Peter Garrett (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Reconciliation and the Arts) Share this | Hansard source

This motion is about blame shifting but it is confused as well. I note that the member for Lindsay referred to the committee report on sustainable cities. We in this House are looking forward to the government and Mr Howard endorsing the recommendations of that committee and putting them in place immediately. I call on him again, given that one of his backbenchers has raised it in the House, to do that as a matter of course.

It is true that the Hawkesbury-Nepean catchment is one of the most varied in the country. It supports a population of over one million people and generates over $1 billion every year in agriculture. It supports a commercial fishing industry, it supplies 80 per cent of Sydney’s sand and gravel for construction purposes and it provides 23 per cent of New South Wales’ electricity, so it is true that we ought to treat issues surrounding the Hawkesbury-Nepean and its health with some seriousness, but it is incorrect for the member for Macquarie to state that the New South Wales government has ignored its responsibility to ensure the long-term health of the Hawkesbury-Nepean river system. From the late 1990s, when the Healthy Rivers Commission completed its investigation into the health of the Hawkesbury-Nepean river system, the New South Wales government has been active in both securing Sydney’s water supply and improving the health of the river.

The Hawkesbury-Nepean River Management Forum was established in July 2001, supported by an independent expert panel. Its brief was to make recommendations on environmental flows for the Hawkesbury-Nepean, and its recommendations were adopted by the New South Wales government and incorporated into the metropolitan water plan announced in 2004. The upgraded plan, the 2006 metropolitan water plan, established a water sharing plan for the greater metropolitan region, and set out the conditions for the sharing of water between environmental needs and commercial uses. Environmental flow rules will also be stipulated in the Sydney Catchment Authority’s water licence—an approach which all managers of New South Wales rivers now have to adopt. The Water Management Act, which codifies the responsibilities of water managers, puts water for the environment above all other water uses.

It is the case that the pressures on catchments like the Hawkesbury-Nepean are enormous. The Hawkesbury-Nepean Catchment Foundation, a community organisation which is designed to promote ecologically sustainable development within the river system, has argued against political bickering over the Hawkesbury-Nepean. The foundation is committed to political bipartisanship, recognising that the challenge of healing the river and its catchment requires a vision and collective concerted effort beyond the time frame of day-to-day partisan politics, which is all that this motion is about.

The federal government’s own report card for the Hawkesbury-Nepean from Natural Resource Management, administered by the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and the Department of the Environment and Heritage, in 2004 highlighted a number of joint investments between the state and federal governments, including river health, sustainable agriculture, biodiversity and community partnerships. That is what we need to do to fix the river system—not jump up in the House and start blaming the New South Wales government. The webpage puts it very succinctly:

The Hawkesbury-Nepean region’s future lies with the community’s inspiration to build a healthy environment. The Australian and New South Wales Governments, Hawkesbury Nepean Catchment Management Authority and the many community groups supported under the governments’ programs are all working to ensure protection and sustainable development of the region’s land, vegetation and water resources.

So it is a bit rich for the member for Macquarie and the member for Lindsay to blame solely the New South Wales government when bureaucrats from the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and the Department of the Environment and Heritage have shown that there are a number of joint initiatives underway. Most importantly, it is a bit rich for the member for Macquarie to come in here and not mention climate change. Seventy per cent of New South Wales will be in drought if we get a one-degree increase as a consequence of climate change. Climate change is the gorilla in the room for this government. It is the very issue that the government will not address—and, because it will not address it, it comes in here and moves a motion of this kind which simply blames the New South Wales government.

We are experiencing significant drought in New South Wales, and it is a consequence of the failure of the Howard government to take climate change seriously. Today the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources, talking about former Vice-President of the United States Mr Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth, said that what is contained in this documentary is an entertainment. I have to tell you, Mr Deputy Speaker, that it is not entertaining to the people of New South Wales to have blame-shifting motions moved in this House when the most important and significant action that the Howard government could take in relation to dealing with the state of our rivers, both in New South Wales and right around the country, is to address climate change. The National Water Initiative is at a standstill, and this motion is misdirected, because if you cannot deal with climate change then you are not going to be able to do anything about the rivers of New South Wales. (Time expired)

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