Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to participate in this debate on Appropriation Bill (No. 5) 2008-2009 and Appropriation Bill (No. 6) 2008-2009. Appropriation Bill (No. 5) 2008-2009 provides additional funding for ordinary annual services, while Appropriation Bill (N. 6) 2008-2009 appropriates funds for other annual services in support of the Nation Building and Jobs Plan. The minister noted this in his second reading speech on the bill. I want to focus on Appropriation Bill (No. 6) in my remarks. There are in fact three components to the additional appropriations that we are dealing with in this bill. The largest is for the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government and it involves an equity injection of $1,188.9 million into the Australian Rail Track Corporation. Investment in the Hunter Valley coal lines is a major component of this proposed investment.

After years of neglect under previous Labor governments, it was the coalition that understood the importance of rail and the fact that without a significant injection of funding into the nation’s rail grid there would have to be an extraordinary additional road transport task. Of course, with road use comes emissions and urban congestion, and a great deal of danger too when you mix large transport with domestic vehicle use. So we are pleased to see that the Labor Party, after a very long period of complete neglect, is beginning to focus on rail. I am concerned, though, that this injection into rail system need is very much focused through the lines in the Hunter Valley. They are important, but that is not all of the funding. In fact, what has been identified in this injection of funds is less than what was committed by the coalition funding our transport sectors, as the Labor Party understands I am sure, but usually fails to acknowledge.

Australia also has massive problems with its ports. Our sea transport lines, immediately offshore and further out to sea, have been so neglected over the years and have been subjected to so much bullying and pressure from trade unions demanding higher wages that sea transport has become uncompetitive. I am sorry that Labor have failed to grasp that besides rail and road there is an opportunity to develop sea transport as an alternative for moving freight in Australia. But sea transport does not get a mention at all in this particular package. We will have to wait for the coalition to be back in power to deal with the problems there.

The second component of the appropriations also for the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government is the bringing forward of $711 million for spending on roads and, of this, the bill provides for $391.989 million in 2008-09 to be paid to the states, territories and local government. The coalition took on the years of neglect and the problems involved with inheriting over $90 billion of debt and servicing that debt and understood that they had to end the neglect of essential infrastructure for the nation. Our roads were chronically neglected under Labor, in particular in rural and regional areas.

As the previous speaker said, black spots programs were seen as a good idea by Labor. They invented black spot funding and then they let it go. It took the coalition to understand the significance of that funding of small, local government roads—gravel roads and small, single-lane bitumen roads—servicing the economies of rural and regional Australia as well as, of course, the ‘danger’ places, no matter where they are in the country, where chronic accidents occurred. We brought back black spot funding to Australia and we made sure that we reduced accidents at railway crossings and on road intersections. We also made sure, through black spot funding, that our local councils in our drought-stricken eastern Australian regions could afford to put gravel on roads and could afford to have bitumen replaced. They had suffered so much under the Hawke-Keating regime. Nothing had been done for them, and they did not have the capacity to raise rates to make up the difference. It is good to see that this Labor government has continued to fund the Black Spot Program, to the tune of some $60 million—a piffling amount but at least there is acknowledgment of the importance of that program.

I am concerned that this road spending fails to acknowledge or understand that the road task right across the nation varies from small to very large and significant pieces of road infrastructure. We are seeing work on the Pacific Highway bypass, which is important; Melbourne’s Western Ring Road; the Douglas arterial on the Bruce Highway in Townsville; Adelaide’s Northern Expressway; the Brighton bypass on the Midland Highway in Tasmania. All are important spends, but I am concerned that the comparatively small amount of funding that is required to finish the Goulburn Valley Highway in my electorate and also going through the electorate of McEwen—commenced by the coalition—is in fact committed. This road services what was the food bowl of Australia, which is now in chronic drought—but which will be permanently in drought due to the Melbourne pipeline and the policies of Senator Penny Wong, the Minister for Climate Change and Water. I am concerned that this permanent ‘droughting’ of the region will be even more unpalatable and impossible to live with if our Goulburn Valley Highway continues to have a start-stop characteristic, with the Nagambie bypass completely neglected.

