David Littleproud (Maranoa, National Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you. This is important. This goes to the very heart of what Labor has done. They have torn up the fact that we were going to get away from buybacks because they destroy the communities. The farmers might get the money, but it's the communities that are left behind. The irrigation shops, the machinery dealers and even the hairdressers are the ones that see that these communities are being ripped up. I've seen them in my electorate: the little towns like Dirranbandi and St George. This is nasty ideology that goes to the very heart of tearing up regional Australia.

You couldn't even wait for a Senate inquiry to complete going through the details, understanding the impacts of what this will do to these communities and why buybacks are so detrimental to these communities. You did not even give the respect of going out and talking to these very communities to understand the detrimental impacts this is having not just financially but emotionally. I have had people in my arms crying about losing their very businesses because of water buybacks, because of the destruction of their towns, but this reckless, nasty ideology that will just destroy regional communities is without any understanding and proper process even of wanting to understand and listen to these communities about. The buybacks that they will go towards in adding an additional 450 gigalitres on top of the plan will put sheer destruction through these communities, but there is not even the respect to understand that and go out and listen to these communities.

We were completing this plan with infrastructure and that has been delayed because of this little thing called COVID. There was no need to rush back into buybacks; we just needed to allow the states to build that infrastructure. I do acknowledge that government does want to extend that time for those infrastructure projects to be complete—and in a bipartisan way. It was me when I was minister, with the member for Watson, who was the shadow, that we got through the sustainable diversion limit legislation that allowed that to happen so that infrastructure could be used, not buybacks. Buybacks just don't make sense.

This has simply been about ideological views trying to tear up a bipartisan approach to what is not just important to the environment but important to our people. For those three million that live up and down the basin, their future has just been ripped away with the stroke of a pen by reckless ideology. Their peoples' future has been destroyed, and not even with a show of respect to turn up. This was a bipartisan plan. We were achieving it. We should be proud of what we have achieved. We should stick to the principles that we had when we all entered into this in 2012. They deviated from it for simple political gain, in one city alone, just for those that live in Adelaide. But, for the rest of this nation, you will also pay this bill, because your cost of living will go up. If you take away the tools that farmers need, then you will pay that consequence. This is reckless, nasty policy. This will be a dark day for every community up and down the Murray-Darling Basin. This is a day that we lost bipartisanship on the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, and that stands squarely at your feet.

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