The One Nation member was elected to replace the former National Party Leader Susan Ley.
Mr Farley was born in Narrandera and grew up in the Riverina town before working as a jackeroo and working on cotton farms.
He joined Colly Cotton in 1983 as a farm manager, was promoted to general manager and eventually became managing director.
In 2002, he was appointed CEO of a large farmer-owned cotton co-operative called Calcot, operating across California, Arizona and south-west Texas.
When he returned to Narrandera, he found communities across the Murray-Darling Basin struggling with “an experiment in public policy”.
“Many today would say the 2007 Water Act and its birth child, the MDB plan, is a failing expensive ideology: a set of political, economic, or social doctrines that can’t sustain a functioning society or deliver on its core promises when put into real-world practice or the next round of severe droughts,” Mr Farley said in parliament.
“It leads to chronic systemic crises, economic collapse, widespread human suffering, causing society to eventually reject or abandon the system.”
Mr Farley said he supported healthy rivers, healthy wetlands and environmental stewardship.
“Anyone who has spent a lifetime on the land understands that productive agriculture ultimately depends upon healthy natural systems” he said.
“But stewardship and productivity are not enemies.
“And environmental policy cannot be considered in isolation from food production, regional communities, national resilience and human wellbeing.
“Australia needs to have the courage to examine the Murray-Darling Basin Plan objectively.
“Not ideologically. Not defensively.
“And not on the assumption that because governments have spent billions of dollars, every underlying model and decision must therefore have been correct.
“We must ask: What has worked? What has failed? What environmental outcomes have actually been achieved? What economic capacity has been lost? What has happened to regional communities? What has happened to food-processing capacity?
“How much water is required to securely feed 40 million people by 2050? And most importantly: Is the Australian Food Chain prepared for the next great Australian drought?
“Because the greatest test of Australian water policy will not occur during a wet cycle.
“It will come when the dams empty, the rivers contract and 30 or 40 million Australians expect affordable food on supermarket shelves,” Mr Farley said.
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