Kay Hull (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in the House today to raise the plight of the farmers, the businesses and the communities across my electorate of Riverina as a result of this devastating drought. At the outset I say to the House that this drought has impacted on and affected almost every person in my electorate and beyond; I am sure that it is impacting on every other electorate. At this point I am very concerned about the way in which communities are managing.

There is such a resilient and positive attitude in our communities. Get-togethers are being organised in most communities across my electorate. Somebody in the community is organising sausage sizzles, steak sandwiches, a beer, so that people can come together and talk about the issues that are confronting them in this very significant time of drought. That is providing some assistance, benefit and strong support for many of those who, at times, are quite paralysed because they simply do not know where to go next.

This government has done a lot. I would like to openly congratulate the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, the Hon. Peter McGauran, for his application in ensuring that EC is available to as many people as possible. I thank the Prime Minister for, as usual, undertaking to go out and look at the issues firsthand, along with the Deputy Prime Minister, the Hon. Mark Vaile, just to see what is taking place. I sometimes think that people living in city areas simply have no concept of how their goods get to the supermarket shelves so that they can purchase them on a weekly basis. My plea in this House today is that, unless we all want to walk around naked and emaciated, we need to look at the benefits that producers from right across Australia provide to the people of Australia and to the international market as well.

In just one of the dryland areas that I represent, in a draw zone centred around Temora, in November-December 2005, which was the first cropping year they had had in five years, they delivered in excess of 500,000 metres of grain to their delivery site. That represented an extensive amount of money that came back to the community after a long and protracted drought period. But this year, the same draw zone is estimated to deliver only 10,000 metres as against 500,000 metres last year. The recovery period for this dryland area, which is probably one of the worst affected areas—around Ariah Park, Temora, Ardlethan—is just extraordinary. They simply cannot get on their feet. If you drive through the electorate, you see paddock after paddock of dry, dusty earth, with absolutely no covering on it at all.

Our sheep and cattle sales are the highest on record. You wonder how people who have spent their lives building up their breeding herds are ever going to be able to start again. But they will. If the rain comes and assistance is provided for them to be able to stay on the land, they will come back. They always do, because that is the nature of farming.

In dryland farming we are used to drought and to crops being totally ravaged by the lack of water. If we look at the irrigation areas, we have seen the absolute decimation of our crops in those areas. Much of that is due to the cuts in our water allocations. Our irrigators have had progressive cuts over a number of years. They have managed; they have cut off water to many of their bays and they have decided to grow only the amount of crop that their water supply can sustain. So for those irrigators it has been a matter of remaining sustainable. They were given the figure of 24 per cent that they would have from the Murrumbidgee to grow this year’s crop. Many of them looked at efficiencies, put together their crops and decided how many bays they would be able to accommodate with their 24 per cent allocation to bring them a return. They did their figures regarding fertiliser, seed and inputs and said, ‘If we can get 24 per cent of our water, as we’ve been guaranteed, we can still deliver to not only our families but our surrounding communities who are absolutely reliant on us getting a crop.’ Only six weeks after the farmers had planted, having seen their rice and corn coming through and looking beautifully healthy in the amount of beds that they could afford to plant with a 24 per cent allocation, we then had another six per cent reduction, down to 18 per cent. Then, straight on top of that, there was a reduction to 15 per cent.

Whilst I recognise that the New South Wales state government has to make very hard decisions because of the amount of inflow to the dams, in essence it has taken its eye off the ball on this issue. It was in a no-win situation; the water simply was not coming in. Somebody took their eye off the ball, and only six weeks after my farmers put all their inputs in the ground. I remind this House that they would never have planted if they had not had that reliable figure provided to them by the Department of Natural Resources and the state government.

What we have now is a catastrophe. All of this water—an extraordinary amount of water—that has been applied to the rice, the corn and the other irrigated crops is now a total waste. About 20,000 hectares have been planted with rice alone. They have incurred costs of about $1,000 per hectare. There is about $20 million in lost opportunities. They have used 50,000 megalitres of water, and that water carried a price of about $400 a megalitre. That is a total of about $20 million worth of water and it will not yield a crop. So where is the waste? The waste is the water that was allowed to be put onto the crops. The waste is the inputs that were put in, with every good intent, by my farmers and producers. They now find themselves in a position where they simply have nowhere to go.

There is every good reason why the New South Wales state government should offer compensation for the water that was taken away from our producers. It is an absolute crisis but there has been no offer from the New South Wales government. In fact, the Labor Party voted down a motion in the New South Wales parliament that sought compensation or financial assistance for farmers for the water that was lost as a result of reductions in their allocation, which was through no fault of the farmers. I implore the New South Wales government to look at the compensation that really is deserved by the irrigators and to seriously consider assisting my growers across the Murrumbidgee area so that they are able to provide for their communities and their families in the coming years. This is a major drought and something that is devastating to all of my communities. (Time expired)