Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

That was only because they wanted more water. Yes, that was very interesting of them. If they had their way, things that they call 'diversions' and that we call roads, towns and bridges in the Riverina would be constraints on the Murray-Darling system. I am glad you raised that because, honestly, there are so many people who are worried that their farms are going to be flooded because of these environmental water plans that your government in conjunction with the Greens have put in place. It is just a disgrace. You know it, I know it and the member for Dawson certainly knows it.

We saw this last year in the debate about the supertrawler. We saw that that vessel was encouraged by this government to fish in Australian waters and, because of a social media campaign, the minister at the table acted, and all of a sudden we saw legislation to stop the supertrawler rushed into the House, along with all the other legislation that gets rushed into this House due to some knee-jerk reaction from this government. Honestly, if you want to get policy into this place, start up a Twitter campaign. Get on Twitter and bombard the government, because that is all they react to. It is not good public policy; it is Facebook and social media that are running this government. We saw it with the Four Corners program. Because it was on air on the ABC, all of a sudden the Prime Minister banned the live cattle trade. There was no consultation with industry. They just brought it in and industry is still feeling the full effects of that dreadful legislation.

Mr Kelvin Thomson interjecting—

I hear the parliamentary secretary at the table calling out something. He has been promoted to a role in trade and, unfortunately, he is very against the live cattle trade. I can hear him saying something. Tell that to the Aboriginal stockmen who have been put out of their jobs. Tell that to the trailer manufacturer in my electorate who has had stock crate orders stopped from above. Tell that to the—

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