Sharman Stone MP

……inauditable……..

 

STONE:                 We have to be serious about a win-win scenario. And if you just simply kill off communities for the sake of metropolitan based votes and say here’s a bucket of money for the rivers, you haven’t achieved a thing except put us in the hands of people that have to import food in the future.

 

PRESENTER:        It sounds very dramatic to say “Why would be implementing a plan that’s going to kill off the communities?” But is it just that? Who says it is going to kill off any communities?

STONE:                 Well it’s simple mathematics I am afraid Joseph. If you take away water security for food producers and fibre producers, if you include the cotton and wool growers as well; if they don’t have water security, then you don’t have the capacity for food manufacturing to be there with a big work force year after year. You can have cash crops from time to time when it rains.

It’s about dams full of water, managing an irrigation system that gives you a crop every year and allows you to grow fruit trees that last for 90 years like pears do or 20 years like grapes and other trees do. You need a continuous and on going supply of water if you are going to have the sort of food we have had access to in our country for the last 150 years.

We have 23 food factories within the range of Shepparton. All of those depend each year on farmers getting access to water, even when there is a lower rainfall that year, its just simple mathematics. We have right now, during the drought, got a big reliance on imported ingredients for our food manufacturing because we didn’t have that water security.

Then you compound our problems Joseph, with the problems of the pipeline. We have got pipelines taking water out of the Murray Darling Basin, to Melbourne, Geelong, Bendigo and Ballarat and so on.

Now we have got this Water Authority, it would seem, taking 30-40 percent of water away on top of that. How can you stand back and say we will not be looking at imported foods for the future and less employment in rural and regional Australia with people adding to the social security needs of the country and metropolitan suburbs of the future.

 

PRESENTER:        We are told constantly that jobs come out of the environment and out of tourism. If we look after the environment we can make jobs in other areas, not necessarily in the traditional areas. We can expand the whole foot print of jobs and the sectors of employment. Isn’t that a fair enough argument?

STONE:                 No its not. It’s a nonsense argument. How many tourists come to areas which are degraded of anything at all in terms of the lively and vibrant communities that are there such as the part of the Murray Darling Basin that we come from the southern part that is agriculture food based.

People come to Echuca absolutely to enjoy the Murray River and to be married on the Wharf. They are also there because of the vibrant commercial sector, they can do their shopping and can go to great restaurants, and as they drive through to Echuca form either north or south they drive through viable communities that have a population base because they have got this other employment or as part of the economy they are engaging which is food production.

 There’s not enough tourist destinations, or tourist products if you like, or tourist differentials in our part of the world to employ the hundreds, thousands of families, who are in the transport sector, food manufacturing sector, banking, financial, commercial and the outright plain primary production sector. You can’t replace that with river cruises I am afraid.

PRESENTER:        Ok well just quickly the MDA is coming to town, for public consultation sessions. I believe you might have the times.

STONE:                 Well yes, indeed, I am really shocked about that too I have to tell you Joseph.

They are coming to Shepparton on Tuesday. So they release this report, this draft report at about close of business today. Then they are going to show up in Shepparton, at 10 O’clock and another session at 2pm in the Goulburn Valley Hotel next Tuesday, with what, one working day for people to understand what’s in that report.? If they can get their hands on a hard copy or they can access the internet to get it they are lucky. 300 plus pages we are told. But I am begging people to get there despite the lack of respect shown to local people in that time frame. But it is on Tuesday and if you get on the internet for the Murray Darling Basin Authority you will see a whole range of other places after that, Dubbo, Echuca and so on, up and down the basin.

PRESENTER:        Ok Dr Sharman Stone we will leave it there thanks for your time.

STONE:                 Good talking to you Joseph.