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

I of course support the Water Amendment Bill 2015, which proposes to put a cap on the 1,500 gigalitres of water buyback from Murray-Darling Basin irrigators and water users. I am concerned that this bill was not in fact put into the House some three years ago. We have known for a long time that the outcomes of water buyback in the basin have led to the destruction of many of the irrigator communities in terms of their economies of scale, the capacity of food manufacturers to get sufficient product—whether it is dairying, rice or oilseeds—to be as efficient as they need to be, because in the midst of the worst drought on record we had the extraordinary option taken up by the then minister for the environment, Senator Penny Wong from South Australia, who suddenly realised what a gift the drought had delivered into her hands. Of course we had established the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder. It needed a bucket of water to be able to release into the environment to sustain and improve the quality of the water related ecosystems across the basin.

The original idea was that all of that water for the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder would be found through the improvement of the works and measures which deliver the environmental water or from on-farm water use efficiency measures, all of which would have added to the productivity of the basin, not detracted from or destroyed it. But, in the midst of the worst drought on record—when in my area in particular the banks were attacking my irrigators because they had doubled their debt loads as they tried not to send their herds through to the abattoirs or as they tried to keep their crops alive—she put into the system a tender which said, 'If you want to sell your water, go for it.'

Up to $2,400 a megalitre ended up passing not into the pockets of the irrigators who sold their water but to the banks. Over 90 per cent of the funds that were generated by that water buyback on behalf of the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder went straight to the banks in northern Victoria. Tragically, that left half of my irrigators dependent on the temporary water market, a corrupted market and one that I hope the ACCC deals with urgently. I deliberately say a 'corrupted' market because it is not transparent. If I wanted to step out of Parliament House today, stand up an A-frame in the car park and call myself a water trader, I could. It is impossible to find out who owns the water and who trades the water.

We do know, of course, that two of the biggest speculators are the South Australian government and the Victorian government. The Melbourne Water authority owns 75 gigalitres, which it plays with in the market to make it one of the most profitable water authorities now in Australia, and all at the expense of primary production, at over $220 per megalitre now in the temporary market and going up.

That means that dairy farmers can no longer pay to irrigate. They are stopped at about $70 or $80 per megalitre. It means that you are just left with further speculation and a few primary producers, like almond growers, who have a much smaller value to the economy in terms of their employment generation, export and domestic earnings—they are important; I do not deny that for a second—but who can pay that dollar. They do not generate the income, the billions of dollars of outcomes, that people investing in the dairy industry generate, but those people are being destroyed.

This temporary water market, of course, was accidental. It was never imagined that it would be the outcome, but too much about the Murray-Darling Basin Plan is a comedy of errors. It is accidental. It is a consequence of incompetence and capturing at the time by the Greens, who were the balance of power for the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd governments. We are now bearing the legacy of that.

On the 1,500 gigalitre cap on water buyback from irrigators, I would have hoped that the bill would also, at least in its memorandum of understanding between states, spell it out. But, in fact, virtually all of that water has already been taken from irrigators. There are only about 300 or so gigalitres left to be removed from irrigators.

I would also hope that it is understood that Victoria has already overdelivered on the agreements about its end-of-valley contributions to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder. I rechecked this fact with the ex-minister for water and the environment, Mr Peter Walsh, last night, just to make sure that I was getting it right. He said, 'Yes, Victoria has already overachieved in the targets that were set for it in giving up its high-security water to the environment.' I want to make sure that the other states understand that in the scramble for the last few gigalitres to go to the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder.

The 450 gigalitres which are also mentioned in this bill are a bit astonishing. I understood that originally this bill was not going to talk about the constraints strategy, one of the biggest farces and most destructive elements of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan as it now is configured. People are often aghast when I explain to them what the constraints strategy is. Certainly overseas environmentalists laugh and say, 'You've got to be kidding,' but, no, I am not. The tragedy is that, as a response to a threat from the South Australian Premier—still the same Premier today—to a High Court challenge, the Greens and Labor, in a last-minute, last-ditch effort, threw an additional 450 gigalitres at the lower end of the Murray system, saying, 'Look, here's a series of objectives which need to be and can be achieved.' All of this was in fact described in the bill which then became law early in the following year, 2013.

These outcomes included nonsense like keeping the mouth of the Murray flowing 95 per cent of the years and in every year without the aid of bulldozing, because someone pretended that that was an environmental measure and that somehow that actually reflected on the health of the basin or its sustainability. Most people laugh out loud when they hear that, but the tragedy is that it is now L-A-W. There is also the outcome which is supposed to be reduced salinity in the Lower Lakes, and higher lake levels. I am all for that. I think it is a jolly good idea, but most of the salt contributed to the Lower Lakes comes from South Australia itself, from its own Mallee areas. Let them look at salt interception works, perhaps. Certainly let us look at engineering solutions to achieve the outcomes that are now designated in law for the lower Murray River.

