Perin Davey (NSW, National Party, Shadow Minister for Water) Share this | Hansard source

I want to thank Senator Roberts for bringing this very important and very pertinent issue to the chamber. Senator Ciccone spoke about models. I often ask about models in the portfolio areas that I'm interested in. When I asked Dr Colman of the CSIRO about the models they're using, particularly with respect to an update of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, he said, 'While models are an important line of evidence, they aren't the truth,' which is true. Millions are being invested in producing models to inform our policies and decision-making, but we must always remember: they are models; they are not the truth. When our primary industries are at stake, when billions of taxpayer dollars are at stake, that distinction becomes very important.

While I believe the climate is changing, I also firmly believe that primary industries have a vital role to play in being part of the solution—unlike Labor, who think things like agriculture and forestry are part of the problem. Take, for example, their countless anti-agriculture policies. I'll start in my portfolio area of water. Despite the government already holding on to more than 2,100 gigalitres of water in Commonwealth environmental portfolios and despite the states holding hundreds of gigalitres of water in their environmental portfolios, the government says we need a new basin plan to address climate change, while pursuing more water buybacks across the basin, despite the unanimous concerns of communities. Goondiwindi, Dirranbandi, Moree, Dubbo, Griffith, Deniliquin, Shepparton, Mildura, Renmark and Loxton—every single one of those communities says water buybacks are not the solution, but, no, Labor knows best, apparently.

Labor wants the new Basin Plan to account for climate change. That's ignoring the fact that irrigation is one of the best tools we have in our armoury to be able to continue to feed the world in a changing climate. That's ignoring the fact that our farmers are already taking steps to address soil carbon sequestration, through farm forestry, through new broadacre agricultural practices, through using techniques like a fungi inoculent that increases the carbon uptake of soils, and through new water efficiencies. Our farmers are doing this despite the government tying their hands behind their back and despite looking down the barrel of new carbon emissions reporting structures that will cost them time and money and achieve no real substantial change.

Then let's talk about Labor's sole solution to the changing climate when it comes to energy: acres and acres of solar panels; hundreds of thousands of wind turbines, on and off shore; and tens of thousands of transmission lines. And where do all of these things go? They're not in Mosman. They're not in Toorak. They're not in Brisbane's South Bank. No. They go right across regional Australia, across prime agricultural land and forestry land. Forestry is a carbon sink.

It's okay to rip up hectares of forests to put in transmission lines and build roads to get the wind turbines to the top of the ridge, but it's not okay for a farmer to put in a development application for an intensive dairy?

I commend Senator Roberts's motion to this place, and I say we need to start recognising that agriculture is part of the solution. We, on this side of the chamber, the Liberals and the Nationals, stand behind our farmers and support our farmers and will do so into the future.