I will give you an example of what I mean. The coalition had committed over $200 million to making the Goulburn Valley Highway—which becomes the Newell Highway, the major Brisbane to Melbourne highway. That stretch of highway, a dual carriageway, is now in fact one of the best pieces of freeway in regional Australia. But there was a small piece left out of the jigsaw, and that was the Nagambie bypass and then the Shepparton bypass. At the last election, the coalition had committed $318 million for the duplication of the Goulburn Valley Highway and, of that, $288 million for the Nagambie bypass. That money was going to continue to flow to do the job. We had another $30 million committed to meet the cost of the Shepparton bypass and Strathmerton deviation planning.

We were not surprised when, just before the last election, the Labor Party committed $216 million for those same works. We thought, ‘That’s $100 million less than the coalition committed but perhaps if they are making a commitment of $216 million they must understand the significance of continuing this work’—after all, it takes some of the heaviest B-doubles and other heavy transport freight loads from the food manufacturers of the Goulburn Valley to the ports at Geelong and Melbourne. That freight task earns billions of dollars for the state government annually in export earnings. Milk powder has been their biggest export in volume and value. So we thought that, with a commitment of $216 million—in writing from the then shadow minister—Labor at least understood the importance of this piece of infrastructure. You can imagine our shock when, in the last budget—the one and only budget so far from the Labor government—some months ago, when we were expecting $216 million to be on the books, we found that just $5 million was there. It was a joke—although many were not laughing, because they came from the region. We were stunned. We wanted to know why. We were told, ‘Be grateful you’ve got $5 million.’ Of course, $5 million does nothing to continue this invaluable project.

I could add that some dozen lives have been lost where the freeway turns back to single lane, where this road pushes through the town of Nagambie at 40 kilometres an hour. We consider those lives important but quite clearly the Labor government either did not care or did not know. So we got $5 million committed. I have to say we continue to be very apprehensive about this injection of funds in the second component of this special appropriation because we have to see it in writing to believe that the Labor government is going to make good on its pre-election promise.

I turn to what is perhaps the most difficult thing in this bill for someone in the coalition to stomach, certainly someone who represents a rural and regional electorate in northern Victoria. The third component is $250 million for the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts. There will be a total expenditure of ultimately $500 million over four years, beginning in 2008-09, ‘to expedite the return of water to the Murray-Darling Basin’. The $500 million is in response to the agreement with Senator Xenophon to bring forward expenditure to buy water and to return that water to the Murray-Darling Basin.

If you are ignorant or if you are unaware that the Murray-Darling Basin is dying, you might think: ‘That’s a good idea—let’s buy the water from downriver. The water must be lying around. Perhaps it is being stolen.’ I have heard a lot of South Australians suggest that an irrigator water  is being stolen. But you need to be aware of the facts. The problem is that the Murray-Darling Basin has been in drought some seven years now. It is in a critical state of environmental or ecosystem stress. The red gums are dying from Echuca to the mouth of the Murray. You have Ramsar listed wetlands on the river, for example, in the Barmah Forest at Gunbower and the Kerang Lakes, and finally you get to the mouth of the Murray, where there are the Lower Lakes and the Coorong. Those places are all regarded as internationally significant wetlands.

So what is this Labor government’s solution to this critical ecosystem problem? What is its solution to the social and economic disaster that is facing the human communities in the Murray-Darling Basin who are trying to manage these ecosystems and who produce the ecosystem services for eastern Australia? This government’s solution is to go to the drought stressed farmers who are being leaned on by the banks and say to them: ‘You know, you have got a liquid asset in your water. You can sell your water. Sure, you will have to get out of farming. You will be left with a dryland property that is comparatively valueless. You will not be able to sell it. It will roll with weeds. The dust will blow in a few months time without the water. But, hey, we’ll buy your licence. We’ll buy your water right. The greenies will feel good. It will look like we are doing something. We’ll all be happy.’ I am sorry: we are not all happy.

You have probably heard of Toorale Station, the property that was purchased up in the north of the Murray-Darling Basin. The loss of 100 jobs is associated with that purchase and there was not a drop of water, in fact, added to the ecosystems downstream. Even more critical in my part of the world is the sale of Madowla Station. It was probably one of the most productive properties, and Madowla Park homestead on that property is of great historic significance. Madowla Park was established in 1859. It has been grazed from as early as 1841. It was a showpiece of irrigation layout. It was hugely efficient. It had all that you would expect to see in terms of reuse systems, special irrigation layout and whole-farm planning. It was a superb example of how to irrigate carefully, not allowing  accessions to the watertable, and how to be a highly productive and valuable piece of secure food production in Australia. That property has been bought by the government. It had a 10,000-megalitre water entitlement and that is going to go to the Snowy River and the Murray River. That might sound like a great solution for those dying red gums and for the stressed fauna and flora in the great Murray River. It would have been far better if that property had been allowed to continue to produce food and to create employment or to sustain employment in the region and if the government had adopted the coalition’s approach and invested in on-farm water use efficiency across the basin and in public irrigation infrastructure, particularly in Victoria, which, for example, has the decrepit, neglected, state owned Goulburn-Murray and Coliban water supply systems. But that would have meant putting funds into the pockets of the farmers, who are desperate.

