McKenzie, Sen Bridget

Senator McKENZIE (Victoria—Leader of the Nationals in the Senate) (18:01): Sadly, I have been in this place long enough to have been here when the abomination that is the Murray-Darling Basin Plan was put in place. I've watched that plan decimate communities, industries, towns and families right throughout my home state of Victoria. It was the sad fact in Victoria, because we had a very highly regulated irrigation system, that it was our water that the Labor government back then, when Penny Wong was the water minister, could enter into our communities for. If you purchased Victorian water, you were actually guaranteed of getting water because of the highly regulated nature of our system. And so, today, when we know over 90 per cent of the water originally envisaged under the plan has been recovered, over half of it comes from regional Victoria. We have paid the price for this plan. Despite it encompassing four states and one territory, it is the Victorian regional communities which have paid the very worst price under this plan. That is why the Labor government in Victoria does not support this piece of legislation. It does not support the water minister going back into the market with forced buybacks and does not support the 450-gigalitre political solution that was arrived at back in the day to get certain members in this chamber across the line. It was never meant to be part of the total plan. It was always a political solution. We have a Labor Party that doesn't understand the regions, doesn't care about the regions, wouldn't know the Barmah Choke if it fell over it and has not sat down in the pubs and footy clubs of Kerang, Cobram, Swan Hill, Mildura, Echuca and Shepparton. Eighty per cent of our national pear crop comes from Shepparton and the Goulburn Valley. Horticulture and dairy industries in regional Victoria have done the heavy lifting in this water recovery task. It says everything about the government and their attitude to those nine million of us that don't live in capital cities that they cannot wait to give our farmers and our regional communities a Christmas present that will devastate our productive capacity and will devastate families. I was taken to task for talking about the mental health impact this policy has had over the last decade on these communities. Hard men, grown men and proud men were brought to tears and worse, and it will be the same with this because it is an incredibly blunt, pathetic response to achieving environmental outcomes. The truth is that a decade ago when we set this thing up we didn't have the science and the telemetrics on our creeks and rivers—the measurement tools to understand how best to water environmental assets didn't exist—so we thought it was all about a base number: 'If we get this many gigalitres down the river then all the Ramsar wetlands will be tickety-boo.' No, they won't. We have pushed too much water down river and it's actually destroying environmental assets as a result. Guess what the scientists say? 'Don't push so much water down the river, because there are natural constraints. Let it sit longer and be slower. That's what our kind of environment needs.' That's what our environment actually needs. Senator Farrell: Ten years you let it sit there. Senator McKENZIE: I'm very happy to hear Senator Farrell, the trade minister. He's going to have to explain why our dairy industry is devastated and why we're not going to be exporting grapes, almonds, apples, pears—horticulture galore—and wine from these regions that his party is seeking to kill. You can't grow anything, Senator Farrell, without water. We have the most efficient irrigators in the world. They're drip-feeding their permanent plantings. The sad reality is—and we heard it in Senate inquiry after Senate inquiry—that the scientists know that measuring the health of the river isn't just about the number of gigalitres pushed down it over a time frame; it's about fish stocks and about leaving water longer in certain places and less long in others. They're all unique aspects because they are unique environmental assets right up and down our rivers. That has nothing to do with actual people who live there. It appears that our worst fears are being realised before our eyes. Today Labor has bowed down to the Greens to ensure that their ideological bill that will destroy regional communities is passed through the Senate today. Those guys do not have a dirty deal that they're not prepared to do between the two of them. Senator Farrell: John Howard proposed this. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Hughes ): Senator Farrell, Senator McKenzie has the right to be heard in silence. All interjections are disorderly. Senator Farrell interjecting— The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Senator Farrell, you don't have the call. I didn't give you the call. Do you have a point of order? Senator Farrell: Senator McKenzie has to start telling the truth about— The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Senator Farrell, resume your seat. That's not a point of order. Senator McKenzie. Senator McKENZIE: If telling the truth in this chamber becomes the new standard for the Labor Party, I look forward to them following their own example, because what we are subjected to in question time after question time and in committee stage after committee stage on key policy and legislative arrangements that we're putting through this place— The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Senator McKenzie. Senator McKENZIE: They have a psychology that is anti truth telling. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Senator McKenzie, you may resume your speech. Senator McKENZIE: There was no point of order? The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: No, there was not. Nice try. Senator McKENZIE: Okay. You can tell you're getting under the trade minister's skin when you start talking about the hypocritical approach this government has to growing prosperous, safe, sustainable regional communities and industries. He's very happy to get the business class ticket to the EU and to swan around Europe talking up a big trade proposal, but at home their legislative agenda seeks to destroy the very men and women and the communities that sustain them that provide you that opportunity, Senator Farrell— Senator Farrell: I'm looking after them. You didn't. You ignored these people. Senator McKENZIE: And provide Minister Watt—the joke of an agriculture minister this country, sadly, has— The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Senator McKenzie, can you resume your chair for a second. Senator Farrell, you have been asked to stop interjecting. Senator McKenzie has the right to be heard in silence. Senator McKenzie, if you could direct your comments through the chair. Senator McKENZIE: Thank you, Madam Acting Deputy President. It is very disappointing the agriculture minister