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

I rise in support of this Water Amendment (Review Implementation And Other Measures) Bill 2015, and I might make some comments on the shadow minister's contribution. I do acknowledge that he is supporting this bill and I do agree with him that the stakeholders, in the basin, are looking for a resolution and completion of the plan.

I will disagree with him about the portfolio going to agriculture. Quite frankly, in the eight years that I have been here, it has only been under the directorship of Minister Joyce that we have started to see some practical outcomes and support for this. Unfortunately, I have been witness to ideological decisions made, here. Undoubtedly, the biggest one was prior to the 2013 election when there was a 450 gig allocation made without any scientific backing at all.

I acknowledge that the Murray-Darling Basin does need to have respect for nurturing agricultural communities and the environment from one end of it to the other. I speak with some authority on this as someone who represents 25 per cent of the basin and, with voters willing, after the next election, somewhat more than that from the Lower Darling to the Queensland border. Those rivers in the Murray-Darling Basin are the lifeblood of those communities.

The shadow minister mentioned the importance of engaging the Aboriginal people in those areas. I do agree that the river is very important to those constituents of mine. There is no greater example of this than the community of Brewarrina where the historic fish traps are located. The whole focus of Brewarrina and the other river communities is that river. It is the lifeblood of the town.

This bill, basically, is implementing the 23 recommendations of the review of the Water Act. I will not go into all of them, but a significant one is the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder, the CEWH, having the ability to trade in the water market. I certainly do not see this as the CEWH becoming a proxy licence holder for Commonwealth water. Far from it. But it is important that the CEWH has the flexibility to trade surplus water and use those funds for other measures that will benefit the basin. At the moment, the CEWH is restricted by having to use the money gained from water sold to purchase more water, which belies the real purpose of selling the water in the first place.

That will be a major change. It will also put some flexibility into the system. In my eight years, here, I have heard countless speeches on the state of the Murray-Darling Basin, and they have been driven through the eyes of ideologues. The part of the basin I represent is an ephemeral system. The rivers in the northern basin are ephemeral rivers. Traditionally, they go from periods of flood and high flow to periods of low flow and, in some cases, no flow. We need to remind ourselves that we are dealing with an ephemeral stream and no two events, in the basin, are the same. There is great expectation, as water is running over weirs in the Warrego River in Queensland, that this water can make it through to New South Wales and give some relief to the Darling River in western New South Wales, because no two rainfall events are the same.

A system that does not have the flexibility to review what is working and what is not has a negative effect and makes it very difficult for stakeholders to work their way through the issues we need to deal with. A lot of the assumptions that were made back in the early days of this reform process were merely assumptions. Now, as we are 10 years through the process, we have data to put against those assumptions and review whether those assumptions were correct and, if they were not correct, whether we need to make some changes and finetune things.

One thing for sure is that we need to have maturity with our approach to this. This is not about South Australia versus Victoria versus New South Wales versus Queensland. We all rely on the health of that river and we all should have some understanding of the system. In my area several of the major rivers are terminal; they do not run into the Darling. They are isolated. We should have acknowledgement that it is not a connected plumbing system and that it is complex and that it changes on a regular basis. We do have iconic environmental assets, of which the shadow minister spoke. In my part of the world we have the Macquarie Marshes and the Gwydir wetlands. These areas have great significance and are of environmental importance, but it should not be one versus the other. There is no reason why water cannot be used for production, amenity, Aboriginal cultural purposes and also for environmental purposes. The water can be reused as it makes its way down the system, and we should have the flexibility to recognise that.

This legislation follows on from legislation, introduced by the minister before Christmas, that capped the buybacks at 1,500 gigalitres. I need to reinforce that that is a cap—it is not an aspiration; it is not a target. That legislation and this legislation having bipartisan support and a genuine feeling of cooperation to get to the end of the plan with reasonable outcomes is very important because at the moment there has been a lot of talk—in this place in particular but around Australia—of the growing world population and of the free markets that we have opened up in countries to our north in Asia and there is a great amount of interest in investing in agriculture. But unless there is some security attached to water within the bounds of climatic variation, unless there is some security that people can purchase land and purchase water with a degree of competence that, all things being equal, they will be able to use that water to produce food or fibre, then investment in regional areas is going to be somewhat curtailed.

I believe that the communities in the basin—and I can speak for the ones in my area—are reformed to the back teeth. They have had enough of reform. They went through a period of state government reform before this plan was enacted. It was conceived 10 years ago. They have gone through 10 years of this and, quite frankly, they have had enough. They want some certainty. They want to be able to focus back on how they are going to produce what they need to. They need to focus on having sustainability in their communities, and communities in my area such as Warren, Moree, Bourke, Narrabri and many others have had huge effects from the loss of water. At the moment plantings of irrigated crops in the Parkes electorate are very minimal because our storages are very low. This is more a result of the drought than anything to do with the basin plan.

I very much support this process. I am committed to working within the communities in my electorate. After the next election, should I be successful in contesting my electorate, I will be representing the community of Broken Hill. I also acknowledge that that community has very serious issues with a safe and regular water supply and that my colleagues in the New South Wales government who are responsible for supplying urban water are working very closely with that community at the moment to find a resolution that will give some comfort to the residents of Broken Hill. They have my full support in that.

We are on our way to having a plan in place. This bill will allow for five-yearly reviews so that we have the flexibility to make the changes that need to be made. I would like to acknowledge the people in my electorate who have been actively involved in this process. They have done it in a magnanimous way. Some peak bodies are my irrigator groups. I have members of the community that are involved in other reviews on the social and economic benefits

They are taking their jobs very seriously to make sure that we have a plan that is fair and sustainable and that looks after the communities, the environment and agricultural production. This bill has my complete support.

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