Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Manufacturing) Share this | Hansard source

I commend the member for Wakefield for bringing this matter before the House because it is important for South Australia. Next month, the Holden plant at Elizabeth will close and, with it, thousands of jobs will be lost and hundreds of small businesses will struggle to survive because the Turnbull and Abbott government turned their back on auto workers in this country. The Turnbull government has known for three years about the impending closure, yet it has done very little to support the workers who are likely to lose their jobs or the businesses that will struggle to continue to keep their doors open. The pittance of support that has been provided to South Australia through the automotive Growth Fund has been nothing more than tokenistic rebadging of regular government industry assistance programs. Even more disappointing is that one of the industry sectors that is able to grow, that has been saying for years that it can grow and that has been neglected by the Turnbull government, is the irrigators in the northern Adelaide plains. The GM workers live in the very region in which these irrigators operate, and they could transition to jobs that would be created, if there were growth in this sector.

Food growing in the northern Adelaide plains isn't just about growing; it also creates opportunities for food processing and the export of South Australian food. The only thing that is stopping the expansion of many of the operators that are currently there—and I have spoken to them at length about this—is access to more water. They have limited water supplies. Indeed, one of the growers that I spoke to said that he has an application ready to go to expand his operations by hundreds of additional hectares if he could get water, and that water would depend on the extension of the Bolivar pipeline that currently goes out into the region. Those growers have been calling for that support for years. It's something that has been known, and Labor went into the last election with an $80 million commitment to extend that irrigation pipeline.

Finally—and I say finally because it has taken this government four years to do something about it and come to the party—the Turnbull government has committed $46 million to assist with the extension. It is not even half of the $110 million that the state government is going to provide for the same purpose. And it is four years of wasted time that could've been used to have the pipeline operational and ready to go right now, in time to provide jobs that will be needed as a result of Holden closing. It has been four years of wasted time that we will never get back. But it should come as no surprise to anybody that this government has turned its back on South Australia. It has done so the entire time it's been in office.

It has particularly turned its back on South Australia when it comes to agriculture. We have an agriculture minister who has never shown any support for South Australian irrigators. His track record on the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, and his disregard for South Australia, speaks for itself. We debated matters related to that only a couple of months ago, where it was absolutely clear that the agriculture minister is only interested in the eastern states. When the South Australian farmers were flooded out last year, we saw a visit by the Prime Minister but we saw no real support for the farmers at all. Since that visit I have spoken to growers who were very disillusioned by the fact that the Prime Minister was prepared to go out there and claim that he was going to give them whatever support the government could, and yet they have since seen nothing.

The $46 million will help extend the pipeline, and it will create some immediate growth opportunities, but, sadly, it won't be for another two years. The northern Adelaide growers know their industry well; they are experienced operators. They also know the potential for growth in the export market. It's an industry sector that will, in fact, create a flow-on of jobs right across transport, irrigation, construction, packaging, machinery, fertilisers and the like, so it will create jobs for the very people who are likely to be made redundant as a result of the closure of Holden. Being located close to road, rail, sea and an airport, the opportunities for exports are indeed there. But the government has only belatedly committed to the funding because it was embarrassed into doing so by the announcement by Labor earlier this week. It's always been Labor that has led the way in supporting Adelaide's northern plains irrigators and small business operators. (Time expired)

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