Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to live in an Australia where you can still buy Aussie fruit and vegetables and do it affordably. Last month, the Minister for the Environment and Water visited South Australia and informed South Australians and other basin communities that she was going to meet the 450 target. She was going to do it using buybacks, despite having told river communities during the election campaign that they were safe with her and that she wouldn't use buybacks. That announcement took place on the banks of a river—the River Murray, you would expect. No—it was the Torrens River in Adelaide, wasn't it? Wrong river, Minister! She didn't have the guts to come to a river community and tell them that she was going to rip the guts out of that community.

Have the guts, Minister, to come to Renmark. Go interstate to Mildura, Griffith or Shepparton. Visit these communities and understand what you're going to do to them, because an irrigation community without water is a desert. The member for Boothby, who is sitting opposite, should travel to the Riverland—it's close to her electorate—and have a think about who produces the fruit and vegetables that she wants her constituents to buy. The reality is that you're condemning them to a future of buying foreign fruit and vegetables while farmers are being pushed off the land. If you think you're getting away with this, think again!