Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This week has seen the water minister, the environment minister, introduce to the parliament the Water Amendment (Restoring Our Rivers) Bill 2023. It should be called the 'Water Amendment (Destroying Our River Communities, Farmers and Food Security) Bill 2023'. With due deference to you, Deputy Speaker Archer—I know we're not allowed to use props—and due deference to the members for Macnamara and Hawke opposite, this is the new map of Australia, according to Labor. It is a country without Victoria, because it is a Murray-Darling Basin plan with Victoria excluded.

I don't know how you can have a Murray-Darling Basin plan without Victoria, and I don't know how you can have a plan without one of the Labor states. More's the pity that each and every one of the mainland states are under Labor governments. But wouldn't you possibly think that, if Labor were to introduce a Murray-Darling Basin plan, it would include all the Murray-Darling Basin states? No, this is the new paradigm.

I am absolutely intrigued by a book I purchased for way too much money. I hope my wife doesn't find out; I hope she doesn't read Hansard. It's a book written by Ernest Favenc, published in 1888, called The History ofAustralian Exploration from 1788 to 1888. It's dedicated to the Hon. Sir Henry Parkes, the oldest ruling statesman in Australia, and it was supported by the then New South Wales government. Interestingly, in its conclusion, the author writes:

By close comparison of the work done by the men who have laid bare so many of the secrets of the interior, and by deductions to be drawn from the physical conformation and climatic peculiarities already revealed, we may, to some extent, conjecture the possibilities of the future. With every variety of climate between temperate and tropical, with enormous mineral treasures—the extent of which, even at the present time, can only be conjectured—boundless areas of virgin soils, and a coastline dotted with good harbours and navigable rivers, we have all the elements of a nation yet to take rank among the recognised powers of the world.

He continues on, and, interestingly, says—

Many a dry watercourse, that is now but a slight depression, could be utilised as a channel for conducting the flood waters to the back country. What would be impossible in an island of bold mountain ranges, becomes easy in the flats of our dry interior.

He continues—

In the dry inland plains, a water supply that will relieve the frontage from overstocking during the droughty months, means the preservation of some of our most valuable indigenous fodder plants.

He talks about water security. He talks about water infrastructure, as such. Then, they had it. They knew it. They understood it. Yet, now, we seem to not understand it. We don't get it because we have this absolute innate refusal to build dams. Try as I might to get states on board when I was infrastructure minister, though I was lucky with Tasmania—they built the Scottsdale dam from start to finish during my time as the infrastructure minister, so good on Tasmania, and good on the Liberal government there—none of the other states seemed to want to get on board with the same passion that the Commonwealth government of the time had.

This latest plan being introduced by Minister Plibersek has the capacity to take an additional 450 gigalitres out of the system. I don't know how you push that much water, almost a Sydney Harbour's worth of water, through the system, through those low-lying areas, through those river flats, through those caravan parks, through the Barmah Choke, through the bridges and through the roads. I don't understand that. Maybe somebody smarter than me—and there are plenty of them—may have that answer. I don't understand how you do it. I also don't understand how you take away up to 75,000 hectares of fruit growing areas, horticulture and vineyards, and then expect people to pay the same amount they are now at the grocery checkout. It's simply not going to happen. We're in a cost-of-living crisis. People are going to have to pay more because there's going to be less food. Why we, in a situation where the world is crying out for more food security, are making plans to grow less of it makes no sense to me. And it makes no sense to me that we are going to lower our exports as well. This is a bad plan and it should be condemned.