Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like you to close your eyes and let your mind take a journey back in time to 100 years ago. Life was much less frenetic yet in so many ways far tougher, especially in country areas. As much as 42 per cent of the Australian population lived in the regions then, compared with only one-tenth today. Labor's Andrew Fisher was in the second of his three stints as Prime Minister, and James McGowen was serving as the very first Labor Premier of New South Wales. McGowen had a bit of ticker. His government carried out an active policy of subsidising hospitals and dispensaries in order to bring about the realisation of universal health care, and he took it upon himself to settle a gas workers strike by threatening to replace them with non-union labour. His public works minister, Arthur Griffith, conducted the celebrated turning on of the water at the Yanco regulator on 13 July 1912.

This was obviously a government with a plan for the future—a far cry from now—because the Murrumbidgee irrigation scheme cost 25,374,000 pounds, which was quite an investment. Mr Griffith and two men who worked on the construction of the irrigation network, one of whom was Christopher Younger, winched open a sluicegate on the regulator to allow water to flow into the channels of the irrigation system for the first time. A contemporary report described the event thus:

Mr. Griffith said the irrigation land they hoped to open up was the best in the world, and this settlement should be as successful as any in America. It would be also an insurance to the Riverina pastoralists.

Then he set to work at the winch and in a few moments, with a noise of cheers, a wave of muddy red water broke out and along the surface of the southern channel.

It was a day of great joy for the district. It was the realisation of the vision of the pioneer dubbed 'the Father of the Murrumbidgee irrigation scheme', Samuel McCaughey. He was the first pastoralist to introduce large-scale irrigation to Australia. This Irish-born farmer's son landed in Melbourne in 1856 and headed bush immediately. In 1889 McCaughey purchased Yarrabee Station on Yanco Creek near Narrandera, in conjunction with his brother, John. In 1900 McCaughey bought North Yanco and at considerable cost built about 200 miles of channels and irrigated 40,000 acres. The success of this scheme prompted the New South Wales government to proceed with the dam at Burrinjuck, construction of which began in 1907. North Yanco, including the land on which the town of Leeton now stands, was later sold to the state for close to settlement.

Early European visitors had not held out much hope for the district now known as the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area. The Surveyor General of New South Wales, John Oxley, looking out from Mount Brogden in 1817 saw what he described as:

… a country which, for barrenness and desolation, can I think have no equal. I believe I am the first white man to ever view this desolate landscape and believe I will likely be the last, there is little probability that these desolate plains will ever again be visited by civilised man.

Charles Sturt was just as scathing in his 1829 assessment, yet within a century of these explorations life-giving water transformed once arid stretches into a fertile, bountiful region. Sir Samuel McCaughey, who was knighted in 1905, was right when he declared in 1909 that water was more precious than gold It is fitting that a statue of this remarkable man will be unveiled on 6 April in the Yanco park named in his memory.

The centenary of the turning on of the water was celebrated in style with a re-enactment of the historical events. The weather for last year's commemoration was just the same as it was 100 years ago to the day: sunny but cold with a who's who of politics and the local community turning out en masse for the occasion. The band played, speeches were given and the water which gave this once-bleak landscape life to produce food and underpin not just the area's economy but, indeed, Australia's, was let flow. 'This is a ceremony of gratitude,' said Governor of New South Wales and Narrandera girl Marie Bashir in a marvellous and captivating address. Professor Bashir talked about how optimistic, energetic and committed the pioneers were and said that the 2012 event would be something everyone should be sure to tell their children about. She said:

It's an emotional homecoming for me because I had the happiest of childhoods in this region.

Here we are participating in a ceremony of gratitude for the vision, the sheer hard work and the determination to turn this region into a veritable Garden of Eden.

This is a great Australian story – I can remember as a child coming to the farms at Leeton to get the fresh oranges and the wonderful apricots.

