Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you for the opportunity for a constituency statement. I want to talk about the most important thing to the economic activity in my electorate of Nicholls, which is irrigation. Back in the late 1800s, the Victorian government looked at opportunities to divert water out of the rivers to grow crops on the very fertile soils of the Goulburn Valley. Back in the old days, it was done with a horse and cart, taking tanks of water to crops. But then it became a gravity-fed irrigation system of channels, which takes water to farms right across the Goulburn and Murray valleys.

What did this lead to? It led to the production of fruit crops, particularly apples, pears and peaches. At the time, which was around the end of World War II, we had to find a way of preserving a lot of those fruit products because we couldn't effectively get them as a fresh product to the markets where they were required, so SPC was born—a fruit preserving company and a great success story of Australian business. The water irrigation water helped to grow pastures for the dairy herds, and a wonderful milk industry developed around my electorate. Milk factories sprung up everywhere, taking not only fresh milk but creating products like cream cheese and a number of export products. The chances are that, if you're having a pizza somewhere in South-East Asia, the mozzarella could be from my electorate of Nicholls—thanks to irrigation. As we've gone from surface irrigation, we've moved to more efficient irrigation, using drip irrigation and sprinklers to irrigate fruit crops and overhead pivots and subsurface drips to irrigate broadacre crops. There have been a number of upgrades to the system, which continue to add to the economic viability of the region that I come from.

Probably more than the economic activity and more than the great food that we produce for the region has been the opportunity for waves of migrants to come to the Goulburn Valley, often with nothing, to make wonderful businesses and wonderful lives. We've seen it through the Albanian communities, even prior to World War II. We've seen it in the southern European communities, after World War II. We've seen it in the Indian communities, the Middle Eastern communities and, more recently, in the African communities. They come because of the irrigated agriculture that provides economic activities—

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 16:09 to 16:22

The hard work of our irrigation pioneers and the waves of migrants bringing prosperity and a beautiful society to the region of the Goulburn and Murray valleys has created something very special, and that has been thanks to irrigated agriculture. Thank you.

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