Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

It is not being political, member for New England, but I think that it would be useful for the Wentworth Group to turn its attention to possibly some re-engineering solutions about what could be done on an occasion like this. I remember those solutions being presented to and considered very sensibly by a previous environment minister in this government, so I think we are on the case there. There is certainly some talk about re-engineering Menindee Lakes—another area of significant evaporation.

So what I would say to the Wentworth Group is: thank you for having the health of our rivers at the forefront of your consideration, but remember that we all need to work together and no partnership between farmers and environment groups will work if each side of that partnership does not understand the imperatives of the other. It is no good saying, ‘Okay, it’s a bad drought, but the environment’s important—the environment needs this—and everybody else has to get in the queue behind it,’ because that is not going to work. We need real solutions for real problems for real farmers in the real world. It very much is a real world out there.

I attended a meeting of rural financial counsellors in Melbourne a couple of weeks ago and spoke to the rural financial councillor from Bourke territory, who the member for New England and the member for Page know well. He told me that on the road between Bourke and Wanaaring, which is a road I have travelled in a previous life, there were about 17 properties and about 12 of them have closed down. That is it: closed and gone.

In the back of Balranald, in my own electorate—I have been there recently—it looks like it does in the middle of January. When the Prime Minister visited western New South Wales on a previous drought tour he came out to the west of my electorate. It had been in drought or dry times for about 10 years. It was interesting that members of the Canberra press gallery accompanying us said, ‘What are you doing farming for out here if it is this bad?’ I tried to make the point that it is not always that bad, that the best land use is agriculture and that, believe it or not, the country, if managed and farmed properly, recovers really quickly. Eight months after that tour I was able to show people photographs of that land in western New South Wales, which had looked like the Simpson Desert, with grass half as tall as I am—fabulous feed. Unfortunately, it did not really last.

The MPI talks about effective rural policy now and into the future. Obviously, we are concentrating on farming and rural policy, but that is not the whole picture. Rural Australia is not just about its farms and its agriculture but also about its communities, its people, its social networks and its children and their futures. I do not want to bang the drum, but I want to run through what I think are some important policies that I have observed working in rural and regional Australia. I will preface it by saying again that this is not about policies for the city and policies for the bush; it is about bringing the two together. It is about each side understanding what each other is about and taking on each other’s problems as their own.

AusLink is the national transport infrastructure plan; there are some interesting developments with it. There is a feasibility study for a north-south rail link, which is going to take on an enormous amount of the freight task. Something we are working out now is where exactly that rail line will go. There are further opportunities to link the rail from Mildura north to join the rail that goes from Sydney to Broken Hill. That will be pretty exciting. Councils in my electorate are very pleased with Roads to Recovery money, which is money directly from the federal government to help them with local roads. I do not think we will ever be allowed to take that one off the table.

While I am talking about councils in my electorate I will mention, in the context of the current difficult situation, that visiting the national parliament today to discuss the water crisis is the Wakool Shire Council, which is based around Barham and Moulamein in southern New South Wales. The mayor, Councillor Ken Trewin, is here with Daryl McDonald and Neil Eagle, two irrigators from the area. They sought urgent talks with Malcolm Turnbull regarding the water situation. I was very pleased that the parliamentary secretary was able to see them. They were able to tell a pretty distressing tale about their community and what is going on there at the moment. Councils and local governments are the closest forms of government to the people. They represent the sad situations that you hear in families, communities and small businesses in the towns. I want to thank them for that. We all rely on our local councils for the work that they do at the local level.

Coming back to some other general government policies, there is the Sustainable Regions Program’s $21 million for the Darling Matilda Way sustainable region in western New South Wales and Queensland. There is Work Choices. It is under attack from the opposition but, remember, in regional areas there is a high proportion of small businesses that need a more flexible labour market. Certainly, losing workers in small towns is more of a hit— (Time expired)

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