The need for sensible water policy and to strengthen irrigation was also mentioned often and loudly at last year's memorable ceremony. The motion before the House acknowledges that the MIA was created to control and divert the flow of local river and creek systems for the purpose of food production and is today one of the most diverse and production regions in Australia, contributing more than $5 billion annually to the Australian economy. The Riverina towns of Coleambally, Leeton and Yanco and the city of Griffith, proud communities all, were purpose built and designed as part of the project and are now some of the most thriving and multicultural regional communities in Australia.

Leeton takes its name from Charles Lee, who was Secretary for Public Works from 1904 to 1910, presiding over an extensive public works program including the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area, Cataract Dam for Sydney's water supply, construction of Burrinjuck Dam and the creation of the purpose built, Walter Burley Griffin designed town named in Lee's honour.

Griffith was named after the man who opened the gates on that great day in 1912. The Coleambally Irrigation Area scheme began in the 1950s with potential farmland made available through a ballot system. Those who entered the ballot had to establish that they were financially secure enough to set up a farm as none of the land had fencing or infrastructure. The successful ballot winners were also required to relinquish any other primary interests they had. For these hardy souls it would be all or nothing for Coleambally.

In essence, that is the way it has been for this entire region. Riverina irrigators have always given their all, yet in recent years these marvellous family farmers have not been shown the same faith by the federal government. Members of this place should appreciate that irrigation underpins national and international food security. Further, they ought to know that our irrigation industry in Australia fulfils its role as the food bowl of Asia. It is important to build our food processing industry so it can supply Asia's growing consumer markets and develop the research, technologies and logistics which strengthen irrigation, grow high-yield crops and improve safety.

Irrigation communities such as those in the Murrumbidgee and Coleambally areas as well as those in the southern Riverina around Deniliquin, of my colleague the member for Farrer, and the Goulburn-Murray of the member for Murray, need the Murray-Darling Basin Plan to be implemented in such a way that it does not destroy hard-won rights fought for and utilised to the betterment of this nation for more than a hundred years. The members for Farrer and Murray and I have argued passionately for a triple bottom line of social, economic and environmental outcomes during this 43rd Parliament as the basin plan neared its legislation. I moved to disallow the Basin Plan and had the motion seconded by the member for Murray. It was debated late afternoon on 29 November 2012, the last sitting day. The motion was lost, but it is better to have tried and failed than failed to have tried.

Ten days earlier I had written to the Prime Minister, inviting her to visit the Riverina to address a public meeting to assure the good people there that the hard work they do to help feed our nation and others is valued and that there is a strong future for them after the plan is legislated. I am still waiting to hear back from her office. In her 3 May 2012 speech to the Global Foundation summit in Melbourne the Prime Minister spoke of strengthening irrigation. Her 28 October Asian century white paper acknowledges the huge role Australia has meeting the global food task in the years ahead. Australia is best placed geographically and economically and with our agriculture industry already well established to more than meet the growing demand for food in Asia.

Happily, the Leader of the Opposition on 27 November 2012 made his strongest statement to date on water, saying a future coalition government would cap buyback at 1,500 gigalitres, meaning that with water already recovered there would be only 249 gigalitres to purchase basin-wide. Previously, the New South Wales Minister for Primary Industries had announced a limit on buybacks of three per cent per valley per decade from 15 January 2013. These assurances were welcomed by Riverina irrigators and certainly every Griffith farmer, whom the Australian Farm Institute says feeds 150 Australians and 450 farmers each and every year.

Just last Friday the Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities, in rejecting a bid by conservationists to lock out mining from Tasmania's Tarkine region, said:

From purely environmental terms, it would have been something that would have been a wonderful thing to be able to do but you have to take into account the impact on people and taking that impact into account meant that I simply couldn't go with the Heritage Council's recommendations.

As Elizabeth Stott, the wife of a Gogeldrie cotton farmer and a strident campaigner for fair water rights, said: 'I couldn't believe it when I heard those words come out of Minister Burke's mouth.' Unions strongly campaigned to allow mining. Australian Workers Union head, Paul Howes, said that the campaign to put the Tarkine region on the heritage register was run by mainland activists and would have been a disaster for Tasmania. Mr Howes further said:

What the Federal Government has done today is a huge win for the people of Tasmania and also for the future of the economic development of north-west Tasmania which sorely needs more jobs …

Given Tony Burke's alienation of irrigation communities during the Basin Plan process, an attitude many of my people saw as unfathomable and unconscionable, perhaps what was needed for their cause was to have the support of a trade union! Sadly, that seems to be the only thing which gets those on the other side moving. So I call on the parliament to support this motion celebrating the centenary of the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area, I call on members to show their support for the people who put food on their table and I call on the Prime Minister to implement the commitment to strengthen irrigation, as promised nine months ago.

Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Riverina for bringing this motion to the parliament. These are important issues that he raises; we all know the importance that water plays in our wide brown country—the very dry land that we have. The early farmers recognised that to survive in this naturally arid landscape the availability and control of our water systems and resources would be the key to successful food production. However, we live in a continent of extremely high rainfall variability, with long, severe droughts and massive floods, as we saw this year in Queensland.

It is not as simple as just controlling and diverting rivers. We have to understand the changes in the water cycles over time and how we can drought-proof regions, and each enterprise within those regions, for those years when drought hits hardest. We have to understand and continually research how we can improve our water usage and storage but, by the same token, we need to ensure that the communities around the rivers survive as they help to keep our waterways healthy and productive.

When the Prime Minister was talking at the Global Foundation Summit in Melbourne last year she said, when putting into context what had been quoted in the motion:

… it’s not just about more exports. It is about developing the systems and services that add extra value to them and participating in the development of a market-based solution to food security across the region. It would involve building our food processing industry so that it can supply Asia’s growing consumer markets and developing the research, technologies and logistics that strengthen irrigation—

make it better than it has been by using new technologies and being very innovative—

grow higher yield crops and improve safety.

So, while the Prime Minister is keen to see the research continue to further improve our production and the safety of our food, we cannot just continue to milk the Murray-Darling Basin without having a really good understanding and plan to ensure that we keep the river flowing too.

Recently, I received a book from Vicky Cullen, the wife of the eminent scientist Peter Cullen, who passed away a year or so ago, entitled, This Land, Our Water: Water Challenges for the 21st Century. I had had some correspondence with Peter over the years, and I was very pleased to receive the book. It is a collection of papers by Peter Cullen and some associates. I think Peter, more than anyone, knew that the science behind water allocation in the past had often been based on European knowledge and that we should be developing our own knowledge on the basis of what is known about Australia here and now, about our own climatic conditions, our own lands and our own river systems.

John Williams of the New South Wales Natural Resources Commission discussed this in his book on page 197:

Peter operated within the firm appreciation of our highly variable climate driving droughts and also flooding rains. He knew that we must work hard to go forward with management that can yield river systems resilient to the shocks of drought as well as massive floods which are often amplified by our engineering interventions. He knew that to perform that management with current climate variability would challenge our science and our society. Further he knew that to add to this mix the impact of climate change, our climate variability and changed probabilities distribution of our rainfall would stretch us to our very limits.

Of course, we see some of that constantly. He continues:

The slow and difficult progress strongly suggests that he was correct.

I would support the recognition of the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area centenary as a significant milestone in the development of Australian agriculture and food production. That river basin has acted as a food bowl for the whole of Australia for a long time. I believe it has played an important role in underpinning national and international food security, but it is not the only area that needs to be recognised, improved and researched. Our water table, river flows and rainfall on the eastern side of Australia need to be continually monitored and understood.

This government has introduced programs that have assisted and will continue to assist this process. In Tasmania, with the help of the state government, we have developed a series of irrigation schemes that will help the drought-prone areas of the Midlands and the east coast to become more self-reliant. Farmers have been persuaded to take part by investing in these schemes for the future on their own properties and many have undertaken to buy water rights. I believe there are still water rights that have not been completely taken up, but as the value of the scheme has become obvious I am sure they will be taken up. People are now starting to see the significance these rights can have for them in their enterprises.

This is a recognition that Tasmania has a lot of rain. I think we have 10 per cent of the rainfall of the continent of Australia on 1½ to two per cent of the landmass. It is a natural advantage, although looking at the dryness and the fires we have at the moment you would not think that is the case; but it is the case. So we have a great natural advantage and we now have the opportunity to use this water in our irrigation schemes to help produce food and make sure the economics of food production work very well.

