Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

After seven years of the worst drought on record, northern Victorians have finally seen some abundant rains. However, one season of average rainfall does not undo the damage to the local economy or individual bank accounts. As well, right now there is growing despair as people await the outcome of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority’s guide to the proposed Basin Plan, fearful that there might not be a balanced result at the end of the day. So I want to put on the record what happens when you do not have enough water to sustain an agribusiness that has been a world leader in terms of efficiency and profitability in the past. A report has just been released, compiled by the Victorian Department of Primary Industries, the Northern Victoria Irrigation Renewal Project and the HMC Property Group. It asks: ‘Where have all the dairies gone?’ From data derived from inspection of 9,500 of 11,500 properties, the report found:

While a high degree of change was anticipated, the results can only be described as startling. The most significant finding was the movement of properties out of irrigated dairy production due to the drought conditions and the low water allocation environment that has prevailed … and the extent to which that land is no longer actively farmed.

In fact, in the area long considered the food bowl of Victoria, the most common land use for the 2009-2010 irrigation season was “in transition”. The inspection program identified that the idle rural land component comprised over 45% of the nearly 800,000 hectares of rural land across the study area.

Typically the idle land was part of ex-dairy and fodder production that have been “dried off” and fallen into poor state. Weed infestation and general degradation were prevalent on these properties. Not only had these holdings been retired from irrigation, they had been retired from active agriculture.

The farms were often located within older soldier settlement districts and while they featured older style irrigation lay-out they also occupied better than average soils in areas that were once highly sought after.

The point I am making is that the consequence of lack of water security is no farming activity. In this case, nearly 45 per cent of once-dairy country is no longer being farmed. It is not being farmed for dairy or for any alternative agricultural production; it is simply land lying idle and being degraded. That is why it is critical, if we want to have food security into the centuries ahead for this country, that we must understand the significance of a balanced approach to the environment and agriculture, particularly irrigated agriculture in this part of the world that I am referring to. That in turn gives you a viable, effective community that more than contributes its share to building the economy of Australia. There are solutions to this, quite obviously, and those solutions will very much be in the hands of this government as it puts together the Murray-Darling Basin Plan for years to come.