Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Finance and Administration (Senator Minchin) to a question without notice asked by Senator Bartlett today relating to a water summit.

The water summit is being held tomorrow and involves the New South Wales, Victorian and South Australian state governments. Belatedly, it would appear that the Queensland government has scored a last minute invitation as well, which is very nice of them! I also note the question that was asked earlier by Senator Ferris on the same topic. Let me say that it does not auger terribly well that the Queensland government was initially left out completely. I do not want to sound too miffed; in some ways, given that the summit is about how badly we have stuffed up water management, you might say it is a bit of a semi-compliment that Queensland was not thought of, although, having said that, I think Queensland is probably as much up there in misuse of water as the other states. It is not really a competition that anyone wants to win, but, as with any other state, I do not think we can really claim to be blameless or perfect when it comes to water management issues in Queensland.

I do think it is not a matter of parochialism; it is simply a matter of concern that Queensland was not thought of, particularly given all of the controversy over some of the water that flows out of southern Queensland into New South Wales, and Cubbie Station, of course, is the most notorious example of that. I do not know whether there was a desire to keep that awkward issue off the agenda of the water summit so that we would not have another stoush between the Nationals and the Liberals—Senator Heffernan and Senator Joyce might have been barricading doors at either end of the conference room or something. But it is an important issue; it is not a joking matter. Indeed I have seen reports today that proposals are again being floated for Cubbie Station to be bought, possibly by the federal government, as a way of trying to resolve what is clearly a significant problem.

But in the same way as it is not appropriate to have forgotten Queensland, it is also not appropriate to think that it is all about Cubbie Station. There are major problems with water management issues in the other states. Senator Minchin acknowledged in a roundabout way that, collectively, we—states and federal and all political parties—failed in the past. We have got to a stage where there is a drastic overallocation of water. There is a real problem in that we have calls at the moment, in this drought situation, for the inadequate environmental flows, which have slowly, finally been agreed to to try to get some water back into the river, to be suspended. I was concerned that Senator Minchin was not able to give a clear indication of whether or not that would absolutely be prevented at tomorrow’s summit. I appreciate that he is not the responsible minister, so I cannot expect him to know everything about this. But I think it should be absolutely clear right at the start of any discussion about fixing up the current situation with water issues in the Murray-Darling Basin that we do not go the other way—which some are urging, including some local government authorities—and suspend our allocation of environmental flows. That would be a serious backward step.

I acknowledge the minister’s comment that we need to have more realistic pricing of water. That is something we Democrats voice our support for. We make a point of doing so because it is obviously a bit more of a politically difficult issue. To put up the price of anything, let alone something like water, is never going to be particularly popular, so it is important to indicate that there is wider political support for that. And pricing needs to go somewhere near the realistic price of the water. There is not much point in having a water trading scheme coming into place if the price of the water being traded is not able to be accurately reflected as something approximating market worth.

The other point I want to make in this context is that the minister himself said that this is just about the Murray-Darling, just about water management in the context of the current drought. That is good as far as it goes, but the Democrats have been calling for a national water summit to address all these issues, including some that the minister mentioned in response to an earlier question about the management of metropolitan water and the failure of state governments to invest responsibly and effectively in water infrastructure. We have to start addressing all those issues in a comprehensive way. We are only going to achieve it if we have a national water summit that addresses all those issues. Tomorrow’s summit may be a good first step, but we need to go further and we need to do it urgently. We need to make sure that it involves everybody and that we do not forget states like Queensland along the way when we are holding such summits.

Question agreed to.