Media Release

KAP Federal Member for Kennedy Bob Katter has forced Parliament to debate the reversal of the Murray Darling Basin Plan on the final day of sittings for 2012 (tomorrow) after calling for Question Time to be suspended so that the water cutbacks could be debated immediately.

After yesterday moving a motion to throw out the Basin Plan, Mr Katter this afternoon moved to bring it on for debate as a matter of urgency due to the devastating impacts on communities in western New South Wales, northern Victoria and south-eastern South Australia, which have already lost one-fifth of their water under the former Coalition government’s Water Act 2007.

Mr Katter told the Parliament that when he visited the Murray-Darling last week, there were reports at Mildura of some 85 empty shops and one in five farms closed down; that at Griffith the figures were even worse; and that at Deniliquin the usual number of 60-70 houses for sale had risen to more than 150.

“Twenty per cent of the economic underpinnings of western NSW, northern Victoria and south-eastern SA has already been taken away and now both major parties want to take another 15 per cent,” he said.

“Whilst the farmers might be compensated, the townspeople are not. For every farmer, there are 20 people living in those towns.

“We consider that this is a matter of great urgency because when you lose a quarter of employment in a town, it takes two or three years for the full economic impact of that to filter through to the communities.

“It is just now that it is filtering through these communities. Before the full impact of that occurs, we can head it off and raise hope that some of that water may be restored, instead of a tenth of what is left being taken from them.”

Mr Katter likened the battle to halt the Murray-Darling shutdown to the Parliament’s failed attempt to sell the Snowy Mountains hydro-electric scheme.

“It was reversed because the people of the Murray-Darling Basin rose up in righteous anger, and it was their doing, and only their doing, that had a decision in this place reversed. We had only three people in this House at the time to oppose the sale – myself, the late Mr Andren and Mr Windsor – and yet we won because the people rose up in righteous anger.”

Mr Katter said eleventh-hour protests about water cutbacks from Coalition MPs who represent Murray-Darling communities was too little, too late.

“The fight over the continued cutbacks in the Murray-Darling is a fight that is going to be won by the people of those areas standing on their hind legs and fighting,” he said.

“But they do have at least one representative in here who is utterly determined that there should be no further cutbacks.”