Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Justice and Customs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to be able to contribute to the grievance debate tonight and to mention a few important issues in my electorate of Farrer. But, before I do so, I firstly acknowledge a special event that is taking place in the parliament tomorrow night. It is a significant event, I believe. A dinner is being held to mark the end of the Ramadan fast, which is an important occasion in the Muslim calendar. This is the Iftar, as many of us here have come to know it. It is an occasion when, for a month’s duration, people of the Islamic faith fast between sunrise and sunset. The breaking fast dinner that we will hold tomorrow night is supported by many members and senators. It is also supported by my colleague the member for Calwell and by the Australian Intercultural Society and Mr Orhan Cicek, who has been indefatigable in his resolve and determination to promote issues that are important to his constituency, the Muslim faith, here in the parliament. I believe this will be the third such dinner. The first dinner was held in 2003 and that was also a special occasion.

Tomorrow night will be an important occasion for this place not just to talk about matters relating to the contri-bution that Muslims make to Australian society but also to recognise that with a dinner held in honour of our Aus-tralian citizens who are of the Islamic faith. I very much look forward to that occasion, and I know that members and senators who attend will join with me in recognising the significant contribution and the place that all faiths play in the hearts of Australian citizens.

I now turn to matters affecting my electorate. It will not surprise colleagues to note that I am going to talk about water once again, because the electorate of Farrer is very much defined by the Murray River of New South Wales. The Minister for Climate Change and Water, Senator Wong, visited the southern Murray-Darling Basin last week. She had a message for the communities there, which was highlighted on the front page of the Deniliquin Pastoral Times. Her message was: ‘Prepare for a future with less water.’ I had an entry posted on my Facebook page on the morning that she attended and it was not particularly complimentary, I have to say. It simply noted: ‘The queen was visiting from on high, looking down at us from her throne, refusing yet again to meet members of the com-munity.’

I say to the minister that we appreciate the undertakings that she makes in her travels around the Murray-Darling Basin and we appreciate the fact that she visits, but it is important to talk to community members who represent the community as opposed to irrigator groups with particular interests. The community is just as worried as the farmers and the irrigators are. The community is the small businesses, the schools, the mums and dads and those who have lived their lives in these little towns and who fear they are going to be forgotten by this govern-ment. Those communities also want a dialogue with the minister.

I heard Minister Wong on our local radio and, of course, did not agree with a lot of what she said. But I was heartened when she said that the government was not prepared to give up on the Murray-Darling Basin. I thank her for those words, because we who live there are never going to give up on our communities, on our family farms and on our productive enterprises that mean so much. But it would be good if we could understand the sort of future that the government actually has in mind for us, and I am concerned that the government itself is not aware of what that future might be. We know we have to prepare for a future with less water, and we know that it will mean sacrifices—in fact, it already has—but I am not certain what the government has in mind. The govern-ment talks of a basin plan taking place in 2011, and the Murray-Darling Basin authority, with input from the CSIRO, is preparing that plan. That will, according to Minister Wong, give us a lot less water than we have got now. But what will happen at the end of this long process is that the government will own, having purchased, an enormous amount of water in the Murray-Darling system, particularly from the New South Wales Murray.

Until not long ago, 96 per cent of the water buyback had come from the New South Wales Murray. I understand that a little bit more has now been contributed from Victoria, with a relaxing of the four per cent cap trade-out rule. Once this water is held by the federal government, further planning will need to be done, and it needs to be determined what will actually happen when the water is there. At the moment we have just got airspace in the dams, but when there really is water there will have to be a serious effort to manage it—whether it is stored, whether it waters wetlands or environmental sites, or whether it goes back on the market to irrigators. I think it has to go back on the market, because there could be a time when there is so much that that is the only sensible use. How will that reapplication of water affect the market, the price and people’s certainty about doing business?

Next Sunday in Balranald in my electorate there is going to be a rally to take on an issue that we are very famil-iar with and that we are fighting, and that is the willingness of so many in our region to allocate the central Murray red gum forests back to national parks. An extremely effective campaign is being run by the Wilderness Society. I have not found a single truthful statement that the Wilderness Society has made in connection with cen-tral Murray red gum forests or the red gum industry, but our communities are rallying in Balranald on Sunday, and I know that the turnout there will be enormous. It will be many times the population of that small town, because we know we are under great threat from this initiative. The New South Wales government, in an attempt to ap-pease the green vote in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly, has ordered yet another study by the Natural Resources Commission of its government into the use of these red gum forests. We have had so many inquiries over the years, and we have already demonstrated so many times that these forests are used in an environmentally sustainable way. They are harvested sensibly, the products that are used are essential in so many areas of life and, if replaced, would be replaced with alternatives that would be largely concrete.

In debating the Wilderness Society on my local ABC radio, I was shocked to hear an individual from that or-ganisation say that very little of value came out of these area—really just fence posts, railway sleepers and fire-wood. The alternatives, I suppose, might be that you would use concrete instead of wooden fence posts and you would use concrete sleepers on railway lines instead of red gum sleepers, and you would heat your homes with coal-fired electricity. Actually, it is not correct that that is all that comes out of these red gum forests. They also produce an amazing red gum veneer that goes on chipboard-type, cheaper wood product and is absolutely bril-liant.

The other thing that I must say about the forests is that in harvesting them we are saving them for the future. We are using them sustainably. That is recognised by the Ramsar convention on wetlands, which acknowledges the sustainable use of these forests. If we go the way of the Victorian forests, we will simply lock up our red gum for-ests and, if they do not regenerate by sustainable harvesting, they will regenerate by fire. In fact, they will not re-generate by fire; they will simply burn. Unlike the alpine forests in Kosciuszko, they do not need fire to regener-ate. They need water to grow. It is getting to the stage where the nature of the forest is so dense that, in order to let light in to accelerate further growth, a small amount of each area has to be patch-felled, and this is what the Wil-derness Society takes great objection to. These areas are probably 50 metres by 50 metres, so they are not large and they are not significant in the overall patchwork of the forest. But they have to be removed in order to let the light in. It is the silvicultural practice that is analogous with the harvesting of a crop. The Wilderness Society and other green groups take great exception to this, and I do not really understand why, because they reside in the in-ner suburbs of Sydney. In fact, if you drive through those suburbs you will see signs saying ‘save the river red gum’. I can guarantee that almost every person who drives past those signs has no understanding of the river red gum industry.

We will confront this latest challenge, but I do fear that the New South Wales central Murray forests will go the same way as the Victorian ones, and that would be devastating. It is a not insignificant area of timber and we do not want to see a repeat of the fires that have ravaged other parts of Australia when similar natural vegetation management practices have persisted in the past. I commend all those who care for their communities to attend that rally next Sunday in Balranald. I know that the fight is beginning, and when we have an opportunity to make our presentations to the commission we will argue our case very strongly.