Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, we remember. I'm glad that you remember. There are two other members in the chamber still who crossed the floor with me. One's the member for Kennedy, Bob Katter, and the other's the member for Melbourne, Adam Bandt, the Greens leader. He crossed the floor for different reasons than I did. The others were the member for Murray, Dr Sharman Stone, and the former member for Hume, the late Alby Schultz—God rest his soul. We sat over there, where Minister Rishworth is sitting now, and we voted against the Murray Darling Basin Plan.

I realise the plan's important. I do. I get it. Don't raise your eyes, Minister Rishworth; I do. Don't pull faces; I do get it. But I'll tell you what—the plan did not include at that time the 450 gigalitres. Even Minister Rishworth will admit that that is extra. That's over and above. It was never part of the plan. It was never part of Prime Minister John Howard's plan. It was never part of the now Labor government's plan. It was not. It was a promise made by Julia Gillard at Goolwa prior to the 2013 election. It was. How is the government now going to possibly get 450 gigalitres—a Sydney Harbour's worth of water, almost—flushed down the system? Don't worry about the infrastructure! Don't worry about the roads or the bridges or the caravan parks or the river communities! Let's just flush that water down the system! What's going to happen to it? It's going to flood out the mouth of the Murray. The mouth of the Murray wasn't even put on the original maps, because, when they were drawing the coastline of Australia, it was sandbanked up, because that's what happens. There are pictures of the Murray completely dry. We don't want to go back to that situation, and we're not going to.

We hear so often from those opposite about how all the animals will disappear and the fish will go. Let me tell you—they do bounce back quicker. Recent history and ancient history have shown that they return far faster than the farmers will. There will be farmers who will sell their water as part of the buybacks. Buybacks is dumb policy. It's lazy policy. It's Labor policy. Yes, go and offer big prices for water! Distort the water market! That's what will happen. The river communities will suffer because farmers will. Debt-stressed farmers will sell their water, and then there will be less people going to the local hairdresser, less people going to the local club, less kids going to the local school. It all has a ripple effect—pardon the pun—on those irrigation communities.

I don't know why 'irrigators' is such a dirty word in this place. It just seems to be. I don't understand why farmers aren't ever applauded for the work that they do. But you'll get members opposite, ministers opposite, who will come here with their sheath of notes, stand there and just read, line for line, never looking up. That's what the Labor dirt unit wants. What we need is to have a real debate where people just get rid of their notes, talk from their heart, talk from the head and talk from their experience about why water is so important and why water is so vital. Let's applaud our regional communities. Let's applaud and let's pay respect to those farmers who get the dirt under their fingernails. They strive so hard to grow the food and the fibre for our nation and many others beside. There's the challenge to the Labor members—and there are plenty of them—when you come in to speak, scrap your notes.

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