Mark Coulton (Parkes, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to speak on and endorse the Water Amendment Bill 2015 and gladly bring the debate back to the Murray-Darling Basin. This bill has been introduced to legislate the limit of buybacks at 1,500 gigalitres. I am pleased to say that, at this stage, this bill appears to have bipartisan support and it also appears to have the support of the basin states—and that is very important. Legislating the buyback cap was a promise that was made by the Prime Minister prior to the last election, and it forms part of the Australian government's commitment to the Murray-Darling Basin communities. The legislation will deliver further certainty to farmers and irrigators in the basin.

I can proudly say that I represent 25 per cent of the Murray-Darling Basin. The border rivers of the Macintyre, Barwon and Darling, through to the Gwydir, Namoi, Macquarie and Lachlan major rivers, make up the Parkes electorate. This bill will ensure that future environmental water recovery to achieve the 2,750-gigalitre target under the Murray-Darling Basin Plan occurs through infrastructure investment and system efficiencies, providing a win-win for the environment and regional communities. We are seeing some of those infrastructure works happening in my electorate, and probably the standouts are the three off-river modernisation schemes in the Macquarie. I attended the official opening of the Trangie-Nevertire scheme, where I represented the minister. It is a remarkable piece of engineering. That scheme was originally designed to, basically, drought-proof a traditional grazing area that had morphed into an irrigation area, which, because of its size and original design, was incredibly inefficient. So that group of farmers agreed to reduce the size of the scheme to allow the farmers on the periphery of the scheme to go into a stock and domestic system and allow for the lining of the channels and modernisation of individual farms through centre pivots and lateral-move irrigators to reduce the wastage in that scheme. Last year, in a very dry, low-allocation year, record crops of cotton were grown in the Macquarie valley.

This proves that this government is focused on recovering water through investment in infrastructure as a priority rather than through buybacks. This legislation will provide further definition of what has been carried out on the ground. We have prioritised infrastructure over water. In the past, we have seen what indiscriminate purchases can do in the basin. The purchase of the Twynam Pastoral Company water from Collymongle Station has led to the devastation of the town of Collarenebri. One hundred permanent jobs have come off that one farm with the purchase of that water, and the economy of Collarenebri, I believe, will never recover to where it was before that purchase.

So it has been a rocky road through the last years to get to this point with the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. This plan has come on top of water-sharing plans that happened previously, brought in by the basin state governments. We have seen reform for the irrigation industry and for the river communities in my electorate that has been going on now for probably more than 20 years. This legislation will certainly give some certainty that the indiscriminate buybacks will cease and that we will see a focus on investment and engineering. But we have a way to go and we are going to require a level of maturity in this. We are going to need a level of goodwill and we need to understand the complexities of the Murray-Darling Basin.

Because of the complex nature of this vital river system, when we try to explain what can be done in simple terms we can end up with a lot of misinformation and a lot of people marginalised in the process. The Murray-Darling Basin is the food bowl of Australia. The communities in my electorate rely on this water. When we look at restructure and what might replace some of the water that has been lost to protect the environment, the reality is that there is nothing you can put into a western town that will generate interest and wealth like a megalitre of water. There is nothing that compares to water to put life into these towns. We should acknowledge the great sacrifice and contribution by these communities and these farmers in an attempt to make the Murray-Darling Basin environmentally sustainable.

But there are some more things that we need to do. I believe there is a real desire for the communities to have a clearer justification for some of the water that has gone to the environment. This is happening at the moment. I believe the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder is committed to having an audit of where the water has gone and the benefits that water has had for the environment. A lot of this is the responsibility of the states, but we need a level of communication and cooperation so that, with the management of the rivers, environmental water and productive water can piggyback with each other so that we can get a better outcome by having both systems working in cooperation, not independently. Over the years, we have seen environmental flows caught in with productive flows, in the Gwydir and Macquarie valleys in particular, leading to indiscriminate flooding of crops and, through that, a loss of production. So we do have a way to go to get to a better understanding of that.

When we speak of engineering works, we really need to be progressing the issues around Menindee Lakes. The Broken Hill water supply is a particularly difficult situation. The amount of water that is lost through evaporation, not only in the delivery of water down to Menindee but what is lost in that system, is unacceptable. We are going to have to bite the bullet on Broken Hill's water supply and on getting some efficiencies in the system around Menindee. I do not think the irrigators and the communities in my area have a desire to go back to the start of this process. They are committed to this process, but not at all costs. They want to see that we are auditing where we are up to to make sure that the modelling that was done earlier on can be backed up by actual figures and measurements of where we are going with the environmental water compared to the productive water.

The reality at the moment is that, bar the Lachlan River catchment, which has had some good rainfall, most of the dams in the northern basin are empty or nearly empty. But regardless of what sort of a plan we have, if we do not have rainfall and water in the dams, those communities are going to suffer. I should acknowledge that things are looking particularly bleak for the border rivers—the Barwon and the Darling—and for the Gwydir, Namoi and Macquarie rivers when it comes to this coming irrigation season. So we are desperately hanging out for some rainfall. For the benefit of my southern colleagues and those further down the river in southern New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia, it should be remembered that the rivers in the northern basin are ephemeral streams. They do not have regular snow melt and there is not a constant supply of water coming into them. Traditionally they go from flood to drought on a regular basis. We had a flood in 2012, then we had a couple of good irrigation seasons and now we are back in drought. I think there should be an acknowledgement that sometimes there is just not the water to contribute further down the basin. I think we are going to see that this year. The northern basin is having a particularly tough time of it. We can only hope that we see a wet summer coming up.

I am very proud to have played a part in pursuing this bill. I acknowledge the work done by Parliamentary Secretary Baldwin and, before that, Parliamentary Secretary Birmingham and the support from Minister Hunt. I also acknowledge my other colleagues in the basin who have worked very hard to make sure that we have this legislation that can give some comfort and certainty to communities and irrigators right throughout the basin that the era of willy-nilly buybacks on an ad hoc basis has come to an end. We are going to focus on productivity, engineering and a triple bottom line for the communities in the basin. We are going to get to an end point where the communities, farmers and irrigators in the Murray-Darling Basin can have some certainty which they can base their planning upon into the future. At the moment, they are fatigued by this reform that has been going on for many years. Hopefully, this legislation will give them some comfort when it comes to their future endeavours.

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