It seems to be a philosophical thing that, while this government is happy to put public funding into the automotive industry, into the retail sector and into businesses which are privately owned and which are competitive between themselves, it refuses to put funding into family farms or even into corporate farms to help them to become the most efficient users of water possible. To give one example, if in my electorate we could afford to invest in what we call subsurface irrigation—it is not new technology; it has been around for 20 to 25 years—we could be twice as productive on half the water. We are going to have to live with half the water because the north-south pipeline—Mr Brumby’s dream—is going to take water out of the Goulburn Valley and push it up over the Great Divide to Melbourne, because Melbourne refuses to recycle or use its stormwater. So we are to sacrifice production in the coalition electorates of McEwen, Indi, Mallee and Murray to put water down the toilets in Melbourne.

I believe—and in fact the vast majority of my constituents believe—that if only Minister Wong would look at on-farm water efficiency and use the $2.5 billion that was there from the coalition government, we would have a win-win scenario. The water saved off those farms could be used for the environment and it would be real water. It would be water that could be counted through a meter; it could actually be put into a system, because it would be water transferred from dams and farms to the environment. It would not be a matter of hypothetical licences. When I put to Minister Wong a few days ago. The question as to why she couldn’t she see the sense of on-farm water use efficiency investment rather than just buying back water from so-called willing sellers—who, I am sorry to say, do not exist in a drought this bad—her response was: ‘Well, it’s the Victorian government’s call in relation to your part of the world.’ The Federal government has asked the states—New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Victoria—to tell it what they want to do with their proportion of what we used to call the national water plan funding.

So I am not sure whether to blame entirely Prime Minister Rudd, Minister Wong and his other ministers who are to do with the environment portfolio, such as Minister Garrett. Can we blame them totally for their ignorance and disregard for the future of the social and economic circumstances of eastern Australia’s rural and regional people, or is it also the fact that the states are culpable? I am afraid that Mr Brumby, as Premier of Victoria, has said: ‘No, I’m not interested in on-farm water use efficiency measures with a part of the $1 billion that I’m getting from the Commonwealth. I’m going to put it into the food bowl modernisation stage 2.’ Stage 2 is all about their own aged infrastructure investment—the state-owned infrastructure—which they have neglected. So it is a massive cost-shift from the Commonwealth to the state government to patch up their irrigation infrastructure—something they should have done years ago. The water users themselves are to miss out. We do not have a stage 2 on the books. There is no business plan available; it is a never, never scenario.

I am deeply concerned that, while Senator Xenophon is no doubt feeling very proud of himself and has had lots of pats on the back from people who do not understand the water implications of the so-called water, the drought stressed farmers, particularly those in the southern Murray-Darling Basin, are in despair. They know that this spells the end of a non-corrupted water market. They know that they cannot survive if they are trying to farm in neighbourhoods where half of the neighbouring irrigators have sold their water. This is called standing assets. It is creating buy-back inefficient water supply systems. It is about losing Australia’s capacity to maintain its own food security.

So when in the future our dairy products all come from New Zealand, when we are competing with the rest of the world to get our vegetables from Africa or China or our canned food from whoever is dumping it in the market on the day, we are going to have to look back at this and say, ‘This wasn’t nation building; the way this support was constructed was nation destroying.’ It is nation destroying in the sense of poor infrastructure not properly thought through and in the sense of just simply buying water and pretending that that really is going to help the environment. All of that is a shocking indictment of a government that has not done its homework, has not listened to the reality on the ground, that does not care, it would seem, about the nation’s ecosystems, about the nation’s food security or about the human communities who in the past have struggled to do their best for this nation and have produced the best, greenest and cleanest agricultural and food production of any country that I know.

Ordered that the resumption of the debate be made an order of the day for the next sitting.

See this speech in context