Mark Coulton (Parkes, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I note with interest the comments of the previous speaker, the member for Oxley. While I do not disagree with everything he said, it was a wonderful example of rewriting history. I would like to place on record now that we would not be here today discussing this bill, the Water Amendment Bill 2008, if it were not for the work of my predecessor, John Anderson. The whole idea of a Murray-Darling Basin Plan and an Australian water plan was the initiative of John Anderson and a former Labor minister in New South Wales, Craig Knowles. We should not forget that in the attempt from the other side to rewrite history. We would have had this plan underway much sooner if it were not for the recalcitrant states, particularly Victoria. The weakness of this bill that we are discussing today is that, while ever the states have a veto power, this plan will struggle. This will never be a truly Commonwealth plan while ever the states have the power of veto.

We have heard a lot of talk here about the importance of water to communities, and I would like to highlight the communities in my electorate because they have been relying on the Murray-Darling Basin for hundreds of years. Quite often we talk about irrigation and things like that but we must not forget the people who live in the towns that rely on water—towns like Walgett and Mungindi and villages like Corinda that are wholly and solely reliant on the water that comes down the rivers in this electorate.

Also, in this debate, when we are talking about taking water from one part of the basin to another, we must not forget the importance of agriculture. Agriculture is important not just to the farmers and the communities that produce the food and fibre that our country relies on; agriculture is important to the whole of Australia. After all, food and clothing are two of the basic needs for human survival, and if we make the production of food and fibre too hard, by taking away the resources to produce them, our country will suffer. And not only will our country suffer but the rest of the world will suffer. It is important to understand that Australia’s farmers not only feed and clothe the 20 million people in Australia but also feed 70 million people worldwide. If we start cutting into our farmers’ ability to do this, we are going to create the possibility of famine in other countries. We need to keep that in mind as we decimate the water supply for our rural areas so that we do not end up with starvation across the world.

Irrigators are quite often maligned in this place. We hear people ask, ‘Is there any place to be producing cotton in Australia?’ We should note that Australian farmers are the most efficient water users anywhere in the world; there is more production from a megalitre of water in Australia than there is anywhere else. But are we prepared to let cotton production take place in Third World countries, where the environmental controls are not so great? We are a global community and, as the world gets smaller and smaller, we cannot just push what we perceive as our problems onto somewhere else.

We have heard a lot of members speaking very eloquently about water in this debate, without much common or practical experience. If they would like to come to my electorate, I could take them to farms in the four major basins, the river valleys, and show them the world’s best practice that is undertaken by the farmers in that area and how they are producing more and more with less and less.

As the debate moves on beyond water and the Murray-Darling Basin, the underlying issue of food security comes up. Up until this point Australia has never had to worry about food security, but, as we look at the growth explosion in the world’s population, food security is becoming more and more important. I can see that a lot of the irrigation areas in my electorate will switch from more extensive cropping to more intensive food production. As the cities and coastal strip grow at a rapid rate and valuable agricultural land is gobbled up by the urban sprawl, areas such as the centre and north-west of New South Wales will become very important for food production for Australia as well as the rest of the world. Tying in with that, we will also need to develop the infrastructure to enable that to happen—such as inland rail so we can get food to ports efficiently and very quickly.

The attempts by this government to deal with the situation in the Murray-Darling Basin at the moment are very much stopgap measures. Perhaps there is no greater example of their misguidance than the purchase of Toorale Station at Bourke. Apart from the devastating effect that taking 100 jobs out of that community has had, the fact that that station will no longer pay rates means that the rest of the ratepayers in Bourke will have their rates go up by four per cent. It is going to be a very, very hard struggle for that community. If they were going to get some benefit from that, perhaps the people of Bourke could come to terms with it, but there will be no benefit.

I challenge anyone in this House to stand on the banks of the lower Murray and send me a photo, when the effects of the buyout of Toorale get to the Murray River, that shows me that purchasing that beautiful property in western New South Wales has had some positive effect somewhere else. If I could see such evidence, perhaps I would change my mind. But we will not see any evidence of that. That water will not make it to the Murray. It certainly will not make it to the Coorong and South Australia. We will be lucky if it makes it to Menindee—and, if it does make it to Menindee, most of it will probably have evaporated. As a matter of fact, if you want to get one megalitre of water into the Murray River, you have to purchase 15 megalitres of water from the top end of the basin in my electorate. So we take 15 megalitres water out of the top end of the basin and, if we are lucky, we get one megalitre into the lower Murray. Mathematically, economically and morally that makes no sense at all.

I heard the member for Oxley mention consultation. There has been no consultation. The federal government moved into Bourke like a thief in the night and did a deal with New South Wales to purchase the property. As a matter of fact, no representative of the federal government set foot on Toorale Station. There was some movement from local people who thought, ‘Well, we’ll try and make some good come out of this; perhaps the water can be taken from it but the rest of the land can be used for some sort of valuable production,’ but the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts has put paid to that idea: ‘No, this area has to be locked up.’

So we are going to see this area go from being a productive area, an area that was very economically aware and had some very valuable wetlands, to being a wilderness. Anyone who has any knowledge of what happens on a river system in western New South Wales when there is no more management knows that the first thing to move in will be wild pigs. They will absolutely destroy any remnants of the pristine environment that was there. We are going to end up with a terrible, weeping sore on the banks of the Warrego as a result of this action. It is an absolute, crying shame for that to happen.

In my electorate I have the Macintyre Valley, which is a highly productive valley, and the Gwydir, Namoi and Macquarie rivers, plus some smaller rivers. They are a large part of the productivity in the Murray-Darling Basin, but neither Minister Wong nor Minister Garrett, to my knowledge, has ever set foot in any of those valleys or consulted with local communities, with farmers or with irrigators. So where does this consultation come from?

It is hypocritical that the very day that the federal government and the New South Wales government purchased Toorale was the day that they gave the go the go-ahead for the pipeline into Melbourne. So, while the water we have flushing out to sea on a daily basis is sufficient that, if it were recycled, it would sustain Melbourne, we are now raiding what little water we have in the Murray-Darling Basin for cheap political points for the Victorian government. That is an absolute crying shame.

The member for Oxley was rewriting history and talking about the wonderful job the new government is doing. One of the measures the previous government put in was the community water grants. Right across my electorate, and indeed in my hometown of Warialda, we are recycling all our water. That was made possible by a federal government community water grant. We have sporting clubs and schools right across Australia that are efficiently using water due to the community water grants. Now that scheme has been taken out. Where is the leadership on saving water? Indeed, it is my understanding that, as part of a previous $10-billion plan, $600 million was to go into engineering, saving water and making efficiencies. To my way of thinking, that is the way to go. We need to have an incentive to save water and keep our production levels up, and the water that can be saved can be returned to the river for the environment and for further production. While most farmers are extremely efficient in their use of water, some of the delivery systems have been there for a long time and there is a great case for re-engineering these systems and helping some farmers put in place the latest technology.

The other thing is that we are hearing a lot about climate change. I do not think there is anyone that doubts we are living in a changing climate, but I think we need to give it further thought. When I look at the dams that I have in my electorate—Pindari, Copeton, Split Rock—

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