Patrick Secker (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Transport and Regional Services. Would the Deputy Prime Minister explain to the House why a national approach to water management in the Murray-Darling Basin is important for regional Australia and especially for my electorate of Barker?

Mark Vaile (Lyne, National Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Barker for this question. To specifically answer the question, the member for Barker need look no further than the fact that, until Melbourne Cup day last year, the states had not done any contingency planning at all for supplying water to the communities across the lower Murray-Darling Basin, particularly in the electorate of Barker, given the extreme circumstances as far as those water supplies were concerned. It took a meeting convened by the Prime Minister to address the issue and put in place those contingency plans. It took the federal government’s announcement of a $10 billion investment to secure those water supplies into the future and take a national approach to what is a significant issue.

The member for Barker knows only too well the track record of our government in securing water supplies in his electorate. We have made significant contributions to piping the Loxton irrigation system which have addressed a couple of issues: water security and salinity. It is very important to recognise our government’s commitment. We have continually tried to improve the circumstances of industry and communities alike throughout the Murray-Darling Basin system.

We have heard comments today from the National Farmers Federation supporting our National Plan for Water Security. We welcome that support. The farming community have been calling for this sort of investment for quite some time. They have been calling for a recognition of what needs to be done to improve the circumstances of the system. To them, this $10 billion investment represents an acceleration of the National Water Initiative, something they have been consistently calling for.

This morning, along with the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources and the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, I met with representatives of the National Farmers Federation and also with an expert based group of representatives from the irrigation industry to discuss the implementation and the way forward with this plan. They are all committed to seeing the investment taken across a number of states in this system to generate more water—to save that water that we have indicated can be saved with the $10 billion investment. They want the federal government to get on with it. They want to be involved in this process and in the technical development of the scheme, and we welcome that commitment from the industry.

It is important to note that we need to implement this plan and we need the states to agree that this plan needs to be implemented. The Prime Minister has made abundantly clear to the states our view of how this structure should work, and this decision should be taken in the national interest. That is the attitude of the National Farmers Federation. That is the attitude of the irrigators in industry that operate right throughout the basin towards this plan. It is time that the state governments also took that approach and started thinking about the communities, thinking about the industry and thinking about the jobs that rely on water security throughout the basin and beyond that can benefit from the implementation of this plan. They should understand that water security equals job security, and just at the moment in regional Australia there is no greater imperative to dealing with some of these issues than securing job security into the future.