address to parliament - BILLS - Water Amendment (Restoring Our Rivers) Bill 2023 - Second Reading

I like the member for Werriwa, the previous speaker, but unfortunately she, like so many of the other Labor members, will come into this place for this debate and read from the notes that they have had provided to them by Labor's dirt unit. And that is an unfortunate fact. It's almost like AI listening to the Labor members, many of whom do not have in one sense a stake in this game—and this is an important game. But, in essence, every single member in this place, and in the Senate over there, has a stake in this debate. I'm not reading from any notes because it's in here, it's in my heart. It's also in here, in my head.

Why everybody has a stake in this debate is because three times a day, every day, every member will sit down and have something to eat. And that something to eat will be provided by a farmer. That farmer will come from Griffith; or Shepparton, in the member for Nicholls' electorate; or Deniliquin, where Senator Perin Davey has probably forgotten more about water policy than the collective wisdom of all of those opposite will ever know. Or it will come from elsewhere, like Renmark or some of the mighty irrigation areas of South Australia, dare I say. Heaven help them if they come from Victoria though, because Victoria's not part of this plan. It's not part of the Labor Party's new, 'Let's get the basin plan in, done and legislated'. Victoria doesn't want a part of it.

What we have is a policy, a piece of legislation, going to the parliament with no Victoria. A map with Victoria taken off it. And why would that be so? Well, don't ask me, I don't know the answer to it. Ask the water minister. I see the member for Hunter chortling away there—and he's right to chortle! He's right to laugh. It is laughable. It is preposterous that you've got a government wanting to implement a plan without a key state. Absolutely ridiculous.

I talked about this in the Federation Chamber the other day and referred to a book I purchased. The book was published in 1888. It's about Australian exploration, written by Ernest Favenc. I promise you it's the only part of the speech I will read. It hasn't been produced by the coalition's talking-point department, if there is such a department—I don't know; I give most of my speeches from my heart and from my head. But it states:

In many districts of the inland slope, the rivers have sandy beds, incapable of retaining the water for more than a few months; whilst running parallel with them on either side, are chains of lagoons that often run dry through the floods not being excessive enough to overflow the banks. These lagoons are, as a rule, well calculated to hold water, and could be brought under the influence of ordinary floods, instead of being, as now, dependent upon extraordinary ones; thus atoning for the insufficient retaining power of the river bed.

The present great need of Australia is the conservation of water, and the irrigation works which have been already commenced on the banks of the Murray River, coupled with the recent discoveries of an apparently unlimited artesian supply on the arid plains of Western Queensland, testify alike to the recognition of the want, and to the ease with which it may be met. One inevitable rule of settlement is that population follows water; present prospects therefore amply justify the hope that at no very distant date the one-time "central desert" of the first explorers will be the centre of attraction for the fast-growing population of the coast line; and that in the merging together of the peoples of the colonies, now separated by merely imaginary boundary lines, will be found the one great help to the fulfilment of the desire of every true Australian—a Federated Australia—a grand result of the indomitable courage, heroic self-sacrifice, and dogged perseverance of the men of all nationalities, who have established a claim to the proud title of "Australian Explorer."

They knew in 1888 what we should know now. They were doing in 1888 what we should be doing now—that is, putting infrastructure in place, building dams, helping line the channels and making sure that the insufficiencies, perhaps, of the geography are aided by human endeavour, to meet human want and human need, to make sure that our irrigation communities can be the best that they can be. That's what we did as a coalition, and it irks me no end—it angers me—when those opposite say that we did nothing in nine years.

Ms Rishworth: You did!

Mr McCORMACK: No, we did not, Minister Rishworth. We worked so hard, with states, to make sure that water recovery was there. We made sure that we put the infrastructure in place. As the infrastructure minister and Deputy Prime Minister, I gained an extra $3½ billion for the National Water Infrastructure Development Fund. Tasmania—the Liberal state of Tasmania—came to the table and built Scottsdale dam. And I have to say that Minister Bailey was interested in what we were doing in Queensland. I'm only sorry that we weren't able to progress that. Certainly the Nationals in New South Wales had ideas too: to lift the wall at Wyangala Dam and Dungowan Dam—and I know how much that means to the member for New England. Victoria? Well, they just said, 'Climate change will be such that we don't want to build any more water infrastructure, because we're not going to need it anyway'—a ridiculous notion.

