Bill Heffernan (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

We do not need any more inquiries. We just have to have the courage to go and do this. There are a range of people who try to fight against and to resist the obvious. It is patently obvious that there is climate change. It is patently obvious that there will be some areas which will have to adapt to the weather in more ways than probably many people realise.

I think a lot of dairy farmers along the Murray River now know that, with the cost of water, growing pasture is going to be a pretty tricky proposition if the Australian people are only prepared to pay $1.14 for a litre of milk but $2.50 for a litre of water. What sense does that make? Consumers in Australia say to our farmers, ‘You’ve got to keep supplying that tucker at cheap prices, old mate,’ yet we import Chinese bottled water—Aqua—and put it on a shelf in the supermarket. It is a lost litre at $2.50; a lost litre for the importer. It comes into Australia at 28c a bottle, 600 mils, and it retails for $1.85 to $2.50. Where is the sense in that? The poor old guy who gets up at four o’clock in the morning to milk the cows can only get half that.

Bottled water is a con job. I have tried it out. I have gone to the tap—as long as you have got reasonable tap water—filled the bottles up, handed them around at an event and people all think they are drinking some special, sparkling spring water from somewhere. It is Mother Nature’s water. It is just that it has come out of a river instead of a spring. Good luck to them all, but we do not need any more inquiries. Everybody knows what has to be done: we just have to get on and do it, and now is the time. I think I have said enough.