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

'Nfp'—does that mean 'not-for-profit'? Well, if you google it and go to the Australian Taxation Office website, that's the first mention, talking about tax concessions and the like for those wanting to set up a not-for-profit. But, unfortunately, when you read Budget Paper No. 2 and turn to page 56, under the heading 'Murray-Darling Basin Plan—continuing delivery', 'nfp' refers to 'not for publication', and it's 'nfp' in 2024-25, 2025-26, 2026-27 and 2027-28. It says 'nfp' in the lines relating to the Department of the Treasury and the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water. Next to 'Total payments', there are dashes—dash, dash, dash, dash, dash. Do you get where I'm coming from? It's not for publication. Why? If it is so important to the Australian Labor Party and, apparently, to Australian people, why, in Budget Paper No. 2, would the water buybacks be 'nfp'? It is because Labor don't want you, the people of Australia, to know how much they are going to spend on ruining river communities, on destroying those once-vibrant regional towns and cities.

I live in the Murray-Darling Basin, and over and over again we see television advertisements paid for by taxpayer money from the department of climate change and others talking about 'our plan to protect, restore and better manage the Murray-Darling Basin for Australia's prosperity—a thriving, sustainable Murray-Darling.' I could go on and on but I won't. Well, that might all be well and good for those bureaucrats—I'll come back to those a little bit later—who sit on their shiny seats in Canberra, who think that our farmers are destroying the welfare of our river system and the livelihoods of those who live in the Murray-Darling Basin. Far from it. Unfortunately, our ministers are being led by the nose all too often by those public servants—we're going to get another 36,000 of them apparently—who very rarely get out of the bright shiny lights of Canberra and that is a shame. So what we end up with is 'NFP' in the budget paper when it refers to water buybacks. That could be code for anything but it is code for spending a whole lot of taxpayers' money on buying water back out of the system, just like earlier this year when we saw $205 million for 26 gigalitres a year. That 26 gigalitres a year is being used by farmers. That 26 gigalitres a year is growing food and fibre to feed and clothe Australians and many others besides. In the budget paper, it's 'NFP', because the government doesn't want our country people knowing how much they're going to spend. It will come with a very, very large cheque book.

As soon as people see the Commonwealth waving a very large wad of cash, there will be farmers who will sell their water and those farmers will leave those river communities whether they're in Deniliquin, Griffith or Hillston or Tocumwal; I could go on and on. But they will leave those irrigation and farming districts of the southern Riverina, the Riverina and right throughout the Murray-Darling Basin. It will have such an impact upon those communities, because the hairdresser will have fewer customers, the school will have fewer kids, the families will diminish in size, then the teacher numbers will reduce. The state school system will reduce the number of teachers in those classrooms. It will have an effect on the little cafes and coffee shops. It will have an effect right throughout, not just a rippling effect but a tidal wave effect in those smaller communities, and the smaller they are, the least they can afford to lose water out of their system. It's such a shame, but this is a government which shows scant regard for our agricultural communities.

Today is a day of shame—it truly is—because today legislation went into the House of Representatives to shut down the live sheep trade. The Nationals, the coalition, sensibly, wanted to send it to a committee for further investigation work to be done, for further research. No, the government didn't want this. They just want to ram this through, like they do everything. No doubt, they will gag the debate.

I'm actually pleased that I can speak on the appropriations bills this year, because last year we weren't given that opportunity, because Labor just cut it off. Of course, the coalition is never going to stop the appropriations bills because this is supply. I won't say 'confidence' because there is not too much confidence in the government at this time. But it does provide for Labor to have the opportunity to spend money on the sorts of things that it has a mandate to do. But when that mandate extends to NFP, they are not going to tell us and that is subterfuge. When it extends to $107 million to stop farmers doing what they have done for generations in Western Australia—that is, produce some of the finest sheep in the world and send them via ships, via boats, with the exporter supply chain assurance system in place to ensure that the sheep animal husbandry and welfare standards are first class, world class, internationally best standard.

And yet, what we will see now, when we ban the live sheep trade—and we will—is that trade being taken over by countries who do not have the same welfare standards for their sheep. We saw what happened in June 2011 when, as a kneejerk response to a television program on the ABC—haven't they been in a bit of trouble lately!—about the Indonesian cattle trade. That had a marked effect on the cattle sales in Wagga Wagga. Now Wagga Wagga is a long way from where those cattle were, but there was a fear, and markets are run by fear, that so many of those longhorn cattle were then going to come south because there weren't going to be the export markets for them in Indonesia, so goodness knows what will happen when the live sheep trade is phased out.

