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

Last Wednesday night, the Kyabram Club saw a packed house of hundreds of farmers and business people who had gathered to express their deep concern about their loss of access to affordable irrigation water in northern Victoria and southern New South Wales. Some had driven hours to get there from Deniliquin and Griffith. Others had driven from further west in the system from around Boort, home to the biggest and best olive groves in Australia. From closer by, from around Kyabram, we had representatives of the biggest and best dairy farms and fruit and tomato growers.

These hardworking men and woman were there because they are so deeply distressed about their own families, their communities and their enterprises. We began with a prayer and ended with a poem penned by one of the organisers, Loretta Warren. This summed up the despair and loss felt by so many. It is not drought and flood that is seeing the productivity of this part of the Murray Darling Basin plummet and the debt once again climb to unacceptable levels. It is not commodity prices or lack of demand for the fine foods—the dairy, fruit, olives, rice meats and oil seeds. In fact, manufacturers are turning away offers for supplying more infant formula, more oil seeds, more meats, apricots, rice and fine lamb.

The tragedy is that the loss of nearly half of the irrigation water out of the Goulburn Murray Irrigation District is a result of decisions first made by the Gillard Labor government, partnered with state governments, which apparently had no idea, or did not care, about the economic, community and other social and environmental impacts of transferring huge volumes of water out of the Murray-Darling Basin and production to flow, instead, out to sea.

The VFF came in for a particular caning on the night. They were seen as not caring, not there and not speaking up. Interestingly, the local VFF water committee representative, Mr Richard Anderson, was not there. He has since flailed about and suggested that all I am saying is that no more funding should go towards the closing down of the system. In fact, what I am saying is that this is a project that has $1 billion of federal funding, and the mid-term review—as recommended by the independent review which was commissioned by the state and federal governments—recommends that this project, shutting down half of the irrigation system of northern Victoria, must be reset.

It was shocking to read in that mid-term review that the business case does not refer to the impacts on irrigators or their enterprises come the removal of half of the water, or to the impacts on the viability of the irrigation system itself should there be a removal of half of the water—45 per cent of the channels. This is extraordinary.

I would have loved to have read that business plan. I still want to see it. But it is an official secret. I have tried to get that business case for the $1 billion that Tony Burke, the then environment minister, signed up to with the state government, demanding that 204 gigalitres be passed from the irrigators to the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder. The business case for that deal is secret. I have tried to get it under FOI from the state and the Commonwealth. I have been refused. Apparently, as I said, the business case does not refer to the impacts of taking away the water, through shutting down the system, on the farm enterprise itself or on the viability of what was the biggest irrigation system in Australia. That is extraordinary.

This is taxpayer funded money, after all, for an infrastructure project—not for a secret submarine plan or how the Federal Police operate. This is a $1 billion federally funded piece of irrigation infrastructure, and its business case is secret. There is a reason for it being secret of course: it is because it is so unconscionable.

What other developed nation would deliberately dismantle its irrigation system in the face of growing demand for its produce? One of the extraordinary problems that the mid-term review identified was the fact that it is based on a false assumption. The false assumption was that farmers wanted to be shut down because, after all, they had sold some of their water to Penny Wong, then minister for the environment. They had not wanted to do that. They were forced to do it by the banks, to relieve the debt accumulated through the drought. So that was a false assumption. Farmers do not want to be shut down. Farmers have viable enterprises. Many still own their water. But they are being forced to agree to plans where they will no longer be viable as dairy farmers and where the communities around them are collapsing. There are just six children left at the Invergordon school where there were 60 not very long ago. So this is an extraordinary case and one we should all be deeply ashamed about. And we need to fix it. (Time expired)