'Do they actually care?': O'Keefe questions government over potential tariffs on lamb exports to the US 04:25

Now, Joe Biden, he could be ready to hit Australia's beef and sheep exports with tariffs. I'm not joking. So our AUKUS friends in the United States of America are doing a President Xi Jinping on us. So the US lamb industry is petitioning the Biden government to curb Australian and New Zealand lamb imports.

And they want tariffs. And they want tariffs so American farmers can double their share of the domestic market. So at the moment, American farmers, I think, make up 26% of the domestic market and they want 50%. Now, Australia, for our lamb producers, the US is the most valuable market. With an election on, Biden is looking at

the pleas from the lamb industry and thinking to himself, well, maybe I'd do it. I need to win these guys over. And it's not unprecedented. Tariffs on Australian beef and lamb. Bill Clinton did it back in the 1990s. So we've got the Albanese government's trade minister, Don Farrell, in the United States at the moment, and he's trying to stop this from happening. But here's my question this afternoon. How serious is Albanese and Farrell? How serious are they about Australian farmers?

How much do they actually care? Because it was at a rural women's awards night in Parliament House, yeah, rural women's awards night, where the Prime Minister went off script and he said that he had a discussion with Indonesian President-elect and it was concerning beef exports. And then, as he was telling this story to a room of farmers and their wives, he said this, quote, Well, when we had dinner...

Beautiful Australian beef, not the live export. We made sure it was dead. Not funny, Prime Minister, not funny. You can see how farmers would have found that offensive given it's only been four months since the Albanese government introduced legislation to ban the live export of sheep by 2028, killing off the livelihoods of hundreds of farmers, especially in WA, and then he makes a joke about it.

So how can we trust the Albanese government to look after our farmers' interests by convincing Biden and Harris and Trump, respectively, to leave Aussie imports alone when it comes to tariffs? Well, I don't think we can trust them. Because for many of our farmers, exports, they are a vital part of their business.

And tariffs would only increase costs. They will lead to reduced demand for our produce in the United States. And you've got Aussie farmers who invest a lot of time, a lot of effort and a lot of finances into growing and harvesting this meat and producing this meat. And suddenly tariffs, of course, would send them broke. It is in both Australia's interests and the US's interests to maintain a positive relationship here.

And in my view, tariffs on our lamb and our beef and our sheep meat, well, that could strain the partnership and create unnecessary friction, wouldn't it? Look, what happens if we did this? We import $3 billion of computer equipment from the USA. Maybe we should whack a tariff on that. What about American cars? Should we put a tariff on American companies selling cars in Australia?

Now, of course, a trade war would be silly. I'm not encouraging that at all. But at what point are our elected representatives going to sit there and tell the Americans, hey, fair's fair, can you leave Aussie lamb and beef alone? But my concern, overwhelmingly, is Anthony Albanese's ability to stomach a hard conversation with these people. Because I believe when it comes to the Democrats especially...

He's got this sycophantic adoration towards Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Can we really trust him to have a hard conversation? I reckon the answer's no.