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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2008-09-24 Daily Xml
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WATER POLICY

Mr WILLIAMS (MacKillop) (15:39): Yesterday I congratulated the government on adopting some of the Liberal Party's policies regarding helping Riverland horticulturalists. Today I will talk a little more about the project that the government announced yesterday but put it in the context of the way this government operates, because this government is operating in a very ad hoc manner. It has no plan for the future, and that is why Riverland horticulturalists are worried about their future. Riverland communities—and when I say the 'Riverland', I am including the Murraylands and the people around the Lower Lakes—have been treated extremely poorly by this government and received very little support. The reality is that it is the ad hoc nature of the way this government approaches these people, manages the drought, the low river flows and the impact it is having on those horticulturalists and the associated communities.

Let me explain. We all know that this government is about spin. Everything it does is about spin. I will read into Hansard a letter published in The Advertiser yesterday. The letter is headed 'Cheap government' and it states:

I for one defend the Rann government's investment in spin doctors. Clearly it is far less costly to make it look as though you're doing something than to actually do it.

Obviously, the more that needs to be done, the more spin doctors it's going to take to make it look as though things are being done.

If the illusion costs $18 million a year, just imagine what the reality would cost. We should congratulate the Rann government on such ruthless pursuit of efficiency.

The letter is signed by Rob Silva of Houghton. It is a well-written letter which aptly describes this government. This government describes itself as 'acting now for the future'. If the government was acting now for the future, if it had done it at any time in the seven years it has been in office, we would not have the sort of thing that is happening today in the Riverland, Murraylands and Lower Lakes.

On Adelaide radio this morning, when asked about the two packages—one to give money to people to exit the horticultural industries in the Riverland and Murraylands and the other to support people to stay—the Minister for Water Security said 'the two packages are very closely linked'. In the Sunday Mail, only one of those two packages was announced; that is, the package to give money to irrigators and horticulturalists to exit the industry. There was no mention over the weekend of support for people to stay in the industry.

In the Sunday Mail, the Premier described the initiative as 'the last piece of the jigsaw to help the Riverland'. On Sunday, the last piece of the jigsaw was to give them some exit money—to take the $150,000 per property from the commonwealth government—so the people would leave the industry. Once they had sold their water and ripped out their permanent plantings—the grapevines and fruit trees—they could possibly get another $10,000. That was the last piece of the jigsaw as far as this government was concerned—this government which is acting now for the future. The last piece of the jigsaw was to give a financial incentive to people so they would sell their water to the federal government and exit the industry.

What would be the impact of that on communities in the Riverland? Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of production and many hundreds of millions of dollars of value-adding would be lost in those communities. Obviously, at the cabinet meeting on Monday, ministers looked at each other and said, 'What have we done?' On Tuesday they came out with the new policy: 'We will give a few dollars to people so they will stay.'

This is from a Premier who signed a historic agreement on 3 July. My question to the Premier is: how many rice growers in Deniliquin will be forced to sell their water and get out of the industry? Why is it that horticulturalists in South Australia have been given virtually no choice and large incentives to get out of the industry yet rice and cotton growers in New South Wales will survive this drought and produce rice and cotton in the future, when our communities in the Riverland and Murraylands are shutting down because they have received no support from this government?

Time expired.

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