Members Statement – Dairy Industry

MR WALSH: The other matter I want to raise is the fact that those in the dairy industry in northern Victoria are very perplexed that John Brumby has been appointed to actually head up the task force to do the dairy plan for the future. John Brumby was the architect of the north–south pipeline, the food bowl modernisation project that has actually led to the waterways of northern Victoria. I really feel for the dairy industry that John Brumby is supposedly the person that is going to save that industry, when he is the person that started at the mess in the first place through what he did around the water projects in northern Victoria and particularly the north–south pipeline. We know that was an appalling project, with $1 billion of Victorian taxpayers and water users money spent to build a pipeline that has not been used and will never be used because when there is a drought in Melbourne there has already been a drought in northern Victoria and there is no water to go down that pipeline.