Those outcomes, a number of experts are now concluding, can be better achieved for them with engineering or works and measures outcomes and not with what is currently required by law, which is 450 gigalitres in addition to the sustainable delivery yields identified in the plan. Those 450 gigalitres are to be—so called—recovered. I object to that term—'recovery' implies it was stolen or lost. Those 450 gigalitres are, again, to come from the water resources of the mid-Murray and upper Murray. In pushing it down the system—given things like the natural Barmah Choke and given the fact that most of our cities and towns and our best agricultural land is in the riparian regions of our tributaries and the Murray itself—we are going to see flooding. It is not denied; it is explained very carefully to us that in six out of every 10 years those regions will be flooded by mid- to high-level floods. I want to commend the member for Indi, who read out a letter from Jan Beer, an expert in these matters on the upper Goulburn tributaries, who has identified very clearly what the floods—these man-made, deliberately instigated floods—will do to the environment and the productivity of the various parts of the Murray-Darling Basin involved: all of southern New South Wales and northern Victoria through the Mallee.

What other nation on earth would deliberately, as a political fix—a last-minute, 30-seconds-to-midnight political fix for a particular government—agree to flood and so environmentally degrade whole sections of their river basin without compensation and with only $250-odd million for ameliorating the impacts but overall with $1.77 billion for state agencies to go about implementing this plan? How extraordinary—but that is what we have in front of us. So, instead of saying, 'Let's make it more flexible for'—so called—'recovering the 450 gigalitres', this bill should have said, 'Let's look at how to achieve the objectives now in law for South Australia by all measures, in particular examining environmental works and measures and engineering solutions.' Why was that not in this bill instead? I find it extraordinary that that is not in this bill. I hope amendments in the Senate might address this.

I am also very concerned that this bill does not address the hypocrisy of the current Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder's requirement that if it trades water—as it should and as I believe it wants to, given that it has only been able to use half of the water in its bucket at the moment—back to irrigators, which would reduce the price in the temporary water market and which, as I have just described, is destroying productivity in the basin, the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder by regulation must spend every cent of that trade on further water buyback from irrigators. So, here we are today with a bill in the House saying, 'I'm going to cap that water buyback.' On the other hand, we have another piece of legislation which says, 'If the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder trades, it has to spend every cent on further water buyback.' Go figure. I believe the parliamentary secretary is going to address this matter soon as a legislative priority. I certainly hope so, but it would have been rather good to have had it also in this piece of legislation for debate, because of course it is hypocrisy for the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder to continue to have to buy back from irrigators while we are trying to cap buybacks with the other hand.

We also, of course, have said to you that people across the basin are suffering a fate which must be addressed urgently. I want to quote from an article in yesterday's Shepparton News: 'Deniliquin food producers will demand a re-evaluation of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority plan when federal representatives visit the area this week.' Ms Shelley Scoular of the Southern Riverina Irrigators group is quoted as saying: 'The plan is flawed. The social and economic impacts are hurting our communities.' She said that the Murray-Darling Basin Plan had been a knee-jerk reaction to addressing environmental issues during the millennium drought, which had led to successive federal governments inadvertently putting the food production industry at risk. 'This was never the intention of the Basin Plan, but that's how it's turning out,' she said. That sentiment is echoed across the basin at meetings like the one in Barham a few weeks ago, where 1,000 people came. A succession of speakers—food producers, people from small decimated communities, rural councillors, schoolteachers and local government bodies—all called for a stay on further implementation of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan until it was comprehensively evaluated in respect of all of the unintended consequences, the waste of billions of dollars in poorly conceived and managed spends, and the inadequate consultation which has seen stakeholders treated like mushrooms or insulted as ignorant when they should have been treated as key participants in the process.

There has been a complete failure to understand the need for a balance between strategies that sustain the environment, the economy and human communities. I have to say that in my electorate of Murray half of my irrigators now are dependent on a corrupted water market which, if not fixed sometime soon, will see the $1 billion of federal government investment in the so-called food bowl modernisation simply being spent to shut down half of the irrigation system, destroying billions of dollars of investment in food manufacturing and destroying jobs. There is already 27 per cent youth unemployment in my electorate, a consequence of us losing over 900 of the 1,900 gigalitres our irrigation system was once entitled to. You cannot have that sort of devastation and still have full employment, investment and expectation of a better agribusiness outcome. The 27 per cent youth unemployment is matched by higher-than-national-average adult unemployment. I have food manufacturers now lining up to say to me: 'What is going on? How come state and federal government policies—both previous and, sadly, even ongoing—are presiding over the destruction of agribusiness in the Murray-Darling Basin and the lack of a balance in the triple bottom line?' This can be done better. It must be done better. My agricultural communities have been financially devastated, but so has the economy generally. The mental health consequences and the destruction of the futures of farm children and the broader community should not be tolerated in a nation such as ours.

So I am pleased this bill has finally come to the House, but it is not sufficient. More has to be done urgently. I commend the Senate select committee inquiry that will shine a light in very dark places in relation to this Murray-Darling Basin Plan. We have to act soon.

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