children from the scourge of vaping.


Can I give you a guarantee we won't be asking you as farmers and primary producers to identify your emissions profiles. The government went up to my home state and made a very clear commitment that they would never force farmers, never force farmers to identify their emissions profiles on their properties. Instead, three months later, they introduced a Bill where they're forcing the banks, they're forcing the merchants to actually provide that through what we call Scope 3 emissions. Anyone that has a loan will have to provide their bank with their scope, with their emissions profile. Treasury alone says in the first year that will add $2.3


billion in costs to the Australian economy. And guess who pays? When Joe Biden himself, Joe Biden would not even go down this track because it would be uncompetitive in an exporting environment. You have Anthony Albanese saying, I know better. You'll pay the bill for that. We will scrap that.

You will not have to be able to have to provide that to your financial institution or to Elders or Nutrien. That’s a cost you won’t have to bear.

But look, we're not going to put a tax on your car either.


We're going to get a sensible solution around emission reductions on vehicles. Technology and time will solve that problem for this nation, as it will for every nation. Manufacturers are moving towards it, but to escalate that and bring that forward to 2030, is going to add a cost on you. For those in regional Australia, a Land Cruiser is going to cost you an extra $25,000. A Hilux $10,000, Ford Explorer, another $16,000 and all in tax.


Doesn't add any value, doesn't go to any solution around reducing emissions. All we need to do is allow the investment in technology from the manufacturers and time to catch up rather than you, and particularly those in regional Australia, will have to bear the brunt of it. That's not common sense, and that's what we won't support.


We've made it very clear that we won't introduce this. We'll work with the manufacturers and take the time to get this right.

Can I say in closing how excited I am that my good mate, a woman that I have known for probably the last six or seven years, to be one that has the highest integrity and intellect, has taken a great step, after some encouragement from me, to come back to politics.


Mia Davies is a talent, but she's a woman of integrity, of strength. People of Western Australia need her in Canberra. The people of Bullwinkel will need her in Canberra. And while we've done a lot in Canberra, I need her. And I'm asking today of you, of you to make one big push between now and the next federal election. This is a fight we can win. We can only win it with Mia, but she's going to need your help.


You're going to have a lot of help from Canberra and from the Parliamentary team and the Federal division. We're going to throw the kitchen sink at this. This is a fight between us and Labor. This is not just about live sheep in the rural area of Bullwinkel. This is also about the forgotten people of Perth in those outer suburbs. They're our people. That's what The Nationals do. We stand up for the little guy, and we get their fair share. People in Kalamunda don't even have sewage to their communities.


In Armadale, the domestic violence. They need infrastructure that those in the middle of Perth have. They're the common sense solutions that The Nationals can bring the leverage that we use within a Coalition, not just changing the big policy settings, but changing lives at a local level, community led politics by local champions like Mia is what we need.


I can assure you that this is worth the fight. Mia has got the fire in the belly. And thank God, she has because we need her in Canberra. And I just say to you, we will give you everything, but I ask you to give an hour, to give a couple of hours to help me are on the ground. We need colour and movement to make sure that the good people of Bullwinkel know that they are respected, as their Opposition Leader is one that's going to deliver for the people of Bullwinkel and the people of Western Australia. You need some insurance in Canberra. You need a National. You need a National that's going to bring the common sense to Canberra that the other two big parties don't provide. That's what Mia Davies will do, and she'll fight like hell to get there, and she'll fight in Canberra to make sure that she delivers for you.


So I couldn't be happier to be here today, and I took the journey two weeks ago today, I flew over and was here for less than 24 hours, but such is the respect that I wanted to show Mia, that she has our support, that we are in this fight to the end. And can I say if we're all in this fight to the end, Mia Davies will be the next member for Bullwinkel, and Western Australia will be better placed for it. Thanks for having me.