John Cobb (Calare, National Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

Like others, I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 5) 2008-2009 and Appropriation Bill (No. 6) 2008-2009. When you look at what money the federal government is bringing forward, when you look at what it is doing with its $42 billion stimulus package, you wonder why it is so determined to wreak havoc on the people who live within the Murray-Darling Basin. There are almost two million people who reside within the Murray-Darling Basin. Not only do a very great percentage of those people provide about 40 per cent of Australia’s food and particularly a very high percentage of its fresh food; they depend upon water for their livelihood, for Australia’s wellbeing and for the world to have access by export to the cleanest, greenest and best foodstuff produced anywhere in the world—or at least as good as what is produced anywhere in the world.

When I look at the amount of money that is being made available around Australia, $42 billion, and I look at how it is being spent, I think to myself: is this being spent to help productivity, to maintain jobs at a time when, as the Prime Minister tells us every question time, we are in a global recession—nothing to do with him, but a global recession which we are one of those countries unfortunate enough to be touched by? Of course we are in a recession and Australia is going to be affected by it like everybody else despite the Prime Minister and his government.

I would like to return to the question of water, the Murray-Darling Basin and the livelihood of the two million people who reside in it. I and everybody in the basin are well aware of the fact that the one million people who reside in Adelaide at this time and historically have, even though it is not within the basin, made use of the water of the Murray-Darling for domestic water for Adelaide. So they should, and I have no argument with that, and I think you will find most people in the basin do not. However, I think we do need to remember that this is not just about people in Adelaide getting water, as indeed they should and always will. This is about the two million people in the basin who do not reside in Adelaide as well.

Senator Xenophon made a lot of headlines by doing a deal with the Prime Minister and his government to get a lot of headlines and what have you. As a result, a lot of money is being brought forward, to do what? To invest in the Murray-Darling Basin? To help the infrastructure? To make it more productive? To preserve jobs? No, not exactly. In fact, it would be true to say that the exact opposite is going to happen. They have brought forward one heck of a lot of money, to do what? To take money out of the Murray-Darling Basin, to take jobs out of the Murray-Darling Basin, to take productivity out of the Murray-Darling Basin, at a time when, in the Prime Minister’s own words, Australia faces recession. He was forced into actually using the word ‘recession’ recently when the last quarter figures came up. It is a fact and we have to have the courage to face what Australia is involved in. But are we moving to preserve jobs where two million people reside? Are we moving to improve productivity where two million people reside? It does not really seem so.

To get his package through and to satisfy the blind, idealistic drive of the Minister for Climate Change and Water, the Prime Minister did a deal with Senator Xenophon which is actually not going to do a lot for Adelaide at this time and is certainly not going to do anything for the two million people in the Murray-Darling Basin. Does it mean that they now have $420 million in total to spend over the next few years? No. It is to spend between now and the end of June—in other words, really in the next three months. It is going to be interesting to see how they do that. It provides for something over $500 million to be spent buying water out of the Murray-Darling Basin in the year 2009-10. Is it well over $1 billion in the next few years? No—in about the next 15 months.

They have had a lend of the senator, because they cannot possibly do that. If they do manage to do it, they can only do it by throwing money like confetti at water and buying properties. If they buy much out of that from Queensland, they will not just be having a lend of Senator Xenophon and the people of Adelaide, they will be having a lend of everyone. Almost none of the water from Queensland is on a regulated system. It is all water that only reaches down the Murray River every other Pancake Day. The Queensland water is not regulated, it is not held by dams; it is water that flows and is only pumped when flow situations reach a certain level. So what are we left with? We are left with the state of New South Wales. The amount of water that can be bought in South Australia is very minimal at the best of times. Victoria has had the character to say, ‘This is ridiculous. We are not having any part of it.’ So we are left with the state of New South Wales. In other words, they are going to spend around a billion dollars over the next 15 months buying water out of New South Wales. As I said earlier, I am very sympathetic to the people in Adelaide that need water, but they will get that water. On the contingency plan, Adelaide and the towns along the Murray-Darling system have first priority, as indeed they should. That is not the issue. The issue is that if they could possibly in the next 15 months spend over $1 billion then that would be absolutely devastating not just to the irrigators but to the towns and communities and to productivity not just for the farmers but for everyone that lives in the Murray-Darling Basin, for everybody that lives in Australia. There is going to be far less fresh food produced, but the real point is that they are going to devastate productivity.

If they really wanted to do something about jobs, if they wanted to do something constructive towards the Murray-Darling Basin, why aren’t they doing what the current Leader of the House suggested when he was shadow minister for water and spending the $1 billion on infrastructure to help with the efficiencies of water, to lift productivity and to get water through savings? No, that does not suit the idealism of either the Prime Minister or in particular the senator who is the Minister for Climate Change and Water. Just last week the Shires Association of New South Wales was meeting and the comment made by the association was that the nation’s food bowl is further gutted by the water buyback scheme. Councils in the state’s south-west fear that the federal government’s water buyback scheme could gut their local communities, which have already been decimated by the ongoing drought.

