Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Heritage, the Arts and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to draw the public’s attention to the real problems we have in rural and regional Australia. Policy failure is compounding the distress that is being caused right now by climate issues and by a whole range of social and economic circumstances that are beyond the control of individuals and communities. I do not think we have ever before seen rural and regional communities driven to place full-page notices in metropolitan daily newspapers—like the one I am holding up, placed today by a group in northern Victoria. They are talking about the north-south pipeline and they are begging for a reversal of a Labor government policy that is denying them the ability to continue to grow food for the nation. But the combination of failed state and federal Labor water policy is driving them to do just that—to spend more than $30,000 on notices. At a time of global food shortages, when drought is decimating the productive capacity of most of the Murray-Darling Basin and climate change is making most of Australia’s most productive farmland hotter and drier, the federal government appears hell-bent on allowing environmental and food production water to be diverted to cities such as Melbourne, Geelong, Ballarat and Bendigo. These cities have other water supply options such as recycling and stormwater reuse. It is just unconscionable that a north-south pipeline go ahead.

Decades ago, farmers in New South Wales and Victoria settled into a system to trade their water entitlements with each other to improve the efficiency and value of production from the use of that water. The market was orderly and transparent. The prices in that market are now completely distorted, as this government has dumped into it an initial $50 million and then another $2 billion or more to try to buy water for the environment. That is a failure of policy because the water licences they are buying are empty, as are the Hume Dam, the Dartmouth Dam and the dams on the Goulburn River. The farmers there will again have zero allocations at the opening of the next irrigation season. Buying water and distorting the market is destroying food production potential, it is destroying the viability of irrigation systems now and into the future and it does not deliver real water to the dying Murray River. It is failed policy and Labor knows better.

Why has this government turned its back on investment in on-farm water use efficiency? The coalition had over $2 billion on the table. That would have produced real water for the environment, real adaptation to climate change and real increases in on-farm productivity. Farmers could have been helped to produce twice as much with half the water. That policy has been shelved. Instead we have had this nonsense of the buyback of water from drought-stressed, lender-pushed farmers. It is failed policy which is going to have enormous intergenerational impacts. Rural Australia was deeply concerned at the possibility of a change of government last November. They knew that Labor would bury them, but they were not sure whether it would be through ignorance, inexperience, a desire to punish or a totally city-centric bias. It would seem that the policy failures and removal of adequate resources are a combination of all of these factors.

I want you to consider Gippsland. Gippsland is a typical hardworking, hands-on rural community that produces more than the average effort in energy production. Its crime seems to be that it has been well represented by the coalition for generations. It should be, and probably will be, for the future. But, right now, its key government services and volunteer effort are being destroyed by Rudd government cuts, pre-budget cuts and policy failures. Let us begin with what Labor has done to kill off the capacity of the locals to sustain their environment and overcome the ravages of fire, then flood and now drought. Landcare has been cut by 20 per cent, the Maffra and District Landcare group is in despair, the local West Gippsland and East Gippsland catchment management authorities have been slashed by 40 per cent, the Envirofund has gone, the biodiversity hot spot funding has gone, the natural resource management officers are gone, the community water grants are gone, strategic roads funding has gone and the Regional Partnerships money has gone for now. Also, the Bureau of Meteorology has been cut back, so they will not know when the next flood is bearing down on them.

Gippsland has some of the most efficient food production in Australia but, like the rest of the country, it too will suffer from CSIRO slashing its on-the-ground research stations—shutting them down because Rudd says they must. If that is not enough, the schools infrastructure grants have gone, and many country schools long neglected by Labor state governments will now not be able to take advantage of their first chance in decades to fix toilets, heating, cooling, shadecloth, playground equipment, interactive whiteboards and computers. (Time expired)

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