Andrew Broad (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources. What is the government doing to ensure that all Australians, including the great Australians in Mallee, have access to a reliable water supply? Is the minister aware of any threats to the effective delivery of affordable and reliable water supply infrastructure?

Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for his question. I realise that he has a strong understanding of water infrastructure, especially with what we have done with Sunraysia and the capital improvements there that have brought a better efficiency for water—and efficiency at the right price. It is very interesting that he would have that interest, because we are very aware of the Labor Party policy to take $235.2 million from the water infrastructure fund. They obviously do not believe in building water infrastructure. They do not believe in dams. But they do have a belief in some forms of water infrastructure.

Back in 2007, when certain individuals were running around telling us it was never ever going to rain again, the Labor government in Victoria chose to build a desalination plant. It was going to cost $2.9 billion. Then it was going to cost $3.1 billion, then $3.5 billion and then ultimately $4 billion—a 38 per cent increase in the cost of the plant. The proposal was so wild that even the Greens gave up on them, because, as we know, desalination is merely bottled electricity.

The plant costs $1.8 million every day now, and how much water is this plant producing? Not a drop—$4 billion and it does not produce a drop of water. But it gets much better than this, of course. Just recently Premier Daniel Andrews has wanted to basically prove its worth, so he ordered $27 million worth of water—50 gigalitres—to be delivered this summer. Now, what we have actually got for this $1.8 million, where you get nothing, is you ask: how did we get this cost blow-out?

Well, back in 2011, during construction, the CFMEU went on strike and defied the orders of Fair Work Australia to return to work, and the cost went up to $5 million a day. They went on strike despite the desalination plant being affectionately known as 'Treasure Island' by construction workers, given its generous conditions—condition so generous that plant workers reported that ice and strippers were made available during midweek parties. The shop steward for the CFMEU at the desalination plant had previously been convicted and given a 5½ year jail sentence for his role in importing $147 million worth of cannabis. Now, I have always thought that the Labor Party needed stronger connections to business, but this is not quite what I had in mind!

So, what do we get for the $1.8 million-a-day white elephant? Well, no doubt we know what the CFMEU got. We know what the CFMEU got, and they paid for it with a $2.13 million donation to the Labor Party over the last five years—and to others and to the Greens. For all of that, we got 130 CFMEU representatives before the courts. They stand accused of 1,129 breaches of the law.