House debates

Thursday, 3 June 2021

Bills

Water Legislation Amendment (Inspector-General of Water Compliance and Other Measures) Bill 2021; Second Reading

12:36 pm

Photo of Mr Tony BurkeMr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Arts) Share this | Hansard source

I want to commend the Water Legislation Amendment (Inspector-General of Water Compliance and Other Measures) Bill 2021 to the parliament, give some of the context behind the bill itself and also deal with some of the issues that were raised in earlier presentations, in particular from the member for Nicholls, and some of mythology that is there around the plan, because there is a reason why we got to the point where, ultimately, I, as the water minister at the time, signed off on the document with the support of all the various state water ministers and there is a reason why it is the interests of everyone in this chamber for to it be properly implemented.

First of all, if there was a single core misunderstanding that we could say was present at the time that the Basin Plan was brought into place, across both sides of the chamber, it was the fact that we took the water market as a given and we presumed that the integrity of water trading would function as a market. When we saw that Four Corners story a few years ago now and we saw the cases of water theft occurring, we realised that the foundations that underpinned everything about the plan needed to be far more secure than they were.

The government and the minister at the time—now the minister for agriculture but then the minister for water—worked closely with the opposition to establish the position of the Northern Basin Commissioner. The role was a compliance role, and we supported the appointment of Mick Keelty, because it was important to have somebody with a law enforcement background doing that job. I must say that, while the government didn't in fact legislate to give him any extra powers, at that point there was good work that Mick Keelty was able to do simply because of his background as being in one of the most senior police positions that exists in this country.

We presume that Troy Grant will end up as the Inspector-General of Water Compliance after this legislation is carried—and I genuinely hope it works. There has been some scepticism and concern around the place. With every appointment, the fact that someone has a political background doesn't necessarily mean it can't work. But we need it to work, because the integrity of the water trading system is essential. This is not simply for the plan to work or simply for the environment to not be ripped off; it's also for every honest irrigator to not be ripped off either. There is a lot at stake in making sure that this role has the powers that it needs and that it is able to perform properly.

The original theory that the role would be able to make referrals to the National Integrity Commission seems to have fallen prey to the fact that the National Integrity Commission that we were told was on its way appears to has got lost on its way. But, even with the integrity of water compliance, we have a problem with the plan now, because, effectively, even though we had bipartisanship when the plan was arrived at—and I'll always remember the vote in this parliament where, for the money to go to the 450 gigalitres, we had a division, and on the side of the chamber that voted no we had the representative from the Greens party, we had Bob Katter and we had the person who is now Deputy Prime Minister of Australia, and we had pretty much everybody else in the chamber voting yes, to go ahead with all the parts of the plan—what we have now is not what anyone started with at the table.

The act didn't allow us to compromise on the minimum environmental conditions that we needed to get to, but it did allow us to compromise on how we would get there, and some of those compromises worked in favour of industry and some of them worked in favour of the environment, but in each case there was a protection. For those that work in favour of industry—and this is what we call the down water, the 605 gigalitres down—instead of having to get the 2,750 gigalitres as total held water, if you can achieve the same environmental outcomes through other works, then less is acquired. That principle of achieving the same environmental outcomes goes directly to minimum standards that are contained within the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. But the flip side is that you can acquire more water if it's done in a way that minimises the impact on communities, with a specific part of the plan that says 'the participation of consumptive water users in projects that recover water through works to improve irrigation water use efficiency on their farm'. It specifically says there that, if you do it through on-farm irrigation, it is taken as not having a negative impact on the community—for a pretty obvious reason. If a farmer gets Commonwealth money to improve the quality of the infrastructure on their farm and, as a result, they don't need to use as much water, you're getting the same production from the farm, you're getting the same production from the enterprise, but you're getting a better outcome for the environment, and that means that it costs the taxpayer more than it would if we were just in a world of buybacks. That's what it means. And we made the decision that we were willing as taxpayers to put that extra investment directly into the farmers and irrigators of the Murray-Darling Basin.