Bringing water into areas that have been marginal has made a huge difference to the production of new lines, new crops and new ideas in Tasmania. These things are starting to open up and the water has given us the opportunity to open up bigger areas to produce more on a larger scale. Therefore those economics of size are working to benefit many people. This means a lot of jobs and a lot of opportunities, and a lot of these areas are in the great electorate of Lyons. I was very pleased that Mr Rudd, when Labor came to power, gave me the tick for this policy to come into being. The $140 million has been spent, along with the state contribution, in a very successful way. I am very pleased that farmers have been making their own investment in getting pivots and putting in infrastructure to make this become a reality.

For many years the Murray-Darling Basin was treated as though each river system ended at the state boundaries—the state started where the system ended and started again. It is one system, and we need to look at it as a national system, but there are four states involved. I have often said that they should probably give Tasmanians the job—as the honest brokers without any need or self-interest—of sorting this out for everybody.

It has been a long time getting to where we are with some of the ways forward. We do need to go forward, but we do need to recognise our history and the significance of this area. I am very pleased that you have brought forward the National Food Plan and the national plan into the future. I think we have great opportunities in Australia. Our food is safe and we have to continue that way. We have to meet the issues thrown up in the Asian century white paper. There are great opportunities for Australia into the future and we need to make sure that we get it right. But we do need to look at things that are contemporary for our own nation, such as what we know and what sciences we have, and utilise them for the future. I thank the member for Riverina for bringing this forward.

Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Childcare and Early Childhood Learning) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to support my colleague the member for Riverina and commend his work in representative politics around water irrigation communities and the people in his electorate that matter so much. I look forward, following the remarks of the member opposite, to the government supporting this motion when we vote on it in the House.

The value of agricultural production in my electorate of Farrer, part of the Murray-Darling Basin, is over $3 billion. The value of irrigated agriculture production is $1.8 billion—that is in the Murray and the Lower Darling. Those figures represent an enormous contribution to Australia's bottom line. People quote these figures, and I do too. We should also understand that they can increase, that we can do better and that we can, as farming methods improve, become much more productive.

When the national debate turns to water and the politics of water, members who represent irrigated agriculture get very frustrated. I would like to go back to the beginning and quote some lines from Henry Lawson, who in the last years of his life spent some time in the Yanco irrigation area near Leeton, a prohibition zone. In his famous poem, which he revised at that time, called Up The Country, he wrote:

I am back from up the country, up the country where I went

Seeking for the Southern poets' land whereon to pitch my tent;

I have shattered many idols out along the dusty track,

Burnt a lot of fancy verses—and I'm glad that I am back.

I believe the Southern poets' dream will not be realised

Till the plains are irrigated and the land is humanised.

The way the early explorers and poets would have seen inland Australia in the part of the southern Murray-Darling Basin that I represent would be nothing like it is today. Sometimes I think that there are people in Australia who do not understand the problem and would take us back to 13-inch rainfalls, scrub country, sheep and, clearly, towns which would be a fraction of their size.

The member for Lyons quoted Peter Cullen, whom I have a lot of respect for and have met many times during the debates on water in this place. The irony is that, when we talk about the politics of water, the national plan as put forward by John Howard and supported by me as a member in this place was about taking the politics out of water. Unfortunately, that has not happened. The plan as it stands is very much expressed in terms of flows at the end of the system in the Lower Lakes. While I have no issue with determining relevant levels of water at that point in the system, I do know that it is a political imperative that has been described by the minister instead of a complete, holistic picture of environmental watering. They say, 'We will deliver this much water to the bottom of the system eight or nine years out of 10.' That is a political objective; so the government's plan has been distorted from the very beginning.

I commend the motion to the House. I place on record in the strongest possible terms that the food-processing industry is vital to the people I represent; that value adding is something that we can do; and that the closer to the source of the primary product you do the value adding the more jobs and industry you get and the more efficient that activity.

