Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak about two issues that are of concern to the productivity of this country. The first one regards the release of water from the Murray-Darling system and, in particular, the Snowy-Murray system. In estimates, I asked on notice if I could get the volume of releases out of the hydro project to the irrigation project. It was started by Ben Chifley and finished by Robert Menzies throughout the forties and fifties. I've got the answers back, and it turns out about 2,000 gigalitres are released each year from the Snowy Hydro project for irrigation purposes. Of those 2,000 gigalitres, we actually buy back 3,400 gigalitres. I want you to think about that. We now buy back more water, which is allowed to then run into the lower lakes and evaporate away, than what the Snowy Hydro project actually releases. Ben Chifley would be rolling in his grave about this, because that whole project, in terms of irrigation, is completely redundant. You may as well just have let the water run down the Snowy in the first place rather than have built the dam and diverted it westwards, because it just runs down into the ocean in another direction. What a waste of time!

The last thing I want to touch on is the recent decision made by the minister for environment Tanya Plibersek, who's decided not to allow the McPhillamys mine in Orange to go ahead. The Regis gold company has spent $300 million so far just on developing this, and, because 17 people have decided they've got cultural sensitivities, they want to shut it down. They won't even disclose what those cultural sensitivities are. It's time to get going in this country, and we can't continue to shut down. (Time expired)