THE Australian economy is in a deep debt hole, Barnaby Joyce told landholders at St George in Queensland, and he said agriculture will be essential to reclaiming it.
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The Federal Agriculture Minister is sceptical of predictions Australia will transition from being chiefly a primary producer to a service-orientated economy.
"We're just an internet click away from the competition on a lower wage rate in Kuala Lumpur, Singapore or Shanghai. And now we're finding many of them are better educated: people in Singapore can speak better English than we can," Mr Joyce said.
"So what in this nation can we do better than other people? Agriculture. Broad-based agriculture."
Mr Joyce hopes the emerging White Paper on agriculture, a document intended to map the future of the sector, and the policy that shapes it, will again make agriculture one of the pillars of the Australian economy.
The paper is in preparation and is due to be completed at the end of this year.
"I don't know how many times I've sat at the sunny end of a pen on a break from drenching sheep, thinking about how I'd do things better if I had the opportunity. Now I've been given the opportunity," he said.
"Hopefully, it won't detract from what other governments have done. I don't want to bucket on the Food Plan. I want this document to live long after I've gone."