Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Hansard source

The Murray-Darling Basin is home to 2.6 million people, who rely on the river to generate economic activity, provide local jobs and produce about 40 per cent of Australia's food and fibre. It generates $22 billion of agricultural output every year, which multiplies to around $80 billion up and down the supply chain. This water is vital for basin communities, for their local economies and for our national food security. By taking this water out of productive use, the Labor government is destroying jobs in our regions and adding to cost-of-living pressures for all Australians.

Let's be clear: Labor's policy will result in higher prices for fresh fruit and vegetables. Less water available for production means higher prices for what water remains on the market, and lower production means higher prices in our shops. It beggars belief that, in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis, Labor would seek to implement policies to effectively place an environmental tax on basic food production. Let's be clear: that's what this policy is, an attack on fruit, nuts, wine grapes, vegetables, rice, cotton, dairy and sugar grown in the food bowl of our nation. When those of us on this side of the chamber were in government, we vowed never to use buybacks to recover environmental water, investing instead in initiatives to improve water-use efficiency and deliver environmental outcomes for the basin with infrastructure projects. It was a win-win. We were maintaining production levels while recovering water for the environment.

Given the trajectory of Labor's water policy, I'm extremely concerned for communities in Barker and the southern basin. Should Labor push ahead with the additional 450 gig from the southern basin and scrap the neutrality test, the loss of 450 gigs from irrigators could lead to more than $500 million in lost agricultural production each year. This is regional jobs we're talking about. It's the difference between seeing Aussie oranges on the supermarket shelves or Californian ones; avocados from Australia or from Mexico. Labor seems hellbent on pursuing an ideological crusade, and it's at the expense of local jobs, local communities and the next generation of irrigators and farmers, who will be priced out of the industry, all the while pushing us into food insecurity. Shame on you!

We've heard a bit from South Australians on the other side in this debate—at one point, in an interjection, all South Australians, but not this one. This one represents the river communities. With the exception of Madam Deputy Speaker Sharkie, who represents a small portion of the Murray in South Australia, I represent it. I'm here to tell you that the 450 gigs will not come at zero cost to South Australians. What is the South Australian contribution to the 450 gigs? It's 38¼ gigs. That's just over 10½ per cent of our whole allocation, or, if I want to put it simply, in particular for the member for Spence, who lives at Goolwa: it's the whole of the Renmark irrigation district. He spoke about the Premier of South Australia, who, during the floods, had a penchant to want to visit Renmark. He'd fly up, he'd stand on a levy, he'd shake the hands of a couple of locals and then he'd make an announcement about some grandiose support program which was never delivered. Imagine all of Renmark turned to wasteland.

Of course, it won't happen just in Renmark; it will be spread all along the river corridor. It will mean the infrastructure we use to pump water around our communities, whether it's the Central Irrigation Trust, Renmark Irrigation Trust or the other trusts, will become more and more expensive, and less and less viable. It will mean we'll see, as we saw in previous times, the Swiss cheese effect, where you had productive block, non-productive block, non-productive block, productive block. It will see packing houses close because, unless you're at economies of scale, they just can't operate. Before the member for Makin gets up and says this is about South Australia—and brother I'm with you—have a think about the people in Renmark. Have a think about the people in Loxton. Have a think about the people in Berri. They can't all do what the member for Spence did and leave a river community in Mildura and get a cushy job with the union. Some of them are tied to their land, they have paid capital, they own those properties, it is their superannuation, and you want to pull the rug from under them. Shame on those opposite. Let's achieve this plan in full. Lets do it by providing an extension of time, let's do it in a way that recovers the water for the environment but doesn't do in the farmers in the process. (Time expired)

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