Pat Farmer (Macarthur, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As I sip on my glass of water here this morning I would like to draw to everyone’s attention to the lifeblood of this nation, which is water itself. In particular in my region, the Macarthur area, it is the Hawkesbury-Nepean catchment. I would like to bring to the attention of this chamber the fact that in 2007 the then Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, announced the coalition’s $132.5 million plan to help the Nepean River recover.

It is important to note that 97 per cent of Sydney’s drinking water comes from the Hawkesbury-Nepean catchment area. That catchment area supplies 4.13 million people of Sydney and supports 70 per cent of the state’s income. The fact that the river is in such dire straits—together with poor leadership—is obviously an example of why New South Wales  is probably running down the gurgler at the moment. Having said all of that, this morning I call on the Rudd government to come good on the promise made by John Howard back in 2007 of that $132.5 million funding. It was already set aside—and I emphasise the fact that it was already set aside—for this project. Because the money has already been put aside it would not be extra spending, so I call on the Rudd government to support this program and to work with the New South Wales state government to clean up the Nepean River catchment area.

In the limited time I have available I would like to also touch on a couple of other points. Sitting in the House last night listening to the budget speech, I could not for the life of me believe that in just 18 short months we have gone from having a $20 billion surplus to a $188 billion debt in our forward estimates. This is a frightening figure for any of us who have children. Those of us who have children are looking at every man, woman and child in the next generation in this country paying back around $9,000, plus a $500 interest bill on top of that, just to try to get that back under control. When the coalition first came to government under the leadership of John Howard 13 years ago, we had a $96 billion debt. We paid that back. It took us nearly 10 years to do that, and we saved $5 billion a year as a result of paying back that debt and getting ourselves into a position of surplus. I want the Australian people to reflect on the mistake they made by putting the Labor government into power and putting them in charge of the finances.