Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, really—to the member opposite. Absolutely. About half of the region's wine production is exported. It is the largest chicken meat producer in Australia. It supplies three-quarters of New South Wales's wine grapes. It supplies 70 per cent of the New South Wales citrus production, worth $98 million. It is the largest prune-growing area in Australia. In almond production it is going absolutely amazingly well. Its gross regional product in manufacturing—and these are just 2010 figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, so they would have gone a long way further since then—is $281 million; agriculture, $294 million; finance and insurance, $189 million; and retail trade, $86 million. That is just out of Griffith alone. You can imagine, when you include the Murrumbidgee shire, Leeton shire, Narrandera shire and Carrathool shire, just how valuable the Riverina is.

I was a little bit sorry that I had to come down and speak because Minister Joyce was unavailable to speak at that particular time, because I was very interested to hear what the Greens member for Melbourne was going to say about this. I hope that he gets on board, because, by goodness, we did not hear too much positive coming out of the Greens during the whole time that the Murray-Darling Basin issue was an absolute political hot potato in the 43rd Parliament. Indeed, what we saw from the Greens was totally destructive. They wanted all the water to go to the environment. To hell with the farmers; to hell with the irrigators; and to hell with those people who grow food and fibre for this nation. Never mind the bright city lights of Swanston Street. All he cared about was the environmental concerns.

The world's best environmentalists are the irrigation farmers I represent. They are the world's best environmentalists because they know, much more so than the member for Melbourne, that, if their river is not protected and does not flow, they are not going to have an income. But they cannot continue to do what they do on 17 per cent allocations. They cannot continue to do what they do for our nation and other nations besides when they are getting totally screwed over by man-made droughts forced upon them by what sometimes might seem to be well-intentioned governments but certainly were not when it came to putting what the Labor-Greens alliance did in the parliament from 2010 to 2013.

I was pleased that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Environment, Bob Baldwin, came to my area on 5 August this year to announce $263.5 million for on-farm irrigation in New South Wales. That is going to be a game changer for the Riverina. It is also going to dovetail in well with this Water Amendment Bill that we are debating tonight. The Minister for the Environment, Greg Hunt, congratulated the successful funding recipients of round 5 of the On-Farm Irrigation Efficiency Program. He said:

Under the Coalition's Clean Water Plan, we're investing more than $12 billion in managing our waterways and key water infrastructure …

… This latest $263.5 million investment will assist irrigators in the southern Murray-Darling Basin modernise their on-farm irrigation infrastructure.

That money is going to be put to such good use to maximise every drop.

Farmers in my area have been accountable for a long time and will continue to be accountable—and they are accountable now. They have to be accountable for every single drop of water that they use. Never mind the water icon sites and the greenies and the Wentworth Group and all these other people who think that all the water needs to go down the river and straight out of the mouth of the Murray. Never mind the fact that they are not that accountable for the water. They are not, but I tell you what: the farmers in my patch are. They have to be accountable not least because it costs them money but also because they are made to be accountable by the innumerable bureaucracies that they have to answer to, more's the pity. But I am pleased that that quarter of a billion dollars worth of on-farm irrigation infrastructure is going to make a difference.

On 24 June this year the Senate resolved to establish a Select Committee on the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. The committee will enquire on the social, economic and environmental impacts of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan on regional communities. Public submissions may be made and will close on 20 September. I would urge that any Riverina irrigators listening to this speech make a public submission—and there will be many listening. I encourage members to pass this Water Amendment Bill unanimously, because that is what is required.

See this speech in context