Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Regional Development and Territories) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to highlight how the drier-than-normal weather conditions in my electorate of Farrer are rapidly making a significant impact in the worst possible way. Last Thursday Australia's largest and most important producer of rice, SunRice, announced a cut of some 100 jobs from local operations in the communities of Leeton and Deniliquin. This is around 20 per cent of the company's entire local workforce. The reason is the critical failure of the 2019 rice crop due to very low water allocation and high water prices. For the benefit of the metro based members of the Chamber, I should explain that, while a lack of rainfall will always affect farming and agricultural output, it is how the water we do have is managed that really impacts during a time like this.

Right now, general water allocations through the Murray River system are at zero per cent. It's been this way since the start of the growing season. SunRice is a brand name, but its growers are small, family owned and operated businesses. Their employees are locals with families and mortgages and Christmas just around the corner. These local growers can only survive on water they may have already banked or kept over from previous years. Unfortunately this is not enough to cover the forward season. In the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area, where the Leeton mill operates, at seven per cent of entitlement, allocations are not much better.

SunRice is a good company and, when it does rain, will no doubt be back in full force. But its predicament highlights the widespread problem across my electorate, with multiple workers being let go from farming operations because rainfall during the spring growing season did not arrive. In August this year I pleaded for common sense in water management ahead of the intensifying drought, backing the call from irrigators in the mid-Murray to borrow stored environmental water to save their failing winter crops. At that time, we had a small window to prevent some of the carnage. The proposal was a short-term loan of up to 100 gigalitres in water from the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder. This pitch was supported by many and ridiculed by some. Perhaps inevitably, it ran into a wall of bureaucracy between the Commonwealth and the states—environmentalists versus those who produce our food and fibre.

On Friday week the Murray-Darling Basin Ministerial Council will meet in Melbourne to tick off on the next stages of the Basin Plan. There to meet the ministers will be a large group of people from the Deniliquin and mid-Murray area. These are local people, farmers, who are still attempting to manage their operations with a zero allocation, not just this year but also quite probably next year. They will be there to remind us that decisions taken at the board table have real impacts on the people I represent. I simply ask those ministers around the table: take the time to listen to their stories, because the very future of many communities in my electorate depends on exactly what you do and the decisions you take.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 16:19 to 16:32