If they somehow manage to spend a billion dollars over the next 15 months, they can only do it if they pay so much per megalitre of water that nobody can resist the midas touch from Senator Wong and Prime Minister Rudd. They would buy very little water for a lot of money in New South Wales, or they would go to Queensland, where people have been in trouble for some time, and buy water which can never be guaranteed, which is not regulated, which is not held by a dam and which is only pumped when overland flows reach certain stages.

It is a straight-out attack upon the irrigators of New South Wales, and, as I said, I have absolute sympathy for the million people in Adelaide. They should get their water and they will—contingency plans which we put into place with state governments will ensure that they will. I also have a lot of sympathy for the two million people who live in the Murray-Darling Basin. The reason that this is such a political ploy rather than a practical one, or one which will help the basin, is that Prime Minister Rudd and Senator Wong know very well that there is no political downside for them because all the 14 or 17 seats in the Murray-Darling Basin are held by the coalition. There are three seats that the Labor Party holds—all of which only just touch on the southern, the far southern, the far eastern and the far northern headwaters of the Murray-Darling Basin. There is no downside for them, and that is why they are so relentlessly pursuing the people of the basin—they do not see them as their friends and they do not care what happens to them. That is very plain from the water policies they are pursuing.

As we look at the $42 billion which is soon to go out, I cannot help but look back at agriculture once again beyond the straight-out issue of water and irrigation and the communities that depend upon it, and look at what the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry is intending to do at a time when jobs, production and exports are so very crucial. They are not crucial just because we are paying back the $100 billion that Labor previously got the country into trouble with; they are important now when we are heading into further trouble, quite obviously. I see that the minister for agriculture fully intends to follow the recommendations of the Beale report, as he said he is going to accept all those recommendations and take $32 million away from the export meat industry—the 40 per cent, or the $32 million out of $79 million which it cost AQIS to perform meat inspection for exports. The industry currently pays about $47 million of that, and the government picked up the tab for the other $32 million. This basically paid for the administration and the Commonwealth inputs and what they wanted to come out of it.

The Australian Meat Industry Council is rather staggered by this, as indeed they should be. We are talking about an industry that provides something like 50,000 jobs around Australia. It is responsible for exports worth around $8 billion, and here we have the minister for agriculture—who never touches policy, because he knows he knows nothing about it—who just wants to get through his portfolio without getting into strife. He is not going to change anything; he is just going to accept every report that gets put to him and proceed in that way and hope that he keeps his head above water. I think an $8 billion export industry surrounded by 50,000 Australian jobs is worth protecting—he may not. But regarding the $32 million he took away, at about the same time or just after he said he was going to accept the Beale report, he had the gall to say that he was putting $27 million into methane research to help agriculture work out how to deal with emissions from stock—sheep and cattle in particular. I think that is great except that it is not true. Well over half of that is in kind, from government departments. Virtually at the same time, he is flogging $32 million from an industry that is export orientated, an industry that is bringing money in from overseas. Jobs, jobs, jobs—it is a little bit hard to get away from that. I said in my local bailiwick, the seat of Calare, the other day that, while ever the breadwinner or breadwinners in your family have a job, your family does not have a recession. I think that is something they need to focus on, rather than just focusing on what they can hand out. I heard a very good description of the stimulus package the other day: walking down to the deep end of a swimming pool, putting a bucket of water into it, walking up to the shallow end and pouring it back in again. It does not matter how often you do it, the level does not change very much.

I look at the stimulus package—or, more correctly, the spending package—and at the appropriations, and I think about what to do if you are really serious about wanting to stimulate the economy in a way that is ongoing and in a way that is going to help pay this back at the end of the day. Let us all remember that at the end of the day every cent that is borrowed does have to be paid back from wherever we might buy it from, whether we do it by bonds or whatever. We had enormous trouble—in fact we totally failed—to engage the New South Wales government in infrastructure while we were in government. It did not matter whether it was the inland rail from Melbourne to Brisbane, which was going to avoid the bottleneck of the Sydney basin, or if it was putting a freeway through the Blue Mountains. Both projects would have had enormous outcomes, not just for Central or Western New South Wales but for Sydney to help it escape the bottleneck and the crowding—great outcomes for everybody involved.

If you are going to throw around $42 billion, why not spend it on serious infrastructure? I think that only about $250 million out of $42 billion was going to be spent on roads and black spots. I did work out once that, of the $96 billion we had to pay back—from the last 20 years—about $108 billion was interest. My heaven, we could have built some infrastructure with that. For the same reason, if they are going to spend $42 billion, why aren’t they spending it on something like putting that highway through the Blue Mountains and putting rail with it—not just a freeway but rail with it, so that we can move goods out of that bottleneck of Sydney. It would be like taking the top off a sore, to let Sydney expand out past the Blue Mountains. This would be ongoing infrastructure development which would pay back to the states GST, which would pay to the Commonwealth income tax. It would be ongoing jobs that would not come to a dead end like most of the infrastructure spending that the $42 billion is designated for will. It will come to a dead end; whereas what I am talking about here today would be ongoing, would increase productivity and would increase the opportunities for businesses to move west out of Sydney.

I can see the day when perhaps Penrith could become a suburb of Orange. Some people might disagree with that. This is common-sense stuff. This is spending money where it will continue to regenerate itself, where it will continue to not just produce jobs now but produce a return in the future.

See this speech in context