Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

As the member for Murray, you would anticipate that I would be deeply concerned about this disallowable instrument. I support most strongly the motion moved by my colleagues. The Murray River, and, indeed, the whole of the Murray-Darling Basin, is an extraordinary ecological system with ephemeral streams. The great Murray River is itself an ephemeral stream. If it were not, there would be red gum forests at the end where the Murray meets the sea in South Australia, where there are, in fact, sand dunes. The Murray River has been a managed river for more than a century. Initially, it was managed to be a navigable stream to take produce from the great inland producers of wool, meat, wood and fish to markets. Later it was managed for irrigation purposes, as well as continuing to be used for recreation.

Unfortunately, there was very little consultation before the move to put the critically endangered label on the River Murray and associated wetlands, flood plains and groundwater systems, from the junction of the Darling River to the sea and on the wetlands and inner flood plains of the Macquarie Marshes. The decision was a bolt out of the blue. There was no consultation with the community in the basin and certainly not with the irrigators or those who depend on the stream for their livelihood and who have in fact maintained the ecosystems in the sustainable condition they are in today.

During the last 15 years the basin has sustained 10 years of the worst drought on record. During that time there was great stress in the ecosystems, and in the human communities, but a mark of the resilience of the basin ecosystems is shown by the extraordinary recuperation and revival of life that has occurred since the rains came. With the rains that broke the 10-year drought came floods. That is the way of the seasons in Australia: droughts then flooding rains. The measures already in place to manage the health of the basin's ecosystems are well and truly adequate. We did not and do not need to have this additional critically endangered label put on the great Murray River and the associated wetlands. Keeping that label in place would be a joke. We would be bound up in extraordinary additional red-tape requirements that would do nothing to affect ecosystem health but would only give a lot of people jobs to do running around the countryside. It would not in fact support any of the ecosystems or any of the species that are still in the process of recovering from the 10-year drought.

I support my colleagues who are seeking to disallow this instrument, which refers to a knee jerk action in the dying days of the last government. There was no appropriate or proper consultation. The scientific community was not properly consulted. The Murray-Darling Basin and the Murray River itself are in excellent hands. Those are the hands that not only love the place—it is where they live—but depend on the river's health for their livelihood. When you depend on an ecosystem to feed your family you do not destroy it; you do not make it less sustainable. You actually nurture and steward that ecosystem, because it also represents the livelihood of your children and your grandchildren. That is why the community in the Murray-Darling Basin, who are Australia's food and fibre producers, are always the first to stand up and plant trees, put in nesting boxes and fence out remnant vegetation. That is what they do. One of the things that has left me in awe, when I go to major tree planting days or revegetation efforts, is that I will see 80-year-olds planting trees on their properties. You may think, 'What's the point? They're 80; they're not going to see those little tiny saplings grow.' They do it because they have a sense of the future generations who will be there to live in harmony with that ecosystem. It is not just a financial issue; it is also the love of place. It is like the Indigenous sense of being part of that place. I am most pleased that we are moving this disallowance motion. I commend those who moved and seconded the motion. I support absolutely keeping the basin and its river in the safe hands that now sustain it.

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