Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Mr President, I ask a supplementary question. Why does the minister say that the biggest problem is the drought, when every expert on the ground in ecology and farming says it is not the drought but the siphoning of water by the big overseas-owned cotton-growing combines which is destroying the wetlands? Would the minister answer the question about the impending complete destruction of the breeding of the egrets in the Macquarie Marshes? Would the minister inform us why it is that better grazing management practices are being implemented but nothing is being done to compensate the graziers who have been denied water in the Macquarie Marshes region and have lost half their income because it has been given to those big cotton combines upstream?