NFF rebuff Nationals leader 'name calling' in response to 'coward' slur

Both Agriculture Minister Murray Watt and NFF president Fiona Simson labelled the comments "incredibly disappointing".

The former agriculture minister accused the NFF of lacking the courage to continue pushing for the now-scrapped ag visa, which it had previously lobbied for.

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"As soon as this government was elected, [the NFF] have gone into a corner and hid... they have become cowards," Mr Littleproud said.

Ms Simson said instead of "calling people names" and "playing political games", Mr Littleproud should be working to solve the workforce issues affecting the voters he represented.

"Either he's seriously misinformed and not across his brief about our [workforce shortage] submission, or else he's perhaps deliberately distorting the facts to get a bit of media attention and clickbait," Ms Simson said.

"Either way it's not the collaborative, bipartisan nature that we need when we're resolving some of these issues."

Ms Simson pointed out Mr Littleproud and the former government failed to produce a single worker under the ag visa.

"We've engaged properly in the process around the ag visa, we've waited for the workers to result, and it just hasn't happened," she said.

The government has refused to heed Mr Littleproud's calls for an ag visa, other than to honour the memorandum of understanding signed with Vietnam - the details of which are yet to be revealed.

Mr Watt said the Coalition government was divided on the issue, with several ministers against the new visa, which was part of the reason it failed.

It's not the first time the Nationals leader and the NFF have butted heads. Before the election, when the NFF called for more biosecurity funding, Mr Littleproud said the organisation was "ignorant of the science", despite both parties meeting with the same biosecurity experts.