John Cobb (Calare, National Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture and Food Security) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Monaro might not like it but it is a fact. As somebody from a so-called regional electorate, he ought to know better than to poke fun at the cost of living of people in regional areas. We all know very well that, with the issue of debt, it is the ordinary people who have to pay it. This government and their union mates believe that it does not matter how much they borrow, because big business will pay it back. Everybody knows that the people who really struggle to pay off debt under a high tax regime are the ordinary workers who pay their taxes every week—and that is a fact. That is what is occurring in the electorates of Calare and Monaro, and you had better start thinking about it.

As well as that, let us look at the fact that everybody has to eat food and that prices for food are going up and will continue to go up. Let us also look at what has gone on in the Murray-Darling Basin, where a high proportion of fresh food is being produced. The previous minister, Senator Wong, was not terribly concerned about what happened to ordinary Australians, or what they did or what they paid. She just wanted to take all the water from the basin. However, we now have a new minister, the member for Watson—the minister for water and various other things. Should he inspire confidence in us? I doubt it. In his time as Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, in one year he took $1 billion out of his portfolio—a portfolio that concerns the very people who produce the food, the best food in the world, and that keeps food prices down—and gave it to Treasury and various other people. He took money away from the CSIRO. He took money away from R&D. He now proposes to cut half the amount of R&D money that goes to industry to keep the costs down so that people wanting to shop in supermarkets do not go broke at the thought of walking in there, let alone paying for anything. Let me talk for a moment about where we are going with the water cuts and what effect this will have on food production. If you take 30 or 40 per cent of the water out of the basin, you are taking about 10 or 15 per cent of all the available fresh food in Australia.

One of the other huge over-costs that this government is wearing is the boat people who are coming to Australia. The government is blowing a billion dollars there. But the biggest refugees in Australia are the political refugees who have come from Sydney to Canberra, and the member for Watson, the Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities, is one of them. Three years ago he woke up to what was going on in New South Wales and he got out. He came from the upper House there to the House of Representatives in Canberra. That man is a protege of Joe Tripodi and Eddie Obeid. It is not really a great recommendation for somebody to talk about policy and not just about politics—and that is all he is worrying about. He is a protege of the New South Wales Right. It is not something that I would want to skite about in any parliament of Australia. He got out because he knew what was going on.

There have been two federal elections since the last state election, and the Joe Tripodis and the Eddie Obeids are getting out too. People talk about having confidence in the minister for water; it is not just about his handling of the basin. He and his predecessor knew what that report was going to show before it was tabled. Do you really think the authority would not advise the minister how drastic that was going to be? Of course they did. You would sack them if they did not. Yet one did not give a damn and the other one looked at it and thought he would get away with it. The minister for water did not even care about it from the point of view of food prices or what it would do to the basin until such time as he suddenly realised that the average Australian is a fair dinkum person and believes in a fair go. Suddenly, they realised they were in trouble with the Australian media in the main cities, not just with the two million people in the Murray-Darling Basin. Now they are saying, ‘We’d better have a look at it.’ Well, he had better do that in a hurry.

This government have empowered the Greens; they are pursuing policies in agriculture, mining, forestry and transport that are being pushed by the Greens. These policies will not just lift prices on electricity and food; they will send them through the roof. It is Christmas and people have stopped buying because they know what is coming. (Time expired)

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