Kay Hull (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It will be no surprise that today with the Appropriation Bill (No. 5) 2008-2009 and Appropriation Bill (No. 6) 2008-2009, I want to talk about Senator Xenophon’s amendments in the Senate and the implications that those amendments have had on people both in the area I represent and far wider. The implications were very poorly thought out, if thought out at all. In the past I have talked many times about irrigation, water, the need for food security and the way in which the Riverina is generally structured in the majority of my electorate.

I want to put this on the record while I stand here today: I am very proud to represent the irrigation companies in my electorate. I am very proud to represent Murrumbidgee Irrigation and Coleambally Irrigation, who I believe have never opposed change and adaptation. They have continued to respond in a positive manner to the changes in our national resource management policies, both state and Commonwealth, and a full national agenda. They have never stepped sideways or looked back and have never complained. As a result, these irrigation companies have become enormously efficient. In the example of Murrumbidgee Irrigation there has been a 35 per cent real reduction in costs since the privatisation took place in 1999 and there have been more savings in other areas. Coleambally Irrigation put in a total channel control system at an enormous cost but it has provided significant benefits. The technology that has been delivered on farm has been huge and in the distribution system it has saved thousands upon thousands upon thousands of megalitres of water. The environmental controls and the environmental initiatives that have been undertaken have been absolutely extraordinary. Barren Box Swamp has now turned into a significant water-saving device in itself. That was once a cost in water.

So what we have are companies and people who have adapted and adapted and adapted. They have done everything that has been asked of them, and in doing so they have reduced the cost to their shareholders and to their licence and entitlement holders. As a result of the Xenophon amendment that was so readily accepted by the government without a clear understanding of the implications, we now see that in particular my electorate is and will be the key target for the water savings, for the accelerated water buyback. It is absolutely devastating. I have in front of me many articles out of the newspapers. The government’s actions in undertaking to give Senator Xenophon what he wanted without first exploring the impact of this have seen the normally compliant irrigation companies go out saying that they are now slapping bans on out-of-area water transfers. They have no choice. They are saying that they will not be bled dry. As directors looking after shareholders’ interests they have to take this unprecedented step.

We have an article in the Sydney Morning Herald on 9 March 2009 wherein the regional reporter says:

HUNDREDS of thousands of fruit trees have been pulled out, rice production has plunged by 93 per cent and vineyards lie abandoned as the “irrigation drought” continues unabated in Australia’s southern food bowl.

Farmers and the regional towns that rely on them in the giant Murray-Darling Basin are suffering from a cruel, unprecedented combination of low rainfall and severe cuts in water allocations as the reservoirs dry up, leading to a population exodus in the worst-hit areas, including the southern Riverina.

That pretty much sums up the issues that we are confronting and that we have been confronting for a very long time. Now we have had forced upon us the government’s agreement with Senator Nick Xenophon to bring forward $500 million of the announced $3.1 billion for the Water for Future fund into the next financial year to be spent over four years, in addition to the $200 million for stormwater and $200 million to assist communities adjust. The only place to draw from is New South Wales. The only place to draw from is from these efficient irrigators that have undertaken everything that governments past and present, state and Commonwealth, have asked of them. Because they have done all this they now have the cheapest termination fees. The termination fees in my electorate from the irrigation companies that I represent are so much lower. The efficient people get thrown out of business and the inefficient people stay in business. It just seems extraordinary, in my view, that this could happen.

We also have Minister Wong adopting water market rules and rules for termination fees as recommended by the ACCC. Now the ACCC have recommended a reduction of the annual infrastructure access charge from 15 times to 10 times. It was difficult enough at 15 times. It was going to create enormous difficulties and it was going to be a burden on the remaining entitlement holders, shareholders and stakeholders. But to reduce it from 15 times to 10 times is purely irresponsible. For the minister to accept this makes it obvious that there is no understanding and certainly no appreciation of water and how it works.

In doing so, the ACCC have said, ‘We are going to ensure that we provide irrigators with the right to request irrigation infrastructure operators to transform their water shares into individual entitlements.’ Irrigation companies have no difficulty in allowing and enabling transformation; that is fine. But the ACCC do not leave it there. They say the irrigation infrastructure operators must allow transformation to take place but also, ‘Although you lose the money, you must offer them substantially the same service that they were getting when they were in your system.’ I just do not understand how they can have their cake and eat it too—how these companies can be expected to continue to operate. Providing substantially the same service is a significant impost on these irrigation companies and has resulted in all these headlines like ‘We will fight to protect our jobs’.

These are towns and communities not of 100 or 50 people; these are towns and communities of 11,000 people and more who are absolutely dependent on ensuring that production exists. But not only do we need production to continue in order to provide livelihoods and keep rural and regional Australia together; we actually need production to take place to ensure food security. We need production to take place to ensure that we can feed our nation.

A combination of our ROCs, our regional organisations of councils, have banded together. They are calling themselves RAMROC and they have employed consultants to come out and assist them to get the message across. They are calling this a taxpayer funded tsunami. They are saying the federal government’s buyback scheme is a ‘tsunami of taxpayer funds’ that threatens to wash away our jobs and cause irreparable damage to local farming communities and local towns—and there are very large towns as well. Basically, they have started a program called Water4Food to try to get on the front foot and educate the people of Australia who may not understand the tyranny of the issues associated with water here but maybe should. It is quite a complicated issue. But they should be able to expect that the minister responsible understands it will ensure food security and sustainability and can make decisions commensurate with enabling food security and sustainability.

