John Forrest (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

There can be no more important issue of public importance, when one represents Murray-Darling Basin communities, than the subject we are discussing now. Whilst I was assured by the earlier contributions from the Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities and the member for Isaacs, I do have to make two specific rebuttals in response to other contributions. First, though, I have to rebut the contribution the member for Wills has just made. His message may be electorally favourable in a constituency like Wills, but it is contrary to popular opinion in my electorate. I invite Kelvin to come up, like many Melbourne visitors do, to my place. They arrive and they say: ‘Oh, we were told the river was dead. We were told it was full of salt.’

I want to back up what the member for Barker said in his contribution, and it is what I said in this place on Monday. I commend the minister to read the contribution I made. The irrigators that we represent resent the lack of credit given to them for the progress that has been made. The truth is contrary to the assertion of the member for Wills about the last 30 years. In fact, I launched my consulting engineering practice on the back of what has probably been one of the most significant solutions to the problems: investment in infrastructure. The principle of irrigation that we learnt from the Israelis was ‘less water, more often’, but to deliver an outcome like that you need modern infrastructure. You need a system that can supply irrigation comparable with that of the urban supply we get to our homes and suburbs, where you switch it on. You do not have to ring up and order it. If the member for Wills is simply saying, ‘We are frustrated the process has taken too long,’ I will accept that, but if he is accusing former governments, no matter what their colour, of not doing something about this huge challenge then that is untrue. As I said on Monday, I was born and raised in the soldier settlement district of Red Cliffs and I remember the fact that as a young fellow my relatives could not spray their citrus crop in the daytime because the high salinity destroyed the leaves in the crop. They had to spray in the evening. Well, from there we have moved on to under vine, under tree and even trickle irrigation. This is the kind of thing I am currently hearing from my irrigators.

The member for Isaacs made the accusation that those of us who represent these communities are scaremongering. Frankly, I have been spending more time than I have in the last eight or nine years—and I mentioned this to the minister before this debate started—trying to keep them calm. I am encouraged by the remarks the minister has made about the emotional stress that every one of us representing these communities is currently confronted with. To be frank about it, I am dreading the Mildura meeting on Wednesday because what the communities want to express is their frustration. They are not hearing the assurance that we have heard in the last few days at the table—that this is a concept, a guide. We are being slapped around a little bit about the ‘this is where we want to pitch to’. But I go back to my speech on Monday, Minister, where I asked the House to consider our ancient history. What the Romans did the first time they built a fortified city was secure their water supply. Now I know I am making a principle related to my engineering background here, but it is true. From that water supply they were able to maintain their sanitary disposal processes. So they secured their water supply but not in the way that we do it in the Murray-Darling Basin. They used sealed channels. They used engineering principles—aqueducts and tunnels through hills—and they stored water in enclosed systems.

When I first arrived in this place I was speaking on, and moving private members’ resolutions about, the risk that climate change was having on our community. I was the first person to speak about it back in 1993-94, and I was ridiculed. So for me to be referred to, as has happened, as a climate change sceptic is completely unfair. I am interested in this subject—in outcomes that secure the future environmental viability of our rivers. I live on the river, and so do my communities, and we have seen huge progress. Irrigators not do not have to make a decision on when they irrigate based on salinity. They have sacrificed a lot of their allocations to achieve that, and all they are asking for is some credit for that.

Two examples of the frustration I have experienced in the last two or three years relate to two proposals. One of them is the Wakool irrigators who in bulk have decided they want to go back to broadacre agriculture and hand in their licences for compensation. There is 40 gigalitres in the Wakool region, but have they been able to bring the former minister and the department along with the concept? Do you think they are worried about what happens to the person who does not want to sell their water station? They have agreed, and it has taken a lot of emotional community consultation to agree, as a whole, to sell their water entirely. Wakool is in the region of the member for Farrer. It is very close to where I live and many of those irrigators out there are old clients of mine, so I have stayed close to that suggestion. But it still has not happened.

In my speech on Monday I also mentioned the Wimmera irrigators. Their problem is with the piping of the Wimmera-Mallee and the constraints of the last eight years in not having water. They have made their own decision—all of them—to sell their water. There is only one purchaser, and that is the Australian government. There is no other purchaser. So they offered a first quote, asking for $1,600 a megalitre—and there is 30,000 megalitres there. They were told by the departmental representative that it was not value for money. So they reduced their bid to $1,100 and were told that was not value for money. They have had meetings where they are asking, ‘Do we have to go lower?’

That is not fair, Minister, and I would like to find a way for your intervention into that, separate to the issue that this report has created, because, when we built the Wimmera Mallee pipeline as a community, with the local community funding a third of it, the Commonwealth government funding a third of it and the state government funding a third of it—a good model—we all decided that it was worthwhile investing, in some stages, between $7,000 and $9,000 a megalitre. That is how much value we as a community put on water. It is different to the Murray system; it is not high security. The benefits of that are currently being realised. With an extremely stressed river in the Wimmera, we now have water going to Lake Hindmarsh, and the Glenelg is a beneficiary as well—wonderful environmental outcomes. Government members accuse us on this side of scaremongering and not wanting to be part of it, but we have history behind us indicating that we are supporting the intention.

The member for Barker has made suggestions asking how realistic the target is. We can massage that, but I want the government—particularly you, Minister—to understand the traumatic state of mind for my irrigators, particularly in horticulture and particularly associated with Sunraysia at Mildura. I cannot get leave to attend the meeting. I hope my growers will be assured that the best place for me to be is here on my feet convincing you, because I need you, Minister, to develop a favourable outcome to this. Visit Sunraysia—and I invite the member for Wills to come up to Sunraysia. It breaks my heart, as someone who as a young fellow grew up in the region and went away for a university education, to drive around that district now and see dead vines and dead citrus trees. I do not want to see any more of that. I want to see them delivered an efficient supply scheme at a price that they can afford and for them not to be asked to contribute too much to the value of that infrastructure.

We have achieved that at Robinvale so far. I am pretty proud about that. It is a Second World War soldier settlement district. We have achieved it at Woorinen, which is closer to Swan Hill—a First World War soldier settlement. And I continue to put the argument that it was governments of those days that created these irrigation districts, for the right reasons, to give people returning from war a future, and I think it is right now for governments, after over 100 years, to rehabilitate the system and give them a modern supply system, which our competitors overseas have. In my days as a consulting engineer I used to host visits from the Israelis, who said, ‘In our country we cannot waste water like this,’ and we used their irrigation technology. That is all we are asking for: some recognition as irrigators in that region of the pain we have already endured. And we are looking for assurances that the government—particularly you, Minister—is going to get this one right.

See this speech in context