Damian Drum (Nicholls, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last Thursday, I had the opportunity to attend two separate functions in Shepparton. The first was an invitation by Brent Rothacker to attend the Victorian No-Till Farmers Association's annual conference. Over 200 members were there, eagerly awaiting each of the various presentations about how far the broadacre cropping sector had come with the different technologies that they now use.

The Victorian No-Till Farmers Association is a farming group led by farmers who are passionate about improving the natural function of our soils and landscapes by farming regeneratively. That involves reducing the reliance on synthetic fertilisers, herbicides and pesticides and substituting for them with biofertilisers and other methods to build soil biology, including increasing the amount of carbon that we hold in our soils.

The second forum was one held by the Goulburn Broken Catchment Management Authority and was mainly based on the environmental river flows on the lower Goulburn River. The forum was attended basically by environmental scientists, academics and stakeholders. One of the key topics of this forum was examining the findings of five years of monitoring the effects of environmental flows on the lower Goulburn River.

So, on the one hand, at one meeting, we had a group of farmers developing practical in-paddock farming systems to grow better food and fibre by improving soil health. These were real, hands-on, environmental farmers.

On the other hand, those at the lower Goulburn water forum were looking at how they were using 100 gigalitres of water—which, today, is valued at $60 million—and working out how they were going to use 100 gigalitres of water to repair the banks of the lower Goulburn River by lifting the seed to germinate on the banks. These river banks had been damaged slightly by trade flows—the high flows in the summer months. The absurdity of this is that, next irrigation season, the high flows of trade water are going to re-damage the banks, and yet we will have wasted $60 million worth of water that could have been so much better used had it been returned to agriculture. When you try to explain this to the dairy farmers who are desperate for additional water that they could purchase, they cannot believe it.

I walk on the banks of the Goulburn River most days when I'm in my electorate, because I live nearby. And the banks of the river are not so degraded that they need to spend $60 million worth of water to try to fix them.

I think all members of parliament should have a good think about this. We should realise that we need to place the health of our farmers above the health of our fish.