Mark Coulton (Parkes, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Water Resources and Conservation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak about an issue that is very important to the people of the lower Lachlan River in New South Wales. As of the last couple of weeks, the lower Lachlan River has ceased to run below the weir at Condobolin. This is unprecedented and it resents a crisis to small communities and individual farms—people numbering in the hundreds—in the lower Lachlan area. I would like to speak about the need for emergency funding to overcome this problem through either piping water from other areas or sinking bores. It is my understanding that there are viable aquifers in the area, but unfortunately many of these people are cash-strapped after eight years of continuous drought and do not have the resources to put these bores down. What is going to exacerbate the problem is that, even though they do have some amount of grass for their stock, they are going to have to de-stock because of lack of water. Probably worse than that, communities like Euabalong, Euabalong West, Oxley and others will have to have water carted in.

The problem with carting water is that it is very expensive and it is a constant requirement. I believe there is a good case to be made for emergency funding to sink bores and help with piping. This is an investment that goes beyond this drought and will add value for many years to come. I find it rather strange that in this place last Thursday we passed a bill to allocate another $650 million to accelerate the water buyback program in the Murray-Darling Basin yet we are having trouble finding funding for this scheme. This is essentially a water saving scheme. If this money had been spent in the last little while on putting these bores down, we would be saving water. One of the problems with the water delivery systems is that, while they are very cost-effective when water is plentiful, they are quite wasteful in terms of the amount of evaporation from the very long open channels. Even Lake Cargelligo, a community of 1,400 people, is looking at having to pump water from a bore field some 33 kilometres to the west. This is going to be quite a considerable cost, but once again it will be a cost that will carry this community well into the future.

This area, the Lachlan shire, will be coming into the Parkes electorate at the next election, with the redistribution. I was out there a couple of weeks ago. There is a great amount of upset and fear for the future. Not only have these people had eight years of continuous drought; they have now suffered the ultimate blow of lack of water. If you think about it, after the air we breathe, water would be the next basic need for human existence. I think those of us who live in areas where that is not a problem would find it very difficult to adapt to a life where every drop of water that is available to you has to come in on the back of a truck. Imagine living in a town where you cannot turn your tap on to get water; you have to go to a common reservoir and take delivery of your own water in a tank in the back of a utility and take it back to your place. In this day and age, that is a very poor state of affairs. I am not being critical of this government at all. This is uncharted territory. We have not been here before. All I am doing is asking that some of the funding that is now being spent for buybacks be diverted. A fraction of that funding could be diverted to the people of the lower Lachlan to ease the hardship that they are suffering. (Time expired)