Wendy Hebbard, Woodend
“The buck stopped with you,” Barnaby.
It is quite beyond belief that you did not know what you were signing in the water buy-back deal with a company in the Cayman Islands. You said you were not interested in the detail and that you left the decision to members of your department. What a dereliction of your role as the appropriate Minister! Either way you were lazy or incompetent.
The deal involved paying for 29,000 gigalitres of rare floodwater from a company in the Cayman Islands, a tax haven that was founded by Energy Minster Angus Taylor. No questions were asked and the price to the government was around $79 million of taxpayer money.
Both you and Mr Taylor deny receiving any benefit from the deal. It seemed that you did not care at all what the deal contained. Although this deal did not include any farms or infrastructure, it nevertheless shows incompetence by the government. An enquiry after the election is too late.
We are aware of the serious water shortage problem in this country – drought in Queensland, dead fish in their thousands in the Darling, dying animals and vanishing birds. Now consumers are experiencing the escalating cost of consumables.
Once again, taxpayers and farmers have been ripped off by this shabby government.