I did Paul Murray Live on Sunday night, and I do thank Sky News for coming to Parkes to promote the very best of what is in that Central West town. After the show, a young farmer pulled me up, bailed me up, in the Railway Hotel and he was vociferous in his criticism of Minister Watt. He was absolutely apoplectic about why the sheep trade was being stopped. He's a young bloke who's starting out, who's starry-eyed and bushy-tailed and looking forward to a career in agriculture. He knows, just like so many people in the Riverina and Central West do because it's a great sheep-producing area, that this decision by Labor will affect the price at the saleyards.

Wagga Wagga and Forbes are the top 2 livestock-selling centres in the Southern Hemisphere. They're No. 1 and No. 2 respectively. Sheep, cattle, livestock are big part of our local economy. We don't need to have the sheep price plunge. It was bad enough last November, without being affected by the live export trade, when sheep were selling in Wagga Wagga for a dollar a head because of all sorts of influences and outcomes. We don't need our farmers to work for nothing. None of the public servants here in Canberra would work for nothing, but they're the ones who are making the calls and ministers, being led by the nose, are following them.

Just last week, I had the good fortune to have Senator Deb O'Neill in Cowra to talk about the government funding for the swimming pool, which is being replaced at long last. It's been in operation for 60 years and Cowra deserves a new swimming pool—no question. The mayor, Ruth Fagan, was there. She's doing a good job as the new mayor; she's taken over from Bill West.

I've got respect for Senator Deb O'Neill, I do, but she had this to say: 'Since coming to government, Labor has made a really big effort to ensure that probity in all the decision-making about how funding is allocated is enlivened by our processes. I was actually part of the panel, which was a multiparty panel, and we had Independents in there and people from all over the country. And while I'm happy to endorse anything of merit that you put forward from Cowra council, I would never be able to assess anything from within New South Wales, so that is the process. I looked at literally hundreds of applications from all around the country and on merit. Those went through an EOI process and into the next phase where'—and this is the important line—'the department made an arm's-length decision about meritorious applications.' The department!

What I do find is that so many ministers, and you only have to look at the under-the-pump minister for immigration at the moment—who is running this country? Is it the bureaucrats? Bureaucrats who will never have their name on a ballot paper, who are faceless people. And while I've got respect for the process and I've got respect for public servants—I do. I was the Deputy Prime Minister for more than three years and Secretary Steven Kennedy and Secretary Simon Atkinson did a wonderful job in my portfolio area, as did the public servants under them, including Pip Spence, now the head of CASA. I have every respect for the role that they play, but it's not up to the public servants to run the country. It's the government. We are in a Westminster system. We've got a cabinet process. They shouldn't be, as public servants, deciding where regional funding is spent. The minister should have the final say because it's the minister who takes advice from, in this case, her members and members opposite—members across the aisles.

The difficulty with that process is that Labor always carried on a treat about probity et cetera when it came to regional funding, yet all those regional programs—and the member for Bendigo would agree with me here, no doubt; the member for Corangamite would too—no, you will. Trust me. Wait until you hear what I have to say. They are totally oversubscribed. Regional members, you'll get a program worth, let's say, $250 million and you'll get $1½ billion worth of applications. So you can't satisfy everybody. You can't please everybody.

Then, of course, it comes down to the question, 'Where are we going to spend the money?' As a minister, I endeavoured to do it in as fair a way as possible. But let me tell you: whilst you took advice from the bureaucrats, they didn't get the final say. The fact that Deb O'Neill couldn't have, wouldn't have or didn't have a say on those projects within New South Wales—because she's a New South Wales senator—I do find extraordinary. I did say I have respect for Deb O'Neill. She's actually a good friend of mine.

Well, she's a duty senator for Riverina and she was part of that process, member for Bendigo. But I find it extraordinary that we've got the bureaucrats making decisions, allegedly, in the immigration space. We've got bureaucrats making the calls on which regional towns will get funding and which regional towns won't.

Then, of course, we come to the communications area, where the shadow minister for communications, David Coleman, stood in the dispatch box just on Tuesday and talked about page 74 of the Auditor-General's report, saying that 'in Victoria 100 per cent of the funds'—this is round 6 of the Mobile Black Spot Program—'went to marginal seats and 100 per cent of them are in'—wait for it—'Labor electorates'. Who would have thought! Then he was talking about New South Wales, again saying that '100 per cent of the funds allocated went to marginal seats and 100 per cent of those went'—where do you reckon they went?—'to Labor electorates'. This is shameful. That's what the shadow minister for communications said. The government must apologise, and I agree with him.

This was totally a missed opportunity by Labor in the budget—a missed opportunity to protect our farmers, to support our farmers and to applaud our farmers for what they do. Why Labor is spending NFP money—that's code for hundreds of millions of dollars to buy back water to stop food production—is beyond belief. Why Labor is shutting out the sheep trade and having $107 million spent on that is appalling. And why Labor isn't addressing the cost-of-living issue, which began on their watch, is nothing short of abrogating their responsibility as a good government, but 'good government' and 'Labor' do not belong in the same sentence.

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