Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Hansard source

With all due respect to you, they are annual progress reports on buybacks. The annual progress reports will include an annual update on water taken out of the productive system, which is code for 'buybacks'—which is buybacks.

Well, it's projects. Thank you, water minister. It is projects which were in place. It's progress and projects which were in place with the neutrality test and which were in place with the clear say-so of states which the former government was working with very closely—Labor states included, noting very carefully and in a very considered way that Victoria is not part of the plans that are in place to change the entire Murray-Darling Basin Plan. A Labor state!

Yes, we want progress. We do want progress reports. We do want updates, but we don't want to see updates on water buybacks because we don't want to see buybacks. That's because buybacks are going to take more productive water. When we have a cost-of-living crisis, we do not want to see everyday, ordinary Australians and families paying more at the checkout for their fresh food and groceries. That's what will happen. The member for Lyons can shake his head all he likes, but that is what will happen. When you take more productive water out of the system, the price of food will go up. And the buybacks will see, yes, farmers selling their water.

Once the Commonwealth enters the water market, it distorts the price of water. The price of water goes up and everybody suffers. They sincerely do. Farmers take the money and run, and they leave communities like Jerilderie, Cobram, Griffith, Narrandera, Leeton, Coleambally and Whitton, where the Indigenous affairs minister is from. She would well know how important this is to a community such as Whitton, in the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area. We don't want to see those effects on communities which are already crippled by hardships and which are still getting over the last drought. Let me tell you: this will cause another drought—a man-made drought. A drought will be brought on by none other than the member for Sydney, the water minister. This is so unnecessary. Yes, progress reports are important, but buybacks should not be part of the current or future Basin Plan.

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