Mike Kelly (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Support) Share this | Hansard source

It never ceases to amaze me the subject matter that is raised in MPIs by the coalition. They could not possibly choose subjects that could more starkly highlight the failures of the Howard government and the successes of the Rudd Labor government, and the water and environment areas are probably two of the most prominent of those. When we look back on those 12 Rip van Winkle years of the Howard government, we think about what was not done about climate change, what was not done about infrastructure, what was not done about schools and what was not done about water. I think there was some sharpening of the mind as we came close to the 2007 election about the need to address the water issue and the cries for help from the Murray-Darling Basin down to Adelaide. That was when they finally realised this was going to be an election issue, so we had the incredible rollout of the Living Murray program—and we know the public administration failures that were associated with the rapidity of that announcement.

But I do not want to talk about this from a partisan point of view. I think I should let an objective observer speak about the failures of the Howard government on water. In particular, a fellow by the name of John Quiggan, who is an ARC Federation Fellow at the University of Queensland, wrote an article in the Australian Financial Review, a notable journal, on 4 June 2008. He said:

Until recently, despite talk of the state obstructionism, the big failures in water policy were at the federal level. Economists and environmentalists have long agreed that unless governments are willing to buy back some of the water rights that were created on a lavish scale, then given away over the 20th century, there is no real hope for a solution to the problems.

He went on to say:

The Howard government, and particularly Malcolm Turnbull as Minister for Environment and Water Resources, talked a good game, but failed to deliver significant progress. The Living Murray Program and the National Water Initiative went nowhere. Howard’s final venture, the National Plan for Water Security announced in early 2007 with no apparent input from Turnbull, was a big step backwards. The $10 billion allocation (most … deferred far into the future) concealed a decision to do nothing about buying back water for fear of offending the National Party.

And what did Mr Quiggan conclude about what has happened since then? He said:

But water policy is one area where the Rudd government has moved beyond review and consultation and gone on to effective action. The government’s purchase of water from Toorale Station and the Twyman Agricultural Group—

which we have just heard reference to—

in NSW with entitlements totalling nearly 300 gigalitres has the potential to secure more water for the environment, and for flows downstream to South Australia, than all the initiatives of the Howard era put together, and at significantly lower cost.

Those are the words of Mr Quiggan in the Australian Financial Review.

In my own area I deal a lot with groundwater issues and I am proud to be involved with the Great Artesian Basin Sustainability Initiative. Just yesterday morning I was at a conference on groundwater, the National Water Commission’s Groundwater Forum. This was another area of neglect by the Howard government. What we saw highlighted in the Australian Water Resources Assessment 2000 was that no nationally agreed, standardised method for calculating and reporting sustainable yield was available for groundwater. That was highlighted in the year 2000, so there were seven years of inaction after that. Also, the National Water Commission recognised in 2007 that groundwater had been the poor cousin in water issues, notwithstanding that groundwater is 30 per cent of our total consumption.

So, what did the Rudd Labor government do? We established the National Groundwater Action Plan. We are proud to say that we have approved $105 million for the commission’s National Groundwater Action Plan, which is being funded under the $250 million Raising National Water Standards Program. This is going to address groundwater knowledge gaps and progress groundwater reforms agreed to under the National Water Initiative. Under that plan, there are three major components: the National Groundwater Assessment Initiative, the National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training, and a knowledge and capacity-building component to communicate research results. It was wonderful to see the 125 experts at that conference, finally helping us to fill the gap in our knowledge about groundwater. We need to be able to capture that knowledge. We need to be able to regulate groundwater more effectively as part of our overall management of water.

But the Rudd Labor government has been very busy in many other areas in relation to water. We have moved ahead rapidly with the Murray-Darling Basin Authority and the appointment of its head, Mr Taylor. The proceedings of the planning phases, moving to the final Murray-Darling Basin Plan, are going ahead well, with consultations throughout the community in the basin. That plan should be completed by 2011. This will finally establish an enforceable, scientifically informed limit on the amount of water that can be taken from rivers and groundwater systems in the basin.

Part of filling that knowledge gap that I mentioned also involves us putting $450 million into establishing, with the Bureau of Meteorology, exactly what water is coming into the system. The problem that we have in the basin largely relates to overallocation, which suggests that we released water we did not know we had—we did not know the amount of water that could be released to licence holders. So overallocation has been a problem, and it needs to be solved by knowledge.

We have also, through our purchases, seen a great amount of water going back into the Murray-Darling Basin, not just to move down through the basin to South Australia but also for the very important environmental assets and values that exist throughout the basin. There were many wetlands and lakes that needed assistance, including Ramsar registered wetlands that were dying. One of the great things that I have seen in this job, when I accompanied the minister for water, Senator Wong, down through the Murray-Darling Basin, was the Hattah lakes. This is an area that had been dry, and the birds had gone. The purchase of our environmental water has enabled those wetlands to be rejuvenated and birds to return—and, in their wake, a large number of tourists. So we can see the effects of that on the ground.

There are many other projects, and it would take me too long to go to them all, but I will say that a number of them are having an immediate effect. The introduction of water market rules and termination rules is having considerable benefits for irrigation farmers through the basin. It is leading to more efficient use of water and it is establishing a dynamic that is improving productivity.

One of the programs I administer, the National Rainwater and Greywater Initiative, which is allocated $205.6 million, has received 5,700 applications for the installation of water tanks, and 3,445 rebates had been paid as at 10 November this year. Some 43 surf-lifesaving clubs have now also applied to install rainwater tanks or water efficient devices, and grants have been approved to 38 of those.

We have assisted small-block irrigators in our exit program, people who are crying out for assistance and are in financial distress. We have provided irrigation exit grants of up to $150,000. We are providing $10,000 for advice and retraining, and $20,000 for the removal of permanent plantings to allow more flexible farming to take place on those properties, and there is production related infrastructure funding of up to $10,000 offered in the original package.

Through our National Urban Water and Desalination Plan, we have committed $30.2 million for the Glenelg to Adelaide Park Lands Recycled Water Project, which is due for completion in early 2010 and will deliver 5.5 gigalitres of water each year. There is $20 million for the Barwon-Shell water recycling project in Geelong, which will deliver two billion litres of water each year at the Shell Australia plant in Geelong. There is $328 million to support the construction of the Adelaide desalination plant, delivering 100 billion litres of drinking water annually and reducing Adelaide’s reliance on the River Murray. There is $20 million for Murdoch University to host the National Centre of Excellence in Desalination, in Perth, and $20 million for the Western Corridor Recycled Water company to host the National Centre of Excellence in Water Recycling, in Brisbane. There is $86 million—out of a total $200 million allocated to stormwater projects—for 13 stormwater harvesting and reuse projects, with the potential to deliver an estimated nine billion litres per year, in Brisbane, Melbourne, Geelong, Ballarat and Adelaide. Through our National Water Security Plan for Cities and Towns, 19 projects identified as commitments by Labor during the election have come to fruition or have started, totalling $101.2 million.

We are also doing a great deal on on-farm irrigation infrastructure, including providing $4.4 billion out of the $5.8 billion allocated to our Sustainable Rural Water Use and Infrastructure program, $191.4 million of which has been expended to date. I do not have time to go through those projects in detail, but they include $21.7 million for the Gwydir Valley pilot project—(Time expired)

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