Bill Heffernan (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Like me, thank you, Senator McLucas. There is not actually anyone from the government who lives in and/or makes a living from the bush, with great respect, but that does not mean to say that some people that represent in a ministerial sense are not having a go. It is a great pleasure for me to talk about the challenges for rural Australia and I intend to define some of the issues that need to be fixed. The greatest challenge facing rural and regional Australia without a doubt is the changes to the planet and the way they are going to affect rural and regional Australia.

Even if you believe a quarter, a fifth or 10 per cent of what the scientists are telling us—all science has vagary, all human endeavour has failure—in 50 years time, 50 per cent of the planet will be water poor. This is on the assumption that we are going to grow the population from six billion to nine billion; there will be a billion people unable to feed themselves; 30 per cent of the productive land of Asia will disappear, where two-thirds of the world’s population is going to live; the food task is going to double; and, at the top of the actuarial assumption on the science, 1.6 billion people will be displaced on the planet. If you bring that down to the science on Australia, the scientists are saying that in southern Australia, and particularly in the southern parts of the Murray-Darling Basin, there will be a decline in the run-off of somewhere between 25 and 50 per cent. That relates to between 3,500 and 11,000 gigalitres less water in a run-off that is presently 23,000 gigalitres, which is 6.2 per cent of Australia’s run-off.

With regard to reconfiguring rural and regional Australia in the face of climate change—I am not interested in what causes climate change; there has been too much debate on what is causing the changes in the weather and whether it is a 10-year or 20-year cycle; I am interested in what we are going to do about it, which is why I talked the previous government into the northern task force. Let us talk about cutbacks. The first cutback that came to my attention was the $20 million we put into the northern task force. They took all but $700,000 out of the northern task force and left it to waddle on its own. It has not had a meeting since we lost government. The great challenge for Australia is to continue to be what it has been in the past: the best place on the planet to raise a family, breathe fresh air and drink clean water. Part of that is adjusting to the signals that Mother Nature is sending us. Mother Nature is saying that in the next 40 years the northern parts of Australia are going to be greatly enhanced, in a slightly anticlockwise direction, and southern Australia is going to be seriously disadvantaged. So what we have done in the new government—and it is an insult to not only rural Australia but the greater family of Australia—is taken the budget away from the northern task force. That is a pretty smart plan!