(Byner: Simon Birmingham … what do you make of this? …) … I’ve been approached by numerous irrigators, water brokers and others … there are numerous problems, many of which you’ve already highlighted here … firstly for those irrigators, those farming families in South Australia’s Riverland who have been treated so unfairly, this is just an inappropriate way to treat people to lead them to believe that they can sell their water licences to Government and then to stuff them around for a few months and then tell them that they can’t (Byner: …who was it that had the sale that wrote to them and said you’ve got a sale and now you haven’t? …) This is something I’m trying to get to the bottom of … they certainly were invited to make applications, they were stuffed around for a few months and some are suggesting that they were given every indication they would have a sale, only to ultimately be told that sorry the Government’s already spent all the money for this year … that’s too much of a common story from this Government spending all the money in advance, but put that point aside, it is a heartless thing to do to people who are … selling part of their livelihood, for farmers, irrigators on the Riverland, this is part of their livelihood selling part of their water entitlement and if they can’t sell it to Government, many of them, to get a bit of cash flow through the door, would be looking to sell it to others, to others in the market for water and it’s a terrible thing for Government to basically stuff them around for a couple of months and remove that opportunity for them … beyond that, we have the Government that has spent of course millions of dollars buying major agricultural properties upstream … but where from those properties very little water ever actually makes it in to the Murray … you’ve got to question in terms of the environmental aspect of this buyback operation, the value of the water that they are buying, why are they buying, spending millions of dollars on big properties in northern New South Wales where they’re barely connected to the Darling, let alone to the Murray and therefore we will see no immediate environmental impact from purchasing any of the water there, yet of course leaving willing South Australian sellers to a right on the Murray, high and dry when it comes to it … the third main issue really is this one of infrastructure and food security, in the end Australia needs to be able to do and grow more food with less water, that’s an issue that we’ve really got to get on top of, unfortunately this Government, though it may have brought forward money for buyback and we’re arguing about how it’s spending that, they had not brought forward money for infrastructure, in fact they’ve pushed infrastructure spending back … in the last year they’ve spent not one cent on on-farm infrastructure (Byner: …thank you …)