 Deputy PM, I might kick this off myself because I was really interested to hear you say at the beginning and then to reiterate it at the end that you felt a sense of moral obligation to hang on to the portfolio so that you could continue to work to improve the fortunes for those who work in agriculture in this country. So in terms of what you're going to do at the Cabinet table, how much more influence will that bring to bear? What difference will that actually make for agriculture on the national agenda? Well Lee, just so, it's your nation. Once you're in the role of Deputy Prime Minister you're also on the expenditure review committee which is crucial for the approval of all budgetary items. You're also a national security committee, I hope I don't have much to do with agriculture than that, but there nonetheless it's just a reason you're now, your ranking in Cabinet goes to number two. Therefore there's greater weight and impetus behind your deliberations. Quite obviously you remain, I was in the leadership group and I remain in the leadership group and to be quite frank your working relationship with the Prime Minister gives you the capacity to in a collegiate way to land on issues without going through the combinations and permutations of political gymnastics that you have to do when you first arrive in politics as a back bench or a back bench or an opposition where you're trying your very best to influence people at the centre of the circle. As I said there's not much point in going out and doing a doorstop now to try and bring the show down because I'd be bringing it down on my own head. We are now at the centre of the circle. Thank you now we have a question up on my right. Yes thank you, thank you Deputy Prime Minister. I'm really really encouraged and impressed by your focus on farming families and I come from a farming family area in Western Victoria and I'm a PhD student with Monash University, Diane Lewis is my name. My question is about this conflict between financialisation of farming families and investments as you say of farms I mean and trying to keep farming families on the farm. How do we balance that pressure of bringing money into the farming regions and also ensuring that farming families do actually stay on the farm? That's my question. Well thanks Diane I think that that question is not only a question about the economics Diane but also about the whole philosophy and I suppose in a way Diane it's one of the things that drove me into politics as recently as yesterday I was saying to colleagues the whole point of why I do this job is the view that in Australia we will remain a nation where a person can start at the bottom, start with nothing and make their way through the economic stratification and social stratification to get to the top, to be mastered of their own ship and mastered of their own ship by their own endeavours. Now some people may do that by luck, by the grace of God and have the intelligence and wander off to university and therefore get themselves a good position within an organisation and transfer through that social stratification in that form. But the dynamism of this nation I believe Diane is done by the people who start from Baradine and end up near Rowena and become major grain producers such as the Harris brothers and that is the dynamism that attracts me. When I was at St George it was those farming families that came out and took the risk coming out from the Lockheed Valley deciding that they were going to be horticultural producers in Western Queensland. That's the dynamism I look for. So what the question you asked Diane is what are the policy structures that puts that in place. Well I suppose one of the first things Diane is making sure that and I'll give you two examples I actually mentioned them in the speech over a whole range. Having Mick Keogh as the ACCC Commissioner concentrating just on rural issues means Diane that when you're a small producer and you may be exploited by someone with massive market power that you have your own champion within the ACCC just dealing with rural issues and a staff of 12 to make sure that that you are not exploited that if you have the right product and you have the right endeavour that you remain in the marketplace and you're not pushed out by reason of bullying you might be pushed out because you got a poor product you got the wrong price but you can't be pushed out because of bullying. To make sure that we continue to drive within the Competition Consumer Act for people to be treated fairly. To make sure that when people buy a place and this is why we doubled our farm management bonds from 400,000 to 800,000 because I know as an accountant Diane that one of the things that knocks people out is excessive debt you can do doesn't matter how good a farmer you are if your debt is too high and you can't meet your payments Khan Horn is going to come for you but it is but it's really important it's really important that we give them all the reason the world to get their equity up and that's why I thought well how do we come up with a policy that encourages them to get equity. I thought well how about we make that 800,000 dollar farm management deposit which we have now got it within the House be able to be offset against the loans so basically they're getting a tax deduction on paying off their place. That's never happened before. That's new and that's the sort of ingenuity that's within this government. We are all the time looking at with this even right now trying to expand the water infrastructure we know as we expand the water infrastructure there's more opportunities for more farmers to come into that space. Everything we do is trying to create centres of excellence so that we have regional centres where people have a clear line of sight from from high school to university to research and development. These are the things and what I'll do Diane is always make sure that every day I'll ask myself if I was starting from nowhere and to be honest in my life I got back onto onto a place without ever having any support from any family and I want to make sure that is also what happens to other people as well. Now in the interest of timing one last question to the gentleman in the centre please. Thank you Deputy Prime Minister. My answer to my question could been even in your presentation and it's with regards to the foreign investment and I guess the answer could lie in all that locked up capital that it is to get our super funds. Just the question really sits with why with regards to the foreign investment isn't there a greater distinction made between nation building foreign investment and nation owning foreign investment. It seems to me that foreign investment in irrigation and facilities and farm lands is already fully developed is nation ownership foreign investment and it doesn't really build the nation. It just seems to be the foreign investment is put into that one basket wasn't there a greater distinction between the two types. It's a good question. Just grab your name. Sorry Andrew Buffalo from Lockout. Andrew this is an issue that has expressed it's not that you hold that view Andrew lots of people hold that view and we express it what's the difference between foreign ownership and foreign investment if you're taking an asset from a lower value asset to a higher value asset and making sure that the economics is a benefit to all those in the district and everybody gets ahead then it's an easier case to argue than if it's just a transfer of ownership from one person to another. I hope you've seen Andrew that probably and I have I have collected a lot of ridicule for at times my more open questioning of every possible transaction. I did believe in the past it was just that anything goes. If you ever questioned anything apparently you were a pariah a xenophobe your parochial this is rubbish we have every right as a nation to question who is investing in our nation and the purposes for which it happens and I think that it is not a case that because you question one you've therefore quit question the whole everything. I think we've seen a clear example of that in the last week or the last couple of weeks. Vandeem's Land Corporation has never been owned by anybody who called Australia was a citizen of this nation it's always been foreign owned and there was an immense push to try and create a create a sentiment to block that but the farmers in the area wanted that transaction to go through the price that was offered was better than any other other bid and so it seemed like a it seemed on the benefit on the balance of things a logical thing to do but the first iteration of the Kidman bid was blocked and I don't find that it should never that should never be remarkable our nation remains the most liberal nation on earth for people to invest in you can't buy land in China you can't and the people say well that's because it's a communist country well you can't buy land in Japan you can't but there are many states in the United States you can't buy land in England local government organisations you have to go through an immense bureaucratic process there front there's a whole range of this nation remains by far and away the most liberal nation in how you can invest in our land but that does not mean that our people the people of this country don't have the right to question it and we will and I want to make sure that as we go forward in the future and we're right now I think it's by the end of March Andrew we should have or everybody should have submitted to the Australian Taxation Office if they're a foreign owner who owns what so we can get a proper a proper expression of who owns what in this nation because we didn't have it there was one another things that we fought for we fought for and got we've changed the foreign investment review board guidelines from 252 million down to 15 before we have to go there the foreign investment review board at the time people said oh this will be the end of foreign investment will never be anymore well it's actually gone up the applications are gone up our counterparts on the other side the Labor Party thought they had a political point to score against us and they said well we'll expand it from we'll take it from your 15 up to a billion a billion dollars a thousand million before they have to go to the foreign investment review board they then obviously went out in the road and talked to a few people and that was not the view that they got they came back and said actually we go from a billion down to 50 million which I've thought was a remarkable turnaround we must take the Australian people with us on this journey if we lose the Australian people we lose the argument and so we have to prove to them that foreign investment is in their better interests over the longer term and that's by showing our capacity to say the word yes and where appropriate say the word no