PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS

Mr JOYCE (New England) (11:11): by leave—I thank the Chamber for leave. I had only a few seconds earlier. Why waste the time?

Tomorrow I'm going to the opening of one of the most substantial pieces of infrastructure in Tamworth. There's a $1.3 billion chicken processing factory—I suppose you'd call it that; it looks like a spaceship. And it's by Baiada.

There's $1.3 billion in the total infrastructure spend that's around it. This is going to process seven million birds a week. The issue is we almost lost it because we didn't have the water.

If you don't have water, you don't have industry. If you don't have industry, you don't have jobs; 1,200 people in Tamworth will be employed by this. One of the issues—we fought for so long—was Dungowan Dam.

The Labor Party, which are supposed to look after labourers, came in. The first thing they did was to come up with this stupendous number, that it was going to cost $1.3 billion—they could never quite tell us why on earth it was going to cost $1.3 billion—and shut it down. So now we don't have the water.

We're searching for potable water, searching around bores and coming up with all these other ideas. We've spent $75 million on a pipeline to what was supposed to be the new water infrastructure. But the water infrastructure is not there.

This gives you an example of the length and breadth of how Murray Darling Basin water policy affects so many people—not just in agriculture but away from agriculture. We also have to meet the requirements of a standard of living in so many regional towns that is premised on people's access to water. The biggest water holder in Australia is not Australian Food & Fibre; it's not any entity.

It's a thing called the Commonwealth. That is the biggest water holder, and it holds water through the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holders book—it's known as the CEWH. This massive asset is badly managed.

We all know that in actual irrigation, as a member for Farrer would know better than anybody else in this building, you water up assets before you plant. You water up assets as you grow them in crop, as they call it. This is all part of it.

But when the Commonwealth turns up, they say: 'Well, we're never actually going to tell you how much water we need to water up an environmental asset. We just need all this water. We're never going to tell you exactly the efficacy of what this water use is, of how much can get past the Barmah Choke.' They just say, 'Well, it's a virtue.' But virtues don't pay the bills.

We have to better exercise this asset to achieve its environmental outcomes and also work hand in hand with the people of the Murray-Darling Basin who are doing the great moral duty of providing food not only for Australia but for the global food stack. There's only a small portion for the global food stack, but you're doing the right thing, doing nothing, doing the wrong thing or just taking from it.

Australia has a moral obligation to provide food into the global food stack, but, more and more, as our population grows, our proportionate delivery into that food stack is getting less and less. In fact, we're getting to the perverse position now where we're starting to import more and more of our own food. It's not just enough to shut down our power supplies; now we're actually affecting our capacity to feed ourselves.

We have to realise the wider aspects of this. It's not just the farmers, but the hairdressers, tyre businesses, getting people into the social structure, the schools are all affected by access to water. If you want a working example of that, I can take you to Collarenebri, I can take you to Dirranbandi, I can take you to St George and you will see the direct correlation between access to water and standard of living.

One of the greatest mechanisms for the social advancement and economic advancement of Aboriginal Australia is access to water for the commercial purposes of growing crops. If you take that away, you are intrinsically saying, 'I want your long-term purpose to be poor,' and we can't do that. In my part, I'll stand behind what I have been part of and what One Nation will be part of.

We believe in building dams. In the past, Dungowan Dam was knocked over by the Labor Party. They got rid of Hells Gate.

They got rid of the Bowen pipeline. They got rid of Emu Swamp. They got rid of Urannah.

I was part of building Rookwood dam, Charlton Dam, Quipolly Dam, Chaffey. We had the MDB upgrades, and more of this should be done because this is the enterprise that takes our nation ahead. This is an enterprise that takes regional areas ahead, and I commend the member for Farrer for his work and diligence in this area.