Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Greens, Labor, the Liberals and their sell-out sidekicks the Nationals, the uniparty, as I call them, like to talk about sustainability, as though it's the environment that needs to be sustained instead of human beings. The real lesson in applying sustainability can be found, though, in Australian family farms. Providing food to feed the hungry and clothing to warm the cold, Australian farmers are heroes for the positive effect they've had on the sustainability of our entire human race. Their farms have been productive for, in many cases, 150 years. Their soil is most likely healthier now than ever before. Our farmers care about their land. It's their livelihood and their future. The role of family farming became clear during the recent drought, which, mercifully, has now ended in most places.

Irrigation canals lose water to seepage, which recharges groundwater. Native trees get roots down into that groundwater and survive the drought. Rural Australia is resplendent with ribbons of native habitat along thousands of kilometres of irrigation canals, home to a wonderful cornucopia of native flora and fauna which would have perished without that irrigation water.

The average Australian dairy farm supports 40 species of native creatures. Where there is as little as one hectare of native bush on a farm, this increases to over 100 species. Yet, where farms are being denied water, their families are being driven off their land and the farms turn into wasteland—a breeding ground for pests and imported weeds, devoid of the ecosystem that happy-clappy environmentalists pretend will return.

When the government pokes its bureaucratic bloated nose where it does not belong, in the name of so-called sustainability, it's a disaster. Family farms cease to exist. Diversity in the rural economy shrinks. The environment is worse, not better. Still, Labor, the Greens, the Liberal Party and the National Party push ahead. This is not sustainability of the environment; it's sustainability of rank stupidity and callous indifference towards the masses of everyday Australians. This madness must end. (Time expired)