Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Hansard source

Does it? How many has it got?

An opposition member: Over a thousand.

Okay, I stand corrected. If you are correct, it is 18c.

With his information we have the capacity to deliver a policy platform, because ultimately this becomes a policy document. I have carriage of it but I do not have the passage of it through cabinet. It becomes a document of the Prime Minister. As I have said before, if you vote against it, it is called a 'career move'!

An honourable member: Stop it!

You are using time up! I want to get back to his concessional loan issue—I think it is only fair. With the white paper, we have had the issues paper out, we are eminently about to release the green paper, which is the range of alternatives, and from that we intend the white paper and its conclusion will be drawn down around about November or December. With this it will be able to cover everything from infrastructure, such as we are currently driving towards inland rail, creating greater connectivity between mining infrastructure and agricultural infrastructure. Also as part of that purpose I have been appointed as the Minister for Agriculture to be chairman of the dams committee. We all know that water is wealth and when the Prime Minister decides to have a dams committee and there must be an intention to build dams.

Our nation in 1980 had about 4½ megs of storage per person. We are down to around 3½ now. If we continue on our way we are going to be down to about 2½ megs of storage in 2050. That is just insufficient. Australia has to take the next step in dams. This will be something that I hope we get, because I know the Australian people want us to take the next step—overwhelmingly. There will always be a contingent that lives with the benefaction of dams and the benefaction of so many resources, but they never want anyone else to advance their position. But I believe this nation in the dams committee, which is also an integral part and is meshed within the white paper, is going to be so very important in advancing agriculture in new parts of this nation, especially in the North.

I note that the member for Flynn is here. In the Fitzroy catchment are some of the better dam sites in this nation. We have already been dealing with it. One of the biggest inhibitors of us actually progressing the dams issue in so many instances is excessive environmental green tape. We have the engineers that can do it, we have a workman who can do it, we have the plant operators who can do it, we have the farmers who can benefit from it and we have the hydroelectricity we can generate off it. The biggest impediment is ourselves. We have got to make sure that we reduce that impediment. Not remove that impediment completely, but reduce that impediment in certain areas to do something that allows us to progress.

In the member for Flynn's electorate, Nathan Dam is held up by the boggomoss snail. This boggomoss snail is almost but not quite as powerful as the Booroolong frog, which managed to stop Chaffey Dam for I do not know how many years. But the boggomoss snail has been having a whale of a time and it is holding up a fundamental mechanism for the advancement of the economy in the Fitzroy Basin for both flood mitigation for the development of jobs and also doing something that the Australian people have always wanted to do, and that is move water from one catchment into the Murray-Darling. We can do that. We have the capacity to do that. Likewise, a dam that was in my area on the Apsley River was stopped by Neville Wran. (Time expired)

Proposed expenditure agreed to.

Debate adjourned.

Federation Chamber adjourned at 19:04.

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