Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. What action is the government taking to help rural and regional communities make the transition to a future with less water? Are there any impediments to this transition?

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Makin for the question. As a South Australian, he would have been alarmed to read in the Advertiser on the weekend the comments of the coalition spokesperson on water, suggesting that the solution for South Australians with what has happened with water was for them to move north. The government’s plan is to help people with the difficult transition. We have the Water for the Future plan within the Sustainable Rural Water Use and Infrastructure program and the water purchases under the Restoring the Balance program—which have all been water purchases from willing sellers. Let us not pass over the threat that we have in the Basin. Water going into the Murray over the last 10 years was at half the long-term average and over the last three years it was at one-fifth of the long-term average.

I am asked about impediments. I have to say—and this will probably not help me get another question here—that the Leader of the House has been saying something which I believe is untrue. He has been saying that those opposite say one thing here and another thing when they are away. Going through the transcripts on water, I have discovered that they say at least two things here and make hundreds of contradictory statements when they are away from here. In what was a carefully scripted, ‘gospel truth’ statement from the Leader of the Opposition on 14 January—all written out for the Sydney Institute—he said that, if the states have not given federal control by 2012, a coalition government ‘will put the appropriate constitutional change to the people at a referendum’. That was put forward as coalition policy.

The other part of that coalition policy is meant to be a group of nine people in this room, those known as the National Party. The Leader of the Nationals on 18 June on Sky News said ‘The Nationals have never been keen on the idea of a referendum.’ For the Nationals these issues came to a head in National Party heartland on the weekend when they held their conference in Canberra. Here in Canberra, in the lead-up to the conference, the member for Mayo—not usually an object of sympathy but for whom, on this one, I have some sympathy—held the line and committed to the importance of a referendum, just as his Liberal colleague Senator Birmingham started to describe the referendum as ‘only being a last resort’. But, as the National Party rolled the coalition’s view here in Canberra on the weekend, Senator Joyce—who is meant to be the coalition spokesperson on water, presenting the position of the coalition on water—said:

My view on a referendum is that it is the last proposition before the coming of Christ.

Keeping with the ‘gospel truth’ theme, Senator Joyce really said:

My view on a referendum is that it is the last proposition before the coming of Christ.

On water, those opposite have held every possible position, but let us not forget where this began. It began in a carefully scripted statement—the one we are told we are meant to be able to able to believe—which was presented not as a Liberal Party position but as a coalition position. For some reason, those opposite are willing to let nine people in this room dictate to the rest of their party everything when it comes to what happens outside the major cities.