PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS

Mr CHAFFEY (Parkes) (11:21): I've said it before and I will say it again in this place: water is absolutely the lifeblood of Australian agriculture. Without water, there's no food, no fibre, no clothes to wear, no flour to make bread, no agricultural exports and no avocado on toast. This is not just about primary producers; it's about all Australians.

Every drop removed from production affects our primary producers. It affects our processors, our transport operators, our employment and our entire nation. It is that basic.

We need food to live and we need water to grow food. Food security and water security should be our national priorities, not funding another train to Melbourne or shoring up Labor's seats. Australians need to eat.

We can't see our country plunged into that same crisis of sovereignty over a lack of access to fuel. We can't keep reducing water availability to grow food and fibre. Our food prices and other cost-of-living prices are already at an all-time high.

Regional communities are already suffering from the impacts of water buybacks and recovery. When you take water from a community, it withers and it dies. It struggles to maintain its population.

What this looks like on the ground is families losing generational farms, schools closing, support industry shutting down, employment ending and people being forced to move out of our regional communities right across Australia. This is another way of saying having less water brings more heartbreak to regional communities, and it absolutely shatters dreams. Our regions are the heart of this country, and we should be pumping lifeblood into that heart, not draining it.

In places like Warren—home to the amazing young man Dusty, who today will finish his walk to parliament to raise funds for Little Wings, a very worthy cause—the population, unfortunately, is shrinking. The population dropped more than 10 per cent between the 2011 and 2016 censuses and by a further eight per cent between 2016 and 2021. This shows that, if you take water from a vibrant community, populations will drop.

Warren is losing the next generation, our younger generation. Unfortunately, instead of helping regional communities, this Labor government continues to hit them where it hurts. It continues to beat down innovation and resilience—that great Australian drive to work hard and to produce something worthwhile.

We need more water, more crops, more exports, more regional jobs, more economic activity, stronger supply chains and greater food security. We need to end further Murray-Darling Basin water buybacks. Australia can't afford any further reduction of water for our farming, for jobs and for productive use.

Instead, we're getting the slow strangulation of water availability. Let's take a look at just one example, the Wilcannia Weir, in my electorate. The people of Wilcannia, a remote community in north-west New South Wales, have been fighting for a new weir for more than 60 years.

This is a community's source of sustainable water. It's a predominantly Aboriginal community. They have waited through feasibility studies, design processes, talkfests, inspections—still no weir.

The previous coalition federal and state governments committed a total of $30 million for the design and construction. That's what it cost at the time. Under Labor, this vital upgrade project is now gone.

Delay after delay, excuse after excuse. Now it looks like the cost of that new weir is $130 million. That's $100 million more than the original plan that we were going to build as the coalition in government.

Unsurprisingly, the Labor government announced this weir, the Wilcannia Weir, has now been put on hold. It's not good enough. How long should a community have to wait for the most basic services?

As I said, this is just one example of the absolute neglect for regional communities and the sheer arrogance and ignorance this Labor government has shown towards people of regional communities. Every day, every drop is important. Buybacks come with huge implications.

We should support practical measures that deliver both healthy rivers and support the lifeblood of our communities. The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Mascarenhas ): The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.