The Prime Minister gave a speech in a summit in Melbourne on 3 May 2012 and made a commitment to strengthen irrigation. I have seen no evidence of that. As the government responds to this motion by the member for Riverina, wouldn't it be good if the Prime Minister reconfirmed that commitment and talked about what it really means, in light of a very flawed Murray-Darling Basin Plan, to genuinely support the farmers and the food producers and the communities that represent irrigation in Australia today. As my colleague has said, our irrigation industry fulfils its role as the food bowl of Asia. When you consider what we could produce, how we could export that product and how we could jump up to a completely different level, the figures I quoted at the beginning of this speech could become history and we would have a much higher value of irrigated agricultural production. I support the motion before the House and I look forward to the government's enthusiastic response.

Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I begin my remarks by commending the member for Riverina for putting forward this most important motion, which commemorates 100 years of the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area being established. I think it is a little ironic that Labor have run out of speakers—they have no-one to speak to this motion right now. One of their objections to the motion is that it is to remind the Prime Minister of her commitment—so called—to 'strengthen irrigation'. She stated this on 3 May 2012. We can see their level of commitment by the fact they do not even have any more speakers to this motion in the House.

I call on the Prime Minister to get serious about irrigated agriculture, because it is under extreme threat at the moment, compounded by the Murray-Darling Basin Plan but also by the carbon tax, which makes it prohibitive for anyone to use electricity or diesel, as our irrigators do. It puts an additional cost onto anyone trying to produce value for money when it comes to irrigated agriculture. Of course, this government is standing by, watching the dollar at current values make our exports non-competitive. It is standing by as we see labour prices going through the roof. Labour prices are exacerbated by the Labor government's failure to understand how penalty rates can kill off an industry which does not run nine to five, five days a week.

Irrigated agriculture covers less than 0.5 per cent of land across Australia, but on that 0.5 per cent of land we produce 28 per cent of the total gross value of all agricultural production. That statistic speaks for itself. If that statistic reflected the comparative value of the automotive industry in Australia, or of some other propped-up industry that the Labor government prefers, then we would all be celebrating—but no. It is 0.5 per cent of land that, with irrigation, is producing nearly one-third of the gross value of agricultural production.

I am shocked at what is happening in particular to irrigated agriculture in Victoria. As I celebrate with the member for Riverina the 100 years of the MIA, I point out that irrigation in Victoria began in 1886, some 30 years before it began in New South Wales. The irrigated agricultural area now managed by Goulburn-Murray Water involved a unique engineering feat which made use of gravity to take water from the south to the north, ultimately draining into the Murray River. It set about creating a densely populated great northern plains region in Victoria with irrigated dairy and fruit growing, supporting in turn some 23 food factories. Food manufacturing is, of course, extremely important in multiplying employment prospects in regional Australia. We now have the state-owned irrigation system managed by Goulburn-Murray Water trumpeting the fact that we have gone down from the 1,900 gigalitres of water that was available for irrigation before 2007. Now we are down to 1,000 gigalitres. That is a loss of 900 gigalitres and there is an expectation that we will lose even more before the business of shutting down the irrigation system is complete. The object of Goulburn-Murray Water is to reduce the size of the irrigation system by some 50 per cent. They are going to reduce—as they call it—the 'footprint' by approximately 50 per cent, pushing it back to the backbone. That means that the vast majority of landowners who are on the spurs are going to be, against their will in too many cases, converted to stock and domestic water only. That kills productivity. It kills jobs. It kills communities. It kills the very reason that we put all of that effort into fertilising, genetic diversity and development of our livestock, because there would not be any water security to make sure that at the end of the day we can finish the product off and send it to the market.

I have to say that this is a sad, sad era for irrigation in Australia. The Commonwealth government with its Murray-Darling Basin Plan has no sense of a triple-bottom-line approach. We could have had a great economic, social and environmental outcome if this government understood what was at stake and what was possible. Instead we see just attack upon attack on irrigated agriculture. Who knows where it will end—tragically in tears. I have no doubt there will be less production to meet that enormous food demand growing in the north of our region and fewer jobs in this country.

Debate adjourned.