Senator JOYCE (Queensland—Leader of the Nationals in the Senate) Let us say that the climate has changed and we are now in an eternal drought. If that is the case, then it does not matter how much money you spend buying water that is not there; it is not going to fix anything. If it is not there, and you believe that to be the case, and you believe that to be the case in perpetuity, then buying nothing creates nothing—no matter how much money you throw at it. The Labor Party need to have the bravery to think outside the box, and I just do not think they have got that capability. I do not think it is in them to say, ‘We’re going to have to look at the engineering projects to move the water from where it is in abundance to where it isn’t.’ They have not even suggested it. For them it is politically incorrect. It is beyond the Labor Party’s capacity in their designing of tax policy to say, ‘If we can’t move the water, we’re going to have to move the people.’ It is beyond the Labor Party’s capacity in their relationships with the states to say to Queensland, ‘You’re going to have to change some of your wild rivers legislation, because we are going to have to facilitate the creation of a new food bowl to take into account the possible demise of the food bowl that is in existence in the Murray-Darling basin’—if they truly believe that the weather has changed and they really want to be sincere and honest in that statement.

If the Labor Party truly believe that there is global warming and that the weather has changed, then surely that would be an indicator that they are going to have to make some hard decisions. But if you look at their policy statement, you will see that they want it both ways. Senator Feeney says, ‘They’re all environmental sceptics over there. They don’t acknowledge that the weather has changed. They don’t acknowledge that the climate has changed. That is why we are going to take
75,000 mega litres a year from where it is not and move it down to Melbourne.’ It is an oxymoronic statement that is completely implausible. You cannot have it both ways. If that is your belief, then start tabling for us the engineering projects that are going to move water from
where it is to where it is not. And put some faith in the Australian people. If you are suggesting that we are going to have a major engineering project to move water from the gulf, or from the Ord, for the creation of new food bowls, the Australian people will actually back you, because you show some vision. But the Australian people are on to these bells-and-whistles shows of getting big amounts of money and shuffling it round and round and round in circles until it ends up in the
arms of consultants, schemes, ideas and committees but never ends up in an outcome.

I premised at the start that so far we have already spent $50 million. Think of that as sealed roads. Think of that as hospital beds. Think of that as schools. Do not let the words ‘$50 million’ just roll off the tongue. Think of what that money could have been used for. With that $50 million they have bought 849 mega litres of water. To be honest, that would be suitable for a very small farm in St George. That is a very profligate and expensive way to do business. Once more, they have said that things are going to get better. They are not going to get better when you spend $23.8 million on properties at Bourke that you never bother visiting. They are not going to get better if that is how little respect you have for money. They are not going to get better when you spend $8.7 billion in one night, on 8 December, while you still do not have the money to get the Australian Navy out to sea over Christmas. When that is the type of management you have, when that is the type of process you have and when that is the fiscal responsibility of the so-called economic conservatives then Australia has a serious problem at hand.

There will be certain amendments to this bill that I hope will be supported. It will be up to the Labor Party then to act on one major issue. Their whole process is flawed, but let us takes one issue as an indicator of whether the Labor Party are fair dinkum or not. If this north-south pipeline goes ahead, then we can take everything they say as being a load of rubbish. We will know from that that in an academic, economic and engineering sense these are very lazy people who cannot
get their minds around a complex solution to a complex problem. If this pipeline goes ahead it will show in spades that the future for the Murray-Darling Basin under the Labor government is dire. If this policy goes forward and the government do not give any thought to how it is going to affect the regional communities, if the government go forward with their policy of buying up water licences, arbitrarily going into remote districts of the western parts of the states of Queensland and
New South Wales without any thought as to what happens to the community after the whole basis of their economy has been lifted up and taken away, we will know that their social policy is also very lazy. I go back to the start of the Labor government. The start of the Labor government saw the apology to the Indigenous community. You cannot apologise on one day and then go into their communities and take out their economy on the next. You cannot have it both ways. You have to go back to those communities and deliver some long-term economic future for those places. If you do not do that, you start to look like you are all bells and whistles and totally hypocritical. The reason for that is laziness and an inability to drill down into your own policy agenda and look at the possible outcomes and ramifications of what you bring before us.