Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

But willing sellers, member for Wakefield, were only willing sellers in many instances because their banks were forcing them to pay back the debt that they had, and there were many of them who were not willing sellers. They wanted to get on with the job of farming as their fathers had done, as their grandfathers had done, as their forebears had done when they first settled in the Griffith, Leeton and Narrandera areas back in the early 1900s. They were sent there by government to grow the food to feed this nation, and the government of their nation turned its back on them and implemented bad water policy, which we are now trying to fix.

The key outcome sought from the legislation is the transfer of two statutory NWC functions to the Productivity Commission on an ongoing basis: the triennial assessments of progress by the National Water Initiative parties towards achieving the objectives and outcomes of the National Water Initiative and also the five-yearly audits of progress towards implementation of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. That is what the National Water Commission was doing. It was not an overarching body, as the member for Wakefield made out in his contribution. It was implementing those five-yearly audits of progress towards the implementation of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. It was set up, as the member for Wakefield quite correctly pointed out, in 2004 by the former Howard government, but only for a period of eight years. Now we are 11 years on. The National Water Commission has done its job and it is time to say: 'Farewell and thanks.' With that, I will now sit and I will allow the Parliamentary Secretary to sum up this important piece of legislation.

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