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

Goulburn-Murray Water is a state owned water authority which manages the huge irrigation system of northern Victoria, a system which covers much of my own electorate of Murray. The area generates billions of dollars worth of manufactured and fresh food every year. The authority has been responsible for managing the storage and delivery of water through over 6,000 kilometres of distribution channels across an area roughly the size of Tasmania. They have been doing this for a number of years—the water system itself is over a century old.

Over 1,900 gigalitres of water were once available for growing the best dairy and fruit produce in Australia. Now there are only some 1,000 gigalitres, with an expectation that this volume will drop further, down to 900 gigalitres, in the very near future. That is less than half what was available some 10 years ago. You might be wondering how this has happened and why this has happened—this extraordinary reduction in water access—given that our part of northern Victoria has very low and erratic rainfall. Without a secure water supply, you simply cannot have the volumes of food production and food manufacturing we had for as long as those previous irrigation water volumes were applied to our land. Are we not supposed to be entering a golden era of new demand for high-quality food from the areas to our north—Asia, China and India? We are regularly told about the opportunities for growth in our markets and in the value of our exports.

Let me tell you about the policy failures which have turned a natural disaster—a 10- or 12-year long drought—into a long-term crisis for the economies of northern Victoria. In the generations when water was secure, food factories grew up in every country town in the Goulburn and Murray valleys. There the workers lived and raised their families in thriving communities as they provided a skilled and loyal workforce and all the support services. The local factories became famous, even iconic, Australian brands—Rosella, SPC, Ardmona, IXL, Devondale, Ibis and Bonlac. These brands were a guarantee of reliable quality and Australia's finest.

By 1998, the worst drought on record was well underway. For the first time the 100-year-old irrigation system failed. Farmers had zero allocations at the beginning of the season. In areas like the Campaspe and Loddon, there were no allocations for all of the irrigation season. At the height of this drought, with Melbourne, Bendigo and Ballarat also running short of water, pipelines were pushed into the failing Goulburn system to take water away from the struggling farmers and their towns and divert it to the city populations to the south. This 10-year drought lasted, ironically, until the worst floods on record arrived—in the summer of 2011 in the west and in the summer of 2012 in the east of the electorate.

To survive the drought, farmers bought in extra feed for their livestock or sent their livestock away on agistment. Farmers sold thousands of heifers to China and whole herds were trucked off to the Tongala abattoir to be processed into hamburger mince for export. Finally, even the abattoir ran out of dairy herds for slaughter. Despite their best efforts, farmer indebtedness rose steeply during the drought, often more than doubling. More than 1,000 families could only put food on the table by accessing the federal exceptional circumstances grants.

At the peak of the drought, the Labor government entered the farmers' water market, offering to buy the irrigators' high-security water entitlements at an inflated price for an environmental water pool. Many farmers were then forced by their lenders to sell some of their water entitlement to reduce their mounting debts. Others, exhausted financially, physically and emotionally, took the opportunity to sell all of their water, knowing it would mean the end of their food production capacity but at least perhaps the survival of their marriage or their children's future livelihood.

In 2006, in the northern Victorian shires of the City of Greater Shepparton, Moira, Campaspe, Loddon and Gannawarra, 2,721 properties were devoted to dairying. That had halved by 2008. You might think our troubles are over now—the drought is over, the floods are over—but, no, they are not. Now we have the Victorian government continuing to want to halve what is left of the irrigation system, forcing irrigators to sell up their water and to convert from irrigation to stock and domestic only. This policy is designed to rescue Goulburn-Murray Water, a state owned monopoly, from its soaring debts and costs. It is a policy failure and a tragedy of the worst order. It has to stop. I call on the Victorian and federal governments to do much better. (Time expired)