Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Labor Party is really conjecturing on this. This is the absolute personification of Labor Party management. We have had some $23.75 million of this nation’s resources put towards the purchase of Toorale Station so that about 14 gigalitres of water can be removed from the station at this time. It will probably merrily go down the river for about 100 kilometres or 200 kilometres—we do not know; we do not even know if it goes into a charged system—and will quickly dissipate. There is an acknowledgment with this purchase that it is probably not going to do very much if in fact anything at all to relieve the pressure on the Lower Lakes and the pressure on Adelaide’s water requirements.

At the same time that this decision has been made, the same Labor government, through Mr Garrett, has approved the north-south pipeline in Victoria and the removal from the system of about 110 gigalitres of water. So, 110 gigalitres of water are going to be removed from the system and removed from where the system is charged—that is, there is a connection of water from the top to the bottom, where it actually has effect. At the same time, with a pious look on their faces, they are also including the purchase of Toorale, which they all acknowledge will have no real consequence for what happens in the Lower Darling—apart from the fact that they can hold it up and say, ‘Well, at least we did something.’

This something that they did with $23.75 million of the nation’s money was done, we find, without even an inspection. Senator Heffernan brought this up here the other day: it was made without even an inspection; it was bought sight unseen. This is a peculiar way for the finances of the nation to be managed by the Labor Party, which holds itself out to be fiscally responsible. This is a $23.75 million example of their fiscal responsibility: they will purchase an asset, sight unseen, that has no effect but to grab a headline.

We know what the effects of this sort of arbitrary decision-making process will be. We will see the effects of this sort of decision on the people who live proximate to the purchase site, the people of Bourke. The people of Bourke are going to have to deal with the fact that one of the big employment providers in their area is now under attack, the irrigation industry. It seems strange in the extreme that at the start of the new parliament we and Mr Rudd had the Sorry Day. We all believed that it was bona fide, that his word was his bond and that this was about making a meaningful difference to the Indigenous people of our nation. And yet one of the first decisions of real effect will decimate the economy where they live. In this area, one of their main employment opportunities is going to be decimated by this decision.

This is typical of the Labor Party. There is a gap between their rhetoric and their actual delivery of substance. The rhetoric was Sorry Day; the substance was the destruction of the economy of Bourke and of the economy of the Indigenous people who live in that area. The rhetoric was Fuelwatch; the substance was a scheme that was actually going to force the price of fuel up. The rhetoric was GroceryWatch; the substance was that they were going to vote to repeal the Birdsville amendment so as to put more pressure on the independents, reduce competition in the market and force up prices. This is the typical separation between the rhetoric and the substance of a Labor government.

Going back to Toorale Station, what are they going to do with this? Not only do we have the removal of employment opportunities for people in the area but we have the fact that this is going to be of absolutely no consequence to the people in the Lower Lakes and in South Australia. This is inconsequential. We are talking about 14 gigalitres from Bourke when they need about 1,000 gigalitres in the Lower Lakes. They are still 986 gigalitres short. And by the time this water gets there—unless they transport it there in little plastic bottles—there will not be any gigalitres; there will be no water that makes it down there. Why? Because of transpiration and evaporation and because of the fact that it is going into a non-charged system that has to permeate through to charge up the system to get it to South Australia.

What has Australia really purchased? For their $23.75 million, they have managed to create serious consequences for all those people who have houses or businesses in Bourke. They have managed to completely threaten the economy of the people of Bourke. They have managed in the same breath to have Mr Garrett take 110 gigalitres out of the system in a way that actually does have an effect and move it to Melbourne. They have managed to go through this whole process without even sending anybody up to inspect the asset that they are buying. They are doing this on the premise that they are fiscally responsible! They have sent a shudder through the whole surrounding area as people now see a government making arbitrary decisions that have huge ramifications for the people there.

Where is the socioeconomic statement that the Labor Party put forward to show to the people of that area that they had the wider implications of this decision in mind? What are they going to do with this Toorale Station after purchasing it? We hear that they are going to turn it into a national park. They are removing productive land and turning it into a national park. For what purpose? What is the environmental benefit of that? Maybe they will be able to table some report justifying this on environmental grounds and clearly laying out what the environmental benefit of turning Toorale Station into a national park will be for our nation. What flora or fauna are we trying to protect in turning it into a national park?

Have they even considered this, or is this yet another example of the processes of a Labor government: jingoistic rhetoric on a position that is only there for the six o’clock news and after that has no real consequence whatsoever—except that somebody somewhere in Australia has to go to work to pay for that $23.75 million? As we all know, all Australians work for the government on Monday and Tuesday. They will be extremely happy to know that they are going to work to purchase an asset that is going to have no effect whatsoever in solving the problems of the lower Murray-Darling, and especially the southern lakes. I know that the Labor Party are going to be able to find people who are willing to sell. Without a shadow of doubt, people under stress are going to be willing to sell. But the implications of these decisions go far further than that.

At a time when the economic conditions in our nation are paramount, when they should be absolutely and clearly focused on the ramifications of the decisions they make about how our nation is run and how this economy will be able to deal with the stresses that will be placed on it by issues both domestic and international, they have shown us as a clear example that on this issue they had no real study into that. We have also had from the Labor government in Queensland the so-called ‘release’ of water from the Warrego. It was the release of water that was never actually captured. It was the release of water that was never actually in a ring tank. It was the release of water that did not actually exist. This is apparently part of the other sort of substance, the benefaction of the Labor governments to our nation.

Why couldn’t we have had a better expenditure of this money on other things, maybe even looking further at desalination, recycling or processes that could actually deliver something to Senator Fisher’s state of South Australia? Why couldn’t we have had a reasonable expenditure on a project that has a long-term future to deliver something to the people of Adelaide rather than this rhetorical purchase, this squandering of the nation’s wealth? It is a sad day indeed when this sort of process is peddled out there. I believe it did not even go to the Murray-Darling Basin Commission—I think that it did not even feature in any negotiations with them. That is the arbitrary nature of government that is emanating from a certain room on the lower floor of this parliament and it has now become profound in the way this nation is governed.