Mark Coulton (Parkes, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Water Resources and Conservation) Share this | Hansard source

I commend the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts for his performance. The trouble is his performance is far more appropriate for the other part of his portfolio, the arts, than it is for the environment part. The amount of drama, illusion and theatre involved in his performance and his total removal from reality were quite compelling, so I compliment the minister on his great artistic performance.

What we are seeing here is a great disconnect. I am totally amazed that day after day we see ministers on the other side of this place stand up and say that black is white—sometimes with a bit of flair, as the minister did, and sometimes with a straight face. It is absolutely amazing. I am speaking on water, but I will touch first on home insulation, because that scheme has given me, as a local member of parliament, a lot of work. In the towns of my electorate the citizens are being preyed upon. The mainly elderly have been approached door to door with an offer too good to refuse: the government will pay for it all; if your roof is a bit bigger than the average, we will need just $200 or $300 more and we will do it. When these elderly people have had a younger relative or a neighbour come and inspect the work, they find that the work has not been done, except for the bit around the manhole that you can see. Anyone who knows anything about home insulation knows that unless it is installed properly—unless the entire area is covered—it will have no effect. So this is indeed a rort. If the minister thinks this program is well regarded in the community, he is delusional. The community sees it for what it is. They see that it is a scheme with the best of intentions that is totally mismanaged, is totally rorted and will not deliver what it was meant to.

Today I want to speak about water—the government’s programs on water and its attitude to water and the environment, particularly the environment west of the range. When it comes to water this government appears to have only one policy, and that is to buy it—to remove water from the basin. At the moment the problem is that they are buying air. They have spent hundreds of millions of dollars but have only bought air.

See this speech in context