Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

The late, great Governor-General and Chairman of Soils for Life, Michael Jeffery, in a book written by Colleen McCullough—a mighty writer—entitled Water is Life and published in 2016, had this to say: 'River systems and water have played a central role in sustaining human populations, but the United Nations reports that one-fifth of the world's population now live in areas of river water scarcity. Australians have the know-how and ingenuity to redress this situation, but to date we don't seem to have the national will to protect our primary natural asset or make better use of the water we have.' The Hon. Major-General Michael Jeffery did so much in the space of ensuring that we had the best-quality soils and also wanted to ensure that we used water wisely. In the book, Colleen McCullough wrote that rural folk were under pressure and continued: 'Only urban centres possess voting reservoirs large enough to matter politically. There are more members of the parliament seated on or around the Cumberland Plain than seated in the rest of New South Wales. City people matter. Country people do not. That leads to a national populace grossly ignorant about the intrinsic qualities and functions of water. Politicians whose foresight extends only to getting re-elected in the main share this ignorance.'

That's pretty telling—it's pretty insightful. I just had a meeting with two very passionate people. The member for Parkes, who is sitting beside me, knows these two people very well. They are General Manager Leonie Brown and Mayor Lachlan Ford of Bourke Shire—good people. They are very worried, as is the member for Parkes, about Bourke, the wider shire and wider western New South Wales, and, as the shadow minister for water, I would add the Murray-Darling Basin system in its entirety, because we have a government now that doesn't understand the intrinsic value of water.

In her book, Ernestine Hill—it's a 1937 publication—writes of Bourke:

Bourke had 32 hotels and 1,000 thirsty men in the main street—

Oxley Street—

on Saturday night—in Australia you estimate the size of a town by its hotel-power.

And you also measure the size and worth of a town by its productivity. Mayor Ford and GM Brown told me a tale—the member for that area, the member for Parkes, understands this well, and he, like me, is very passionate about this topic—that these towns, which have provided so much for so long, are now being held in the grips of a Murray-Darling Basin Plan which does not serve our river communities well. Just last week we saw yet another 86 gigalitres of productive water being taken out of the system—and for what? To be flushed down the mouth of the Murray. That cost is at a time when Labor's debt is spiralling towards a trillion dollars. $430 million. It equated to 34,400 Olympic-sized swimming pools taken out of farming use, taken away from irrigators to be able to use potentially for fruit and vegetables, rice and cotton and anything else, and sent down the river for the environment—now, our farmers are the world's best environmentalists. They pay for every drop of water. They want to see the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder, Simon Banks, be accountable for the water that he and the CEWH overseer hold and maintain in the water space. The CEWH is taking water out of the system—and it's legislated; I appreciate that. There's no accountability over every drop of water, but there is for our farmers because they're paying for it. The CEWH holds, retains, manages and owns 72 per cent of the available water in the Murray-Darling basin. It is the nation's biggest irrigator, yet our irrigators are being told they're the ones wasting water. The coalition has a better way; it's to make sure that we put the infrastructure in place, that the CEWH is accountable and that we stop the water recovery by stealth and stop the insidious buybacks.