Then, of course, we've got the newly minted New South Wales Labor Minister for Water, Rose Jackson, saying, 'We're not going to increase Wyangala Dam wall,' and, despite the floods which have beset the township of Forbes half a dozen times in the last dozen years, 'We're not going to build any flood mitigation for them; we'll just build better roads so they can escape more quickly.' I mean, have you ever? Anybody who's driving their truck along the Newell Highway at the moment, remember that when you vote next. Remember that when you're driving along the Newell Highway, one of the busiest freight corridors in this country, which has been shut for weeks and months on end because of the flooded Lachlan. Remember that Rose Jackson, the water minister in New South Wales, said that. Quite frankly, she wouldn't know what she's talking about when it comes to protecting regional communities.

Then we have Minister Burke, who last week in question time maligned the National Farmers Federation, when he said:

As an organisation, they often provide very good advice on policy, but they've never been that good when it comes to the rights of workers, historically.

That's what he said about the NFF. Then we had the member for McEwen, who yelled out across the chamber on 5 September when the member for Dawson was on his feet, declaring that the backpackers were 'scab labourers'. I'm, quite frankly, sick of how the government, its members and its ministers treat people in regional Australia who grow food, who grow fibre, who boost exports and who make sure that we are fed three times a day, every day. This stuff's important. Water is vital.

I have to admit that I did cross the floor and move the disallowance motion on the Murray Darling Basin Plan.

Ms Rishworth: We remember.

Mr McCORMACK: Yes, we remember. I'm glad that you remember. There are two other members in the chamber still who crossed the floor with me. One's the member for Kennedy, Bob Katter, and the other's the member for Melbourne, Adam Bandt, the Greens leader. He crossed the floor for different reasons than I did. The others were the member for Murray, Dr Sharman Stone, and the former member for Hume, the late Alby Schultz—God rest his soul. We sat over there, where Minister Rishworth is sitting now, and we voted against the Murray Darling Basin Plan.

I realise the plan's important. I do. I get it. Don't raise your eyes, Minister Rishworth; I do. Don't pull faces; I do get it. But I'll tell you what—the plan did not include at that time the 450 gigalitres. Even Minister Rishworth will admit that that is extra. That's over and above. It was never part of the plan. It was never part of Prime Minister John Howard's plan. It was never part of the now Labor government's plan. It was not. It was a promise made by Julia Gillard at Goolwa prior to the 2013 election. It was. How is the government now going to possibly get 450 gigalitres—a Sydney Harbour's worth of water, almost—flushed down the system? Don't worry about the infrastructure! Don't worry about the roads or the bridges or the caravan parks or the river communities! Let's just flush that water down the system! What's going to happen to it? It's going to flood out the mouth of the Murray. The mouth of the Murray wasn't even put on the original maps, because, when they were drawing the coastline of Australia, it was sandbanked up, because that's what happens. There are pictures of the Murray completely dry. We don't want to go back to that situation, and we're not going to.

We hear so often from those opposite about how all the animals will disappear and the fish will go. Let me tell you—they do bounce back quicker. Recent history and ancient history have shown that they return far faster than the farmers will. There will be farmers who will sell their water as part of the buybacks. Buybacks is dumb policy. It's lazy policy. It's Labor policy. Yes, go and offer big prices for water! Distort the water market! That's what will happen. The river communities will suffer because farmers will. Debt-stressed farmers will sell their water, and then there will be less people going to the local hairdresser, less people going to the local club, less kids going to the local school. It all has a ripple effect—pardon the pun—on those irrigation communities.

I don't know why 'irrigators' is such a dirty word in this place. It just seems to be. I don't understand why farmers aren't ever applauded for the work that they do. But you'll get members opposite, ministers opposite, who will come here with their sheath of notes, stand there and just read, line for line, never looking up. That's what the Labor dirt unit wants. What we need is to have a real debate where people just get rid of their notes, talk from their heart, talk from the head and talk from their experience about why water is so important and why water is so vital. Let's applaud our regional communities. Let's applaud and let's pay respect to those farmers who get the dirt under their fingernails. They strive so hard to grow the food and the fibre for our nation and many others beside. There's the challenge to the Labor members—and there are plenty of them—when you come in to speak, scrap your notes.

Ms Rishworth: Run out of content, have you?

Mr McCORMACK: I haven't run out of content and I never will, but I won't be like you, Minister Rishworth, and just read from the notes. I will speak from the heart because I know what this means to my community. I know what this means to regional Australia. I know what this means to our nation and our exporters, to those people who went to those desert plains and turned them into gardens of Eden. I know what it means to them. I know how important it is to them, and I know how much this will affect them if this plan goes through unaltered in this place and over there in the Senate because, quite frankly, some of those country communities will just have to close their doors. That will be it for them. Yes, we'll get in all the foreign food, and our grocery prices will go up and the cost-of-living crisis will get even worse. Will those members opposite care about that? I don't think they will. But they will get pats on the head when they go to the Labor dirt unit: 'Well done, you read the notes well. Good on you, excellent, good job.' That is what we face.