Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Hansard source

I already have. Mind my passion on this. I withdraw it. The member can probably understand my passion, given what farmers in my electorate are about to go through. They are about to be shunted off their land.

If you don't care about those farmers then spare a thought for those consumers who are going to walk into supermarkets and be confronted with a wall of produce—fresh fruit, vegetables and nuts—courtesy of jurisdictions overseas. That's the reality here. Those opposite talk a really strong game about Australian made, but what about Australian grown? And by the way, you'll be lucky if you can afford those fruit, vegetables and nuts because, of course, they will be much more expensive. That's the pure reality.

I want to spend the time I've got left asking something of the South Australian minister for the environment. The South Australian minister for the environment, unlike the Victorian minister responsible in this space, hasn't done any modelling of what impact this will have on South Australians. The Victorians have done that. That's why they're opposed to this approach. They say that it will increase the cost of temporary water by $72 a meg; that it will cost the Victorian agriculture industry about $400 million. That's every year, each and every year—$400 million. That work hasn't been done in the South Australian context as the South Australian minister for the environment champions this cause.

I'm going to ask something of the South Australian minister. Through you, Mr Deputy Speaker Goodenough, I want her to make a commitment to South Australians that none of this water will come from South Australia. You see, the Australian Labor Party wants South Australians, particularly in South Australia, to think that this is a zero-sum game for South Australia, that all of this water can be recovered from those horrible nasty irrigators in New South Wales and Victoria, and perhaps Queensland. If that's what the South Australian Labor Party believes, make it thus. Give us a commitment that none of this water will come from South Australia. Protect South Australians who, like the member for Boothby acknowledges, are at the end of the pipeline. Give South Australians that comfort. I would welcome that announcement. So my challenge to Minister Close is to reassure South Australians that they're not about to lose Renmark and, indeed, the whole of the Riverland irrigation districts by removing this water from them. Take it from those upstream states.

My personal position, and this is why I am opposed to the bill, is that we should only do this if we can recover this in a socioeconomically neutral way. There are programs like 3IP, where farmers were offered capital in return for the water savings that capital delivered. If I can deliver water to an orange grove in a more efficient way and save water by using that technology, and that cost can be borne by the Commonwealth, then in return the Commonwealth can have the water saving. That's how you deal with this challenge in a way that doesn't kill communities.

The alternative is the option that those opposite are taking—that is, coming into a community that is suffering desperately because of low commodity prices and getting them to sell you their water. And by the way, once that water has left the consumptive pool, let's call it the irrigation pool, and been placed in the Environmental Water Holder's hands, it can never go back. It will never be used for production ever again in this country. So while those opposite want to talk about food security provenance, you can't do it without water. So instead of working with irrigation communities to make their enterprises even more efficient and offer up the dividends to the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder, we have a circumstance where they're going to come into communities and purchase the water from what they say are willing sellers. I encourage the member for Boothby to go to the Riverland and talk to red-wine producers. They're the kind of willing that comes with utter desperation. It's akin to saying to someone who had to sell their home and is now living rough on the streets, 'Oh well. You were a willing seller.' It's disgraceful.

While I'm here, can people stop using the argument that we're prepared to sell water to foreign investors but not to our own government. The reality is we want this water to remain in the consumptive pool. We want it to sustain river communities just like we want it to sustain the environment. The very people who irrigate from this river are the people who were working on salt interception schemes before the Murray-Darling Basin existed. These people care about their communities. They're connected to the land. When our Indigenous brothers and sisters provide a welcome to country, I listen. They talk about their connection to their country. My irrigators are just as connected to their country. The difference is that this government is going to walk into their kitchen-dining room, offer them a cheque and tell them to pack their bags and leave. It's a sad day for Australia.

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