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

Sorry; I meant the other fellas, with the big beaks—pelicans. I am from inland, and I get my waterbirds mixed up. It is all this discussion of global warming and climate change. I have got penguins coming up the Murray-Darling now. But the pelicans at the Menindee Lakes, for a couple of days, will appreciate the water from Toorale Station. The community of Bourke has been decimated for now and evermore. Toorale is locked up. It is a national park. The feral pigs will appreciate it. The feral pigs will have a field day with what is a landmark property in western New South Wales.

The other major purchase this government has made has been the purchase from the Twynam Agricultural Group. If anyone saw a good deal coming to them, it was the Twynam Agricultural Group. A massive sale of water, something they did not actually have, was made to this government. But what is going to happen when the seasons do return and when the dams do get water in them? The town of Collarenebri, which relies very strongly on the production and employment of Collymongle Station, will be in a permanent drought—a drought that has not been induced by the environment but by this government.

You might think that the decimation of the community of Collarenebri is an accidental thing, that it is a bypass, that it is an unthought of consequence. But tie this in with the overspend of $1.7 billion on the Minister for Education’s Building the Education Revolution and ask: where did the savings come from for that $1.7 billion? I can tell you where they came from—from places like Collarenebri Central School. Nearly 90 per cent of its students are Aboriginal students and its science lab is a demountable that has been there for 30 years. It is in desperate need. But the only chance those kids have got of any employment in Collarenebri, now that the major employer in the town has been closed down by the government, is to get a decent education so that they can go off and do something else. But the government has made that so much harder. I would like to think that the decimation of Collarenebri and Mungindi is an unforeseen consequence, but when you tie it in with other government programs I wonder if there is not a more sinister scheme behind this.

The other thing is the decimation of Landcare. Caring for Country, something that Minister Burke comes in here and trumpets time after time, has been an unmitigated disaster for the environment of Australia. In the last 12 months I have travelled a large part of this country speaking with natural resource management groups. Without exception, whether it is a group from Cape York or from Gippsland, they are fed up with this government and its gutting of Caring for Country and Landcare. That is one of the largest volunteer organisations in Australia: a million volunteers who do things for nothing because of their commitment and their love of the environment. They go out on weekends to stabilise creek banks, plant trees, combat erosion and put in programs to stop salinity. All they need is a bit of back-up support from the government, and that has been removed. The funding has been cut by 40 per cent in the last 12 months—everywhere in New South Wales except for one place. Can you guess which catchment management authority got an increase in their funding last year?

See this speech in context