Nicolle Flint (Boothby, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am very proud to be speaking on this motion today and to talk about the wonderful job that the federal coalition government has done, particularly in relation to water policy. The only problem we have in South Australia is the terrible state Labor government. The sooner we get rid of them, the better for the future of our state.

I'd like to highlight the effective water policy of the coalition government, which is building critical water infrastructure across the nation. The Northern Adelaide Irrigation Scheme will create crucial jobs for South Australia, boost the output of our arable market gardens around Virginia and the Gawler River and enhance our horticultural export potential. This is a commonsense project. It is disappointing that the failed state Labor government didn't jump onto this sooner.

Currently, half of the potable recycled water from northern Adelaide's Bolivar Wastewater Treatment Plant goes out to sea and has done so for years. In South Australia, where we often have water restrictions, we are wasting gigalitres of our most valuable and scarce resource by pumping it into the ocean. This is insanity. This is why the coalition government has picked up the slack in South Australia once again, as we have on so many projects—first, funding the feasibility study with $2.5 million of federal money and now committing $45.6 million to the scheme itself.

It's the first project to be funded under the National Water Infrastructure Development Fund's expression of interest process. These projects are selected on a priority basis for what will bring the biggest economic return, which is precisely what my state of South Australia needs. The Northern Adelaide Irrigation Scheme will create over $500 million worth of economic activity and 3,700 jobs in the process. It will do this by delivering up to 12 gigalitres of water to the region for irrigated agriculture and intensive high-tech agriculture, allowing local businesses to grow and develop greater market access to Hong Kong, Malaysia, Taiwan, the UAE, Indonesia and Singapore. This project aligns well with the state Liberal Party's GlobeLink plan to create a dedicated road and rail freight corridor around the Mount Lofty Ranges into northern Adelaide, and a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week export airport at Murray Bridge.

Despite the fact that our region's farmers and primary industries are being shunned by the state Labor government, the agricultural sector is propping up South Australia's economy. It's one of the bright lights of our economic activity in South Australia at the moment. This is just as well, because the state Labor government is killing manufacturing in our state with the world's highest power prices, and the worst is yet to come. I spent the couple of weeks we've just had in our electorates talking to a range of businesses. It is genuinely terrifying, the impact that we are yet to see of these terribly high power prices and what this is doing to business investment and employment. We can contrast this with the state Liberal Party's visionary plan to build productive infrastructure as part of GlobeLink, which has the potential to create thousands of jobs and export activity. It will be a game changer for South Australia's economy, while solving local problems, such as getting freight trains out of my electorate and others and getting trucks out of the Adelaide Hills and suburbs, which clog our roads, provide safety risks and, particularly in relation to the trains, provide a significant bushfire risk during the summer months.

This is what the Liberal Party and the National Party do. We build dams, save water, support farmers, build infrastructure and grow the economy. This is what creates jobs so that hardworking Australians can put food on their tables, pay their mortgages and provide for their families and their communities. It's policies like our National Water Infrastructure Development Fund supporting the Northern Adelaide Irrigation Scheme that will lift South Australia's economy out of its current slump.

If state and federal Labor were serious about economic growth and job creation, they would have investigated and funded this critical scheme years ago. By contrast, the state Labor government has had wasteful and nonsensical water policy, like the $1.2 billion desal plant that sits, mothballed, not far out of my electorate while we pump almost 30 gigalitres of potable water from northern Adelaide into the sea. Federally, Labor—those opposite—are not much better. A Labor government in Canberra would have stopped the Northern Adelaide Irrigation Scheme dead in its tracks; so I'm proud to be here today to support this very important initiative for South Australia.

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