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

If you have got something to say, you can take five minutes on your feet. I agree with the member for Parkes: we will be successful in getting a study of the Namoi. But what that means in the Murray-Darling context is that an opportunity is going to be missed because we have got people on Haystack Plain on the Darling Downs with a similar issue and there are a number of locations across the Murray-Darling system that are going to experience these very same issues. And if we have to go through this political nonsense every time one of those issues is raised, to beg and cajole to get some money for an independent study, then heaven help us. I am very disappointed in the member for Parkes. I get on well with him personally, but this is an absolute cop-out for the people he is representing—and not only for those people but for the people that I represent in the same valley system. It is an absolute cop-out and an abrogation of the responsibility that he has been given by his constituents.

The other issue that was raised in relation to this by Senator Williams, a National Party senator, is that the original amendment that the coalition and Senator Williams voted for in the Senate was going to ruin small exploration companies because they would have to incur enormous expense to allow them to explore. The amendment is about the granting of exploration licences. No-one, even under today’s flawed process, explores unless they are granted an exploration licence. (Time expired)

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