Senate debates
Wednesday, 13 March 2013
Committees
Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee; Report
6:11 pm
Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source
I will be brief. I mostly concur with the remarks of my colleague Senator Birmingham, who outlined a lot of the concerns. But I want to reinforce that we commend the work of the Senate References Committee on Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport. I also want to note the reality that if we are going to have irrigation in a temperate climate then we are still going to be highly reliant on the Murray-Darling Basin as the provider of Australia's food requirements. It produces 40 per cent of Australia's agriculture, 60 per cent of Australia's irrigated agriculture. It is the home for 2.1 million people. The resources of the Murray-Darling sustain my town and so many others. We have to acknowledge that so much of our nation's economic future is reliant on increasing capacity and our ability to deliver an agriculture product with an efficient use of water.
We should not put aside one of the most vital elements in the Murray-Darling Basin, the people. Some of the most iconic things in the Murray-Darling Basin are the houses that they live in. We must make sure that those people are entitled to a future. Their future is certainly not subsequent to the future of the frogs or the moss or anything else. As far as I am concerned, their lives are more important than the wildlife. As important as the wildlife is, the people come first. We have to make sure that their dignity remains so that we can sustain an economy.
Some of the actions taken thus far, such as the arbitrary purchase of water without any real thought behind it, have caused real problems. They might not be completely apparent in wet years but as soon as we have dry years again we will see that. That is why we in the coalition commit to capping buybacks at 1,500 gigalitres. That is what must happen. We know that buybacks pull the economic rug out from underneath towns. We are quite happy to look at the advantages of more efficient environmental and on-farm use of the water. But when we buy back the licence to give it to the environmental water holder, the question becomes: are they able to use it? How do we acknowledge the difference that it makes? What is the actual difference that has been made thus far? What has been compromised in regards to the social and economic future of the people who live in the basin?
More and more, we see issues surrounding imported food. On a related topic—and this was on the television last night—there are problems with imported fish products. We have now come to the conclusion that the use of antibiotics in fish means that we are eating our way into a superbug. The Australian people will demand a clean green product. The only clean, green product we can really vouch for is the one we produce ourselves. That will most likely, if it is a temperate product, be produced in the Murray Darling Basin, in an area that goes from the agricultural regions of Stanthorpe down to the agricultural regions of Murray Bridge and everywhere between. They are all linked by one river system, one river basin—obviously made up of a number of tributaries.
I commend this report and look forward to the continued growth of the economic and social future, the population and the agricultural potential and production of the Murray Darling Basin. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.
Leave granted; debate adjourned.
Charlie Schroeder
Posted on 14 Mar 2013 10:41 am
Barnaby Joyce seems to forget that it is the wildlife, the animals and plants that help to keep a water system healthy and are also indicators of the health of the water system. People are important in relation to all other things, not to themselves alone. Without a healthy and viable water system that is maintained by the fauna and flora of that system, people become ill and therefore move to the end of the tree of importance. Suddenly other elements that can make people healthy become important.
Why would anyone consider houses as iconic. Is iconic even more important than people. Houses change every day. People move house every day all over the country. Moving out of houses and tearing down houses and building new ones shows that houses are expendable.
Irrigation is mining water. The mining industry has pulled the rug out from under towns and communities since Australia was settled. When the metals and minerals ran out so did the miners and they did other things, found other work. Though they left many areas degraded. When the mining of water is curtailed and finally stopped as it should be, the surrounding land will also have a higher water table and better production system. Plants will be adapted to produce higher yields without the use of mined water from the Murray Darling system and the whole area will benefit as will the environment.
If the mining of water out of the Murray Darling system continues as it does now, it too will be left much like any mining industry, which is by its very nature a rapine and destructive industry, a wasteland blowing away to top dress the hills of places like New Zealand.
The changes that we've seen have been incremental since irrigation was permitted. The boiling frog. Slow changes are unnoticed till finally the frog boils. We now think that this is how it was always. It was never like this, it was a great deal better when there was no irrigation or very little, and the population learned to live comfortably with it. Irrigation has become a problem through greed. With more water in the system because of less irrigation, production in the Murray Darling area will still be high enough to support an export industry. If that's the ultimate aim.
The reason that imported food is sought by the consumer is because it is cheaper, and maybe it is of a lesser quality or sprayed with chemicals that have long been banned by the countries that manufacture them still, but it is affordable. Competition is not just about price. Competition is also about quality and food safety. If Australian farmers are to compete, possibly we must all take a step back from our overindulgence and cut back on what we as communities waste.
Farmers waste water and fertiliser and that's all part of the problem with the Murray Darling basin and most other river systems from which farmers are permitted to mine water. We have to get real about this. Even the mining industry is using water and in some instances polluting water to an extent that's completely unacceptable.
Though he might not realise it, someone better tell Barnaby Joyce that a world without frogs and mosses is also a world without human beings.