Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Kennedy says ‘sham’, and in a sense it was. I think the members of that committee were quite legitimate in what they were trying to do, but the terms of reference did not enable them to convey the wishes of growers. And the Deputy Prime Minister had assured growers at that meeting in Victoria last year that he would poll them if there were any substantive changes in those marketing arrangements.

I have taken it upon myself to carry out a poll of wheat growers, and I will be releasing that information tomorrow. I am hopeful that the government will take it on board. If the consultative committee has essentially taken on board the views of the growers, there should be no significant difference in the recommendations. It will be very interesting to see what the recommendations by a government appointed group are and what the views of the growers are. The government and all the political players in here, including the National Party, have been consistently saying, ‘We want to do what the growers want’—as they were going to do with what these growers wanted. It is going to be very interesting. They said, ‘We will fix that. We will do what the growers want.’ They wanted a mandatory code of conduct. It has not been put in place. It will be interesting to see if there is a replay of a similar agenda in terms of the export wheat marketing arrangements. In the poll I conducted, there were something like 3,600 respondents. It was done by a legitimate body and will be released tomorrow. I will be handing it on to the Prime Minister, the minister responsible and anybody who wants to look at it. The release of the poll is going to be a fully open document.

Just recently again, we have seen a similar display of a commitment given by the National Party in my electorate during the state campaign. The leader of the National Party, Mark Vaile, opened their election campaign in Tamworth and promised something like a quarter of a billon dollars to the people of Tamworth on that day if they were elected. I am pleased to say they had a 10 per cent swing against them, so money does not buy confidence. These people have developed a form that they will say anything coming into an election period or to a crowd of people they want to impress. When they return to Canberra and the buttons are pushed, they renege on these things—and similarly in Sydney in terms of the state agenda.

Mark Vaile, the leader of the National Party, was at the opening. He made a speech and he spoke with the press. He had visited sometime before that, when the country music festival was on, and made certain commitments that the Commonwealth government would support the upgrade of a dam. I have raised that in question time in this place. In answer to a question in here Mr Vaile made the point that the upgrade of Chaffey Dam was not only an issue about urban water for the people of Tamworth; it was also an issue for irrigators in the Peel system. When he did that, given the Prime Minister’s 10-point plan and the agreement from the state Premier to hand over the responsibility for water, particularly irrigation water—there is some dispute about urban water—to the Commonwealth government, there was a certain obligation on behalf of the Commonwealth to look after the irrigators.

Mark Vaile, when in Tamworth, made a commitment that he would support, at a Commonwealth level, the upgrade of Chaffey Dam. On Monday morning, two days after the election result, he also reneged on that commitment. So there is real form on this. I think it is very disappointing on two levels—firstly, that we actually have to move a motion of disallowance to a regulation such as this, when the Deputy Prime Minister of the day gave a firm commitment. In our parliamentary system you cannot believe the Deputy Prime Minister of the day—

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