Self-confessed "political hermaphrodite" Barnaby Joyce has delivered a hymn to country life and a plea for a better deal for farmers.
He also had a shot at federal politics, saying that in Canberra "you gain weight and you lose touch".
Mr Joyce was making, in unusual circumstances, his first speech as a member of the House of Representatives.
Having just switched from the Senate - which explains his "hermaphrodite" line - he's no newcomer to federal parliament.
And as a cabinet minister with the agriculture portfolio, he doesn't have the freedom to sound off that most new members, with no executive responsibilities, enjoy.
That led him to dance around some issues, like foreign ownership of farm land.
Watched by mining billionaire Gina Rinehart, an old friend, Mr Joyce began with nostalgic memories of growing up on the family farm at Danglemah, near Tamworth, in his electorate of New England.
Life was simple, but happy. The work was hard: digging post holes on the stony ridges, splitting stringy bark posts.
He even invoked Cicero's claim that agriculture was most becoming to a free man.
But, he continued, life never gets better for farmers.
Farm management practices now have to conform to a view "whose religion is a quasi-alternative environmentalism, of forms, of paperwork - and trees having attained an anthropomorphic character".
The work of his own portfolio has been usurped to the point where, in many instances, it is a "mere ambassador for agriculture".
Water and vegetation are with state and federal environment departments and the sale of many farm products and land is with trade and treasury.
Mr Joyce said for farmers everything from strikes on the wharves to the use of chemicals for fly strike on sheep was political.
"If you can't build the Chaffey Dam because of the Booroolong frog, if you can't fix the road to Weabonga because of the same Booroolong frog 30 kilometres away, that is verging on the barking mad," he said.
Mr Joyce said Australia needed a strong, vibrant agricultural sector.
"If we are solely reliant on mines, we will live in a boom-bust cycle," he said.
"If our future is only in services, then we must contend with lower wages.
"We must get a better return back to the farm gate, and fighting to keep families on their own land must be the core of agricultural policy."
However, he also said responsible foreign investment was essential.
"I don't oppose that and I never have," he said.
Some of Mr Joyce's sharpest remarks were for his own trade of politics.
"You can get embroiled in a machismo of the debate in the chamber, which may collect the interest of your peers but not the respect of the public," he said.
"It becomes a perverse form of mud wrestling in a suit."
Share
