Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

There are couple of issues that I would like to speak about briefly. I support the member for Murray in terms of amendment (6) to the Water Amendment Bill 2008. It seems to me that not supporting it makes a nonsense of what we are trying to achieve in relation to the totality of the Murray-Darling system, particularly when there are other options available. Most of our capital cities are surrounded by water, but there are problems with that water in that it has salt in it. Some cities are taking the salt out of the water and using the water, and we are told that, if climate change does persist—I think it probably will, and I support the government on its initiatives; in fact, I encourage it to do more than what it seems it is going to do—and polar meltdowns occur, we are going to have more water around our cities. So to be taking a highly valuable resource and transferring it back to a city from an inland river system seems to me to be the height of absurdity when all those other options are available. I sat on a committee that looked at some of the options for Melbourne a few years back, and I do not think any of those recommendations have been taken into account.

The other issue I want to speak briefly about is the disaster that has occurred in the Coorong and the Lower Lakes. Here again, I have real difficulty in reconciling the logic. I remember Prime Minister Rudd and Minister Wong travelling to the Murray mouth—and I have been to the Murray mouth on a number of occasions to look at what is happening down there. They were making the point, in terms of the Murray mouth and this legislation, that we had to do something for the totality of the system rather than four states governing the river systems—we had to do something because what we had done in the past was a massive mistake. There are certain issues that we can all argue about: barrages, for instance. What are they doing there? Who put them there? Why are they there?

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