Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to have the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry here today—and I assure him I come here with no overtones of malice! I want to refer in particular to his extension of EC, and I compliment him on the areas that he has extended it to. But I have a difficulty with what is called the ‘Burnett addendum’, which is a boomerang or U-shaped area that goes around the Burnett region. It takes in, largely, my electorate and that of my colleague the member for Flynn and, to a lesser extent I think, the electorate of the member for Wide Bay. I find that the whole addendum has been included, except the Burnett Shire, not to be confused with the Burnett region, which is now part of the Bundaberg Regional Council, and the City of Bundaberg, which is also now part of the Bundaberg Regional Council.

What I find bewildering is that it takes in the names of the three former shires: Miriam Vale, which you have included in the Burnett addendum, to the north of Bundaberg and Burnett; Kolan—that is, the Gin Gin area to the west, which is in the original Burnett region; and Isis, the Childers area, which comes right across to the southern side of Bundaberg. In other words, the entire Burnett Shire and Bundaberg city are fully enclosed by former shires that have all been included. Yet the Bundaberg and Burnett areas operate the same crops and horticulture, come off the same river systems—the Burnett and the Kolan—and have the same irrigation rules. It will be argued, I am sure, by QR and others in Queensland that, ‘You get four inches or six inches on the coast,’ and that sometimes happens; however, if a drought is to be broken, any rain needs to fall into the catchments of what is known as the Fred Haig Dam and the Paradise Dam that feed the Bundaberg irrigation scheme. All those areas I have just discussed with you—Kolan, Isis and Miriam Vale—will be affected by the new irrigation rules. South of the Burnett River, the allocation is only going to be 10 per cent, so the drought has not broken in the traditional sense of the word.

I appeal to you to have another look at what was formerly known as the Burnett Shire and the City of Bundaberg, because you have included every other area around them without including them. I repeat: they work on the same irrigation scheme, they have the same crops—sugar, fruit and vegetables and so on—and I find it bewildering that you can have all the others in and those two out. My final point is this: as we all know, when you come out of a drought—and I am not denying there have not been good falls of rain in that area in the last three months; there have been—you need a recovery period of about 12 months or more. So would you reconsider the Burnett and Bundaberg areas?

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