John Forrest (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I join with the member for Cowan in his recent comments about Mr David Hicks. More and more Australians are indicating their uncomfortableness with the outcome. Whether Hicks is guilty or not, everybody deserves their day in court, no matter what they are charged with. That is my position, and it has been made public.

What I want to talk about is a great project in my electorate. If I never achieve anything in my ongoing career in this parliament other than this, then I will be satisfied that I made a difference in respect to the piping of the Wimmera Mallee, a stock and domestic system that supplies the whole of the north-west corner of Victoria. It is interesting to note that the members for Ballarat and Murray are at the table. Because it is so large, it has served parts of what used to be their electorates. Mallee continues, by redistribution, to get bigger and bigger. This is a water system that supplies the whole north-west of Victoria. It is over 130 years of age. This open channel system leaks much water—water sufficient to fill Olympic swimming pools laid end to end from Melbourne to Darwin and back again every year. It is a delight that, over my tenure as the member for Mallee, since 1994, this scheme—with the assistance of state and federal governments—has become progressively piped.

It was tremendous back in October to stand in Halls Gap for the launch of construction of the western leg of the Wimmera section of the pipeline. Whilst pipes were being laid in the north, bringing water from the Murray River south, people in the Wimmera region of my electorate felt neglected and felt that their project was not proceeding. Even though enormous amounts of water were being saved, they just could not see tangible evidence. Level 5 water restrictions have been in place throughout the Wimmera, particularly around Horsham, for the last five years, so water is a resource that we can no longer afford to waste.

At the launch back in October, I was fascinated by the contribution from Chloe Welch, an 11-year-old student in grade 5 at Yaapeet Primary School. The town of Yaapeet is where the Murray River water supply pipe converges. We cannot get water any further south, so Yaapeet’s water will continue to be piped from the Grampians in the south and will be at the end of the first western leg. I would like to read Chloe’s speech into the public record. She said:

My name is Chloe Welch from Yaapeet. I am in grade 5 and 11 years old. I would like to tell you what water means to us at Yaapeet.

Yaapeet is the home town of the former member for Mallee, Peter Fisher.

In the past water has been brought to our town and local farms from the Grampians via the channel system. It delivered water for us so our community could use it for farming, washing and watering our gardens. It has meant survival for animals, plants and people.

It has brought us water, however, lots of water has been lost due to evaporation and seepage into the ground.

This is the thing that struck me when Chloe spoke. She said:

Since we have been born we have never seen Lake Albacutya with water in it. There has not been enough rain in the Grampians to fill the catchments, rivers and lakes to overflow to where we live.

We realise that it is critical that we save water. We are using buckets from our short showers to water the garden at home. At school we hand water our garden to keep it alive. We also save water from under the bubble taps.

With the new pipeline things will change, some parts of our lifestyle that we thought we may never know, we will have once again, things like yabbying, swimming, gardens, farming, habitats for wildlife, fishing and recreation.

If everyone saves water and it rains we may see catchments filling, rivers flow, Lake Albacutya full and people smile.

Those are the sentiments of an 11-year-old in my electorate. It is quite staggering to realise that since 1975 there has been no water in the two principal lakes of the Wimmera system—Lake Albacutya and Lake Hindmarsh. Here is an 11-year-old who has never seen them full. To be honest, I have been the member for Mallee for 14 years and I have never seen water in Lake Albacutya. So I say: let’s get on with the piping. When we can save enough water to get those river systems operating in a more natural environment, we will restore the environment for the river itself, and we will watch our rain come back when we get evapotranspiration from water in the lakes at Hindmarsh and Albacutya.

The Wimmera Mallee pipeline is not the only thing that is challenging my electorate at the moment. We have the drought, which is the worst in living memory—although there are some old-timers around Wimmera Mallee who tell me they can remember the Federation drought and the big one in 1945. It is taking a toll on the morale of my farming communities. They have been busy in the last month or so removing their meagre grain harvest. The drought is now so extensive that it is impacting on horticulture. Wine grapes, table grapes, citrus and orchards need rainfall. If they have rainfall depleted by six or seven inches, that means more irrigation and water having to be brought from the Murray, which puts pressure on that system as well. It is a little bit intimidating to realise just how many primary producers, including horticulturalists, are receiving exceptional circumstances support. But we will continue to be positive.

One of the things about the Wimmera Mallee pipeline is that it is symbolic as a project in the national interest for which the National Water Initiative is demonstrably applicable—offering a partnership between the state and communities to save a resource that is so necessary and precious as water is. I am looking forward to the National Water Initiative being utilised to upgrade irrigation infrastructure along the Murray River, from Tresco all the way through to Merbein, where there are some soldier settlements as old as the Wimmera Mallee channel system itself and water is still being supplied with open earth and channels. With not just evaporation from the channel but also seepage, environmental problems are being created and groundwater tables are being lifted. So I am very positive when I say to the National Water Commission and to anybody else in the state water authority: ‘Understand that I, John Forrest, the member for Mallee, am not going to be satisfied with the large contribution that has been made to fund the Commonwealth share of the Wimmera Mallee pipeline; I am also looking for solutions to achieve water savings along the river as well.’

That brings me to the last point I would like to make. I would like to indicate to the parliament how relieved I am that the people of Sunraysia have finally made a decision to send to their state parliament someone whom I can work with: the new member for Mildura elect, Peter Crisp—another engineer. I am hoping that outcome will bring a much more positive and constructive approach—rather than argumentative, media-driven politics—and constructive and positive outcomes for the great regions of Sunraysia and Mildura. I congratulate Peter Crisp, who has worked extremely hard and has doorknocked every house in Sunraysia. In fact, he was still doorknocking at seven o’clock on the Friday evening before the poll. He is a great man. He has very positive solutions, and we are going to work to put Mildura back into a positive frame of mind; we are done with negativism. The people of Sunraysia have realised that sending Independents into their parliament achieves nothing, and we will work extremely positively together to ensure that the— (Time expired)

Question agreed to.