Mr Davis said agriculture was in a state of emergency and the industry must be immediately revived to ensure the country did not end up in a food crisis.

If elected on September 7 Mr Davis said he would fight for a minimum milk price to be set so companies such as Woolworths and Coles could not dictate the farm gate price.

He said he would hold a Labor or Coalition government to account over their treatment of farmers. 

“The only farmers we’ve got are in debt and can’t get out; we would freeze their debts to start with, to help them get ahead,” he said.

“Regulation is the key. The bigger companies with big profit margins are there to make money; you’ve got to have minimum prices to control Coles and Woolworths.”

Mr Davis supports the party’s plan to develop high-tech farmers through a five-year college-based course and then five years on-the-job training. 

Farmers would then be eligible for a resettlement package including land and equipment if they agreed to work the 

property for at least 10 years, but Mr Davis could not outline what land would be allocated. 

The farmer would pay 10 per cent of value to own the land and machinery under the policy.

Mr Davis said the incoming government needed to establish a national credit bank that guaranteed peoples’ savings and funded infrastructure projects that would create jobs and boost the economy. 

He likened it to the days before the Commonwealth Bank was sold.

Mr Davis would fight for commercial banking and investment banking to be separated and push for nuclear power in line with the party policy.

He dismissed safety concerns about nuclear power and said the technology had evolved and it was the best way forward.