John Madigan (Victoria, Democratic Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Listening to the debate on this issue this evening, for every action there is a reaction—in this case there is an impact. The fact is that the majority of the land in Australia is not usable for agriculture. Yet we continue to put what good land we have at risk, the communities that use that land at risk and our ability to grow our food at risk. Anybody can go to the urban sprawls around our major capital cities and see the amount of market gardens et cetera that have been built on—good farmland. We should be building on our worst land, not on our best land. I hear the figure that was raised tonight—the $150 million—that was for advice or research that nobody has to pay any attention to. And then we wonder in this place why the public have become so apathetic as to the state of the parliament and why we have such a high informal vote. It is because people have lost faith in the political process and the fact that we do not seem to learn from past mistakes. We have the benefit of hindsight and how future generations will judge us. We have limited resources that can be used for the benefit of Australians and for feeding the rest of the world. In this place often we hear people say A, B, C and they do X, Y and Z. That is how the public judges us. That is how rural communities judge us. We expect them to feed us; we expect them to give us food that is good, clean and affordable. Yet we continue to destroy the very thing that provides us with that very food.

We also hear 'sovereign risk' thrown up continually in this place to talk people down. The Australian people are sick to the death of the bickering and the quarrelling instead of us sitting down and working out what is in the best interests of our nation. We continue to do that in this place. As such, I will not be voting for this bill.

Progress reported.