This is not just an issue for Australia. There is an absolute obligation on Australia in terms of food programs for our nearby Asia-Pacific neighbours as well. I get incensed when I hear ridiculous comments about rice, and I will turn to another article that is literally driving me crazy. While one Sydney Morning Herald article depicts the dire circumstances and conditions confronting my electorate and the electorates of Hume, Farrer, Calare and many others, there is another article, the cover story in Good Living, which I will take the time to say here in this House contains garbage and misinformation. I hold the editor, Sue Bennett, responsible for allowing that to be put forward in this article from Angela Crocombe. I rang Ms Bennett, who has not returned my calls. I have left messages for her to rectify the absolute and disgraceful untruths in this magazine. It is an attack on almost all production. You are told in the article not to eat steak, to skip it altogether if possible, because of climate change, with beef emitting so much, and because it is feedlot beef. It says that to eat ethically you should not eat steak at all. The article goes on to have a bit of an attack on pork and the way sows and piglets are handled, which is fair enough. Then it goes on to the biggest and most disgraceful attack, with misleading and incorrect figures, on rice. The article says:

According to the Water Footprint Network, 3400 litres of water are needed to produce one kilogram of rice.

That is absolutely and categorically untrue. It is not even half of that. The article says:

Rice fields consume 21 per cent of global water used for crop production. About 1.3 million tonnes of rice is grown in Australia every year …

Well, it is, primarily in my electorate and some in the electorate of Farrer. But it goes on to say this is by:

… using irrigation water from rivers in crisis—the Murrumbidgee and Murray rivers.

Can I say to you: there is no rice grown when rivers are in crisis. My rice growers have not been growing rice for years and years because they do not grow rice when there is no water. This article is so misleading. It says:

Even though buying locally is recommended for most foods, rice is one product better sourced from a country such as Thailand, which doesn’t have our water crisis.

Have you ever seen rice grown in Thailand? Have you ever seen the conditions and the environmental devastation that takes place? Have you ever seen a less regulated industry in your life? Yet we have this kind of reporting. If it seems that I am incensed, I am. The article goes on to talk about vegetable oil. It says we should not buy canola oil. Another big crop in my electorate, of course, is canola—when we get a bit of rain and there is not a massive drought. But it says not to buy canola oil because it could have GM in it: you steer away from canola oil; you just choose quality Australian olive or sunflower oils instead. The article has a bit of a whack at the dairy industry and the way their milking sheds are washed out so they are disinfected and kept clean. It is a pretty devastating article.

I want to come back to the issue of rice and Thailand and the way in which rice is generally grown. Rice is the most regulated crop in Australia. You cannot grow rice unless you are approved to grow rice. You must have an impervious clay liner. You must undertake the environmental champions program. Rice growers are the most efficient users of water. They have a completely dry processing process. They have just a little blanket of water as a protective cover until the rice can shoot through the water. The water is absorbed down and then is used again—it has double the bang for the buck. After you take your rice off, your subsoil moisture is then used for the next crop to feed the nation.

You know how you get the bread and those things on your shelves? Well, that pretty much happens in Hume, Farrer, Riverina and all of those places. It does not actually come out of those plastic bags that sit on supermarket shelves—it comes from a product. So rice has a significant control process taking place, and I am proud of it. I get knocked down all the time because I am proud of it, but I am proud of it. As I said, it is a dry process. There is not one waste product from rice. Every single bit of it is used. There is horse feed, dog food, husks and hulls—not me!—and rice cakes and things. Everything is done in Leeton; everything is packaged. We have the largest packaged and branded product to leave the port of Melbourne. Jobs are not exported. Nothing goes out in bins. Not one grain of rice goes out in a major bin and provides a job somewhere else. It provides the jobs right here in Australia.

That is the most irresponsible reporting I have ever seen in my life, and I feel aggrieved for the people who have not had the ability to grow rice and who only grow rice when there is water. In summation of my frustration with all of these issues that are constantly working against us at the moment, I seriously do not know when there will be a time that people will understand and make changes to their thought patterns for their own future. I do not know when people will understand that these articles are simply not ethical. To do this to people and to portray them as environmental bandits, environmental vandals, is just so unethical. I do not know when the Australian people are going to realise that there is a world food shortage. They think that it is okay to let all the regional people dissolve into a mass of nothing, a mass of dust, and expect them to go and live in Melbourne, Sydney or wherever—nobody is going to produce their food.

Do they really think that other countries are going to produce food for us and allow us to import their food? They are prohibiting food from leaving their own borders. They have a food shortage. They have no idea how they are going to feed their masses, so why do Australian people think they have a right to make choices and judgments about rural and regional farmers and producers, who are doing the most magnificent job, and say they can be expended? ‘We’ll just import our food,’ the people say. I honestly believe that the Australian public have to have a decent wake-up call. I rise today to raise these issues of fairness and equity for the water users of Australia and to rectify the record. They are indeed the environmental champions; they are not the environmental vandals. (Time expired)

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