Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

That is a fair point. But the previous speaker, the member for Hinkler, talked about water infrastructure and you gave him wide latitude, so I don't see why I shouldn't be allowed wide latitude—not that I'm dissenting from your ruling. I'm just pointing out that the previous speaker, in a very calm voice, talked about all sorts of things, such as water infrastructure, and I know a bit about water infrastructure, because there's a project in the north of my electorate which is very important to South Australia. This project is so important to South Australia that the government, at the last election, basically made an election promise to provide funding for a feasibility study into this. Now the feasibility study is in, and guess what? This thing adds up: 3½ thousand jobs, lots of investment. All it needs is $110 million from the state government and $46 million from the Commonwealth government.

I've written to the Deputy Prime Minister about this project. I know many other people have put in their two bob's worth about this project. It's a very important project because it takes treated effluent water which is currently discharged into the gulf and, protecting the environment, pumps it north onto farming land which is, I suppose, less productive than some of the farming land in my electorate, and it can be used for intensive horticultural purposes. This project, the Northern Adelaide Irrigation Scheme, also has a commitment from the opposition. Bill Shorten came out about three or four weeks ago now and committed to this project. He said, 'If the government doesn't do this, we will.' I might add that we committed to it at the previous election as well, because South Australia needs jobs. Just like Orange, which the member for Calare was talking about, we're about to get king hit. Why are we about to get king hit? I'll tell you why: because of this government.

We would still have a car industry today if the investment decision hadn't lined up with the prime ministership of Tony Abbott. That's actually what cost this country the car industry—those two things lining up. It is a devastating king hit to my electorate, to South Australia, to Victoria and to our manufacturing ability, capacity and coherence. So many things hang off the car industry. There are rural communities affected, too. In my home town of Kapunda, the hay mill used to take all the empty shipping containers from Holden and fill them up with hay to export. Now they have to import empty shipping containers, from Victoria or somewhere else, presumably, to go out again. So there were all these economies of scale that hung off the car industry.

This is a very serious issue. We need jobs in South Australia. We don't need criticism, which we constantly get from the Commonwealth government. We don't need platitudes, which we constantly get from the Commonwealth government. What we actually need is jobs. Here is a situation where you have the Northern Adelaide Irrigation Scheme sitting there ready to go—jobs, investment, improvements, all the things the previous speaker talked about—and why can't we sign off on it? I'll tell you why: because this government's paralysed by the intransigence of the member for New England. He's putting his own interests ahead of the government. We all know what the honourable thing is to put the government out of its misery. We all know what the sensible thing would have been to do: to say, 'I'm a New Zealander; technicality; I will honourably resign and go to the people.' Let them return him, if that's the case. But he doesn't do that. Instead he holds the government and the country to ransom, and in the process he's holding this project to ransom. Let's be clear about this. There are projects all over this country which require his undivided attention, his undivided authority, his uncompromised authority.

So there are some very serious issues in this bill about governance. It tells you a lot about the National Party and how they operate; how they operate for one group of farmers, the silver circle that you will find in any country town and any rural community. They don't operate for everybody in rural communities, and they certainly don't represent South Australian farmers. The problem with the Liberal Party, particularly the South Australian Liberal Party and the Liberal Party out west, is they don't do a very good job of standing up to the National Party. It's always been the National Party tail wagging the Liberal Party dog.

With those kind comments about the government, its coherence, its prospects and its performance, I will say that we oppose the bill. We oppose it for good, sound reasons, reasons that my conservative grandfather would have been happy to say: don't waste money on boondoggles and don't have what effectively are government-owned banks let loose with little oversight. With that I will conclude my remarks.

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