and the trade minister were rolled in cabinet on standing up for these communities, clearly. If they really cared about productive food capacity in the regions, they would not be supporting this bill and they would be standing up for our great primary producers. Communities across the Murray-Darling basin have done it tough under the challenging conditions of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. There are many senators on this side of the chamber who have sat down in these communities and sought to understand it. In my home state of Victoria our dairy and horticulture industries have done the heavy lifting in meeting the targets of the plan. More than 50 per cent of the water recovered has come from Victoria. No more should come from the state of Victoria, but the Minister for the Environment and Water is going to roll her own Labor state, which is valiantly standing against this ridiculous policy, this cruel policy. Our farmers have had no choice but to produce more with less water, and they've risen to the challenge. We should be proud of that instead of taking the stick to them once again. Enough is enough. Without water there is no ability to grow food, provide well-paying local jobs, sustain the future of our regional towns and communities and provide Senator Farrell with a platform to negotiate future free trade agreements with our fabulous primary produce. The Albanese Labor government is backed in by the Greens and the regional Independent for Indi, Helen Haines. What a shameful, woeful regional member Helen Haines is. She voted to decimate her own communities. The people across Indi know she is more interested in currying favour with the likes of the Greens from Melbourne and Tanya Plibersek from Sydney than in standing up for her primary producers. I am confident they will throw her out. Today we have seen the true colours of the Labor Party under the Albanese government. States came together and said, 'We understand the pain that this plan implementation has provided our primary producers, and do you know what? You cannot take that additional water without convincing us that there won't be detrimental social and economic impacts.' That's it; do no harm. I often hear the Greens talk about the do-no-harm principle, the precautionary principle. That is all this is for the humans, the stock, the productive capacity, the future. If you want that additional water, just prove it's not going to do social and economic harm, but they don't care. We know buybacks decimate and destroy our communities. A 2022 independent study found that the purchase of 750 gigalitres would cost the southern basin, that's Victoria for the non-giga literates—that's fine, because it can be complex—$900 million in agricultural production per year and tens of thousands of jobs. Talk a big game on jobs, but not if you live in the regions. You actually don't care, because tens of thousands of people are going to lose their jobs. I look forward to the committee stage of this bill, because if you have not modelled the impact of this legislation on our communities you will be held to account in this chamber this week. The research backs up what we already knew. When you take water away from producers, their business dries up. When farmers are forced to shut down it affects the whole community. It's not just about a farmer receiving an economic benefit for the water you've purchased. It flows right through the fabric of the community that the farmer is a part of. It's not just the farmers who experience devastation. It's the local food producers, the manufacturers, the dairy processors, the abattoirs and the food processors such as SPC in my home state. It's the milk truck drivers. I look forward to hearing Senator Sterle and Senator Sheldon stand up for the Transport Workers Union workers who work for those companies. They don't care. They won't be making a contribution on this bill and standing up for those TWU members and other truck drivers. People will stop going to the local supermarket. They won't buy supplies at the CRT in town. Kids will move from the local school, the town will begin to diminish, the teachers will leave, you won't need so many coppers and you won't need to have your hospital so well staffed. That is the decline, and it is based on the decision that this chamber is choosing to make today. The aspirations of Labor, the Greens and Helen Haines are not aligned with reality, and there is no regard for the lives this legislation will destroy. The VFF's water council chair, Andrew Leahy, said: "Buybacks kill rural communities, it's plain and simple, I've seen it first-hand in my hometown." "We'll have less kids in our schools, less doctors and nurses and less community volunteers in the CFA and our local football teams,"— and I'm sure he also meant to say netball. Even the Victorian Labor government understood this. The Victorian Department of Jobs, Skills, Industry and Regions did their own analysis on the impact of this devastating legislation on the Victorian Goulburn-Murray Irrigation District, and they emphatically concluded the buybacks would have 'substantial impacts to local communities and disproportionately affect the dairy industry.' But we're expected to believe that no-one is going to be hurt from this. This will be another net zero consequence. But it's only a net zero consequence because it's a net zero consequence to anybody you care about or anybody that has political value to you. This government is more prepared to stick up for Hamas supporters than it is to stick up for those of us that live in the Murray Darling Basin. Senator Farrell, shame on you—more prepared to stick up for Hamas sympathisers than you are to stick up for the productive capacity of those of us who live in the basin, prepared for our lives to be destroyed and our communities to disappear. The report, which is a Labor's government report, I remind us, also found that a 450-gigalitres water buyback in the southern basin is estimated to result in—and here are the actual facts the Labor Party won't tell you, but the Victorian Labor Party has done its homework. There will be $270 million a year of net loss in gross value of our ag production, 900 jobs affected and lost. Farming practices will continue to evolve to account for less reliable water availability, and it's likely the number of farms and the amount of land used for dairy farming in the GMID will continue to decline. If this Labor Party were serious about creating good water policy for people, for industry, for the environment, for the river, it would do the following. It would support extending the deadlines for the implementation of the Basin Plan. It would retain the cap on buybacks. It would not enable open tender buybacks used to recover the 450. It would say no to the 450 because it is not a neutral impact on our people. It would broaden the definition of water recovery. Imposing— (Time expired)