David Leyonhjelm (NSW, Liberal Democratic Party) Share this | Hansard source

The millennium drought led some to conclude that drought was the new normal and the environment was facing catastrophe. The drought ended with widespread flooding. Dorothea Mackellar's 'Australia, a land of droughts and flooding rains' was never better demonstrated. However, during the drought, a plan was devised to release water from agriculture to save the environment. The result was one per cent science and 99 per cent politics. The plan calls for the return of 2,750 gigalitres of water to the environment, with a further 450 gigalitres to be returned subject to certain conditions. Since it began in 2012, water rights have been purchased from farmers in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria, plus a small quantity from South Australia.

In the last parliament, I chaired a Senate inquiry into its effects, with hearings in each of the participating states. We found the loss of irrigation water was hurting rural communities. Farms no longer grew irrigated crops such as fruit or pasture. They required far fewer inputs and generated far less income. Workers had lost their jobs and moved away. Regional communities had fewer schoolchildren and volunteer firefighters, and customers in local shops. We also found a very poor understanding of the plan. Many people had an almost religious belief that the environment simply needs water, irrespective of whether it's in the right place at the right time or in the right quantities. It was even worse in South Australia. Its outrage over allegations that water is being misappropriated from the Darling and Barwon rivers in New South Wales is ridiculous, given that these rivers often run dry and only about six per cent of the water in these two rivers ever gets to South Australia.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the inquiry was hearing how 900 gigalitres of water taken from productive agriculture in Victoria and New South Wales evaporate in Lake Alexandrina and Lake Albert in South Australia. If Lake Alexandrina was allowed to remain open to the sea and subject to tidal influences rather than being kept closed by man-made barrages, it could be sea water that evaporates, not fresh water. Preserving an artificial environment at the expense of farming and rural communities seems very poor public policy. The Murray-Darling Basin Plan was conceived in panic and is seriously flawed. Its intentions are laudable, but it is not Holy Writ. There's enormous scope for improvement.