Fran Bailey (McEwen, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise on what perhaps will be the last opportunity to raise an issue which I feel passionately about, as do the people of my electorate—one that I think that anyone who cares about the future of the Murray-Darling Basin, anyone throughout the country, would feel passionate about. I rise on this opportunity to speak because it probably will be my last opportunity before the parliament rises for the end of the year.

Let me begin, Madam Deputy Speaker, by describing this to you. A couple of weeks ago I was driving from the township of Yea in my electorate of McEwen down to Healesville. This is an area that both of the government members in the chamber at the moment would know well because they participated in the Pollie Pedal. They rode up the Melba Highway, so they will be very familiar with this part of my electorate that I want to describe to you.

I noticed several police cars on the side of the road and a number of four-wheel drive vehicles. Guessing that it had something to do with the north-south pipeline that is being constructed, almost running parallel for virtually all of the Melba Highway from Yea right down to Yarra Glen in my electorate, I pulled over to the side of the road. I know the local police—I know them all very well—and I said, ‘What’s going on here?’ To my utter dismay what was being perpetrated was—and it was being perpetrated by Melbourne Water officials, of whom, by the way, one of the police in attendance said to me, ‘They have more power in Victoria today than the Victoria Police’—that these Melbourne Water officials were dragging drilling equipment and heavy vehicles, without firstly doing the biosecurity checks on those vehicles, onto private property.

This farmer had had his pastures locked up to make hay. The only opportunity he has to earn money over the summer months is from the hay that he makes that he can sell and, of course, use on his property. But Melbourne Water would not wait another couple of days to enable this farmer to make his hay. I asked the Melbourne Water official on the spot, ‘Would you please ring your boss and just get permission; wait another couple of days.’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘mobile phones don’t work here’. I said, ‘Well, actually, mine does; use mine.’ He rang his boss at Melbourne Water and the ruling came back: ‘We are on a deadline here; you have to continue work.’

This is the sort of activity that is happening the length and breadth of the Melba Highway in my electorate: Melbourne Water officials are gaining access to private property—

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