David Hawker (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to join in this debate, and I commend the member for Lyons for bringing this motion to the House. I too represent part of regional Australia—in western Victoria—and, like my good friend and colleague the member for McMillan and like the member for Bass and the member for Lyons, I am only too well aware what the drought has been doing. This year in the northern part of my electorate it continues to cause considerable problems and many grain growers are looking at heartache yet again. It has not just happened over one year; it has been going on for several years now. It is not just the dry years. It does cause immense difficulties. The points that the member for Lyons and the member for McMillan have raised about the impact on individuals and the need for individuals to know that there is someone who can help cannot be overemphasised. We really do have to try as hard as we can to communicate with people on those issues.

I was fortunate enough to visit the Midlands of Tasmania on 8 October, so I saw firsthand some of the issues that the member for Lyons mentioned. I had the opportunity to speak with some of the local farmers of the Clyde River Water Group at Bothwell, in the member’s electorate. We had quite a few there who raised many concerns. They were very worried about what was happening and in some ways they were very frustrated. They did draw attention to a couple of issues. One of them was the fact that there is water up the river at Lake Sorrell and they were having a problem in trying to get agreement to release, as they put it to me, just 20 millimetres off the level of Lake Sorrell to provide sufficient water to get their irrigation going.

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