Now, of that money that was put aside that almost everybody voted for to acquire 450 gigalitres, we find that, of the 450 gigalitres, 2.1 gigalitres has been acquired. That doesn't just mean there's less water for the environment than there was meant to be; it also means farmers and irrigators who were meant to get Commonwealth money to improve the quality of the infrastructure on their land haven't been given a cent—that the government would rather leave those irrigators without improved infrastructure than allow the basin to be healthier. Of all the things that we predicted and worked through when we were putting the plan together, it actually never occurred to anyone that there would be a government so determined to have a culture war about water that they would deny irrigators and farmers improved infrastructure in order to make sure there wasn't additional water for the environment.

I don't know who they think they're doing a favour. Maybe they think it means they can rally around in a town hall meeting in the country and pretend to people that they're fighting for them. But the only outcome is that the irrigators end up with older infrastructure than they would otherwise have, that the government subsidy that was available to them never reaches them and, from an environmental perspective, that the extra water is never acquired.

There are no jobs on a dead river. There are no communities on dead rivers. What happens with the Murray-Darling Basin, particularly on the Darling part of it, is it will always be a situation that, through periods of drought, part of the natural cycle is for there to be a drying cycle. But the combination of overextraction and climate change means that those dry years now are much more than would ever be the case naturally. The concept of held water is that once those dry years start you've got some held water to effectively be able to provide some sort of palliative care to stop the system from breaking down altogether.

There's a lot of mythology, particularly in the Darling system, about where water would flow, and because the land is so flat sometimes people will take a particular irrigation property and say, 'If they weren't allowed to have so much water then that would fix the entire Darling system,' which is not how the system works. It's an incredibly flat system and it is meant to go through a drought cycle, but overextraction kills the river. The way to resolve a whole lot of these issues is to make sure that you have water held for environmental purposes through a combination of methods, some of it through buyback and some of it through infrastructure projects.

I predicted what would happen when the government first put the cap on buyback. We didn't have a cap on buyback in the plan, for a very clear reason. If you wanted the states to come forward with projects that, in time, they would implement for the 605 gigalitres of down water, then you had to give them an incentive to do that. If they knew that if they didn't do the projects then buyback was what would occur, they would come forward with the projects and they would make sure that they worked. But when the government foolishly, for the sake of a political slogan, got rid of the cap on buyback they created an impossible situation for basin communities. The states now don't have an incentive to go ahead with their projects and—surprise, surprise!—we're now starting to hear the states aren't going to be able to meet the deadlines on their projects. Of course they can't. Of course they won't, because the incentive to make them do it was taken off the table.

So now we have a world where, for the plan, the government says, 'The states might not do it and we won't buy back either.' Under the plan as a legal document, the water has to be acquired. Every day the government allow this farce to continue they make the situation that's coming down the line for basin communities more and more perilous. Part of the reason that the plan had a staged gradual accumulation of water for the environment at the same time that money was going through to communities and farm businesses was to make sure that you could do this slowly, to make sure that at a gradual pace you could help communities with the transition and help make sure that the irrigators themselves were becoming more efficient, so as to make sure that the jobs that were then available in the communities weren't disappearing on the way through. But what the government has done is create a situation of brinkmanship where we are heading down to deadlines, they have hardly acquired any water, the states are not coming through with their projects and the irrigators are not getting the improved infrastructure. Yet the targets need to be met. If there was ever a triumph of messaging over reality in regional communities, it's what members of the government have done here.

Let's not pretend that the only victims here are people at the end of the system. There is no doubt rivers die from the end of the river all the way back up, and the worst and most immediate impacts are in the state of South Australia. I am always astonished at the hypocrisy of people when they say, 'You need to remove the barrages. You need to remove the interventions at the bottom of the system but keep every other intervention further up the system.' If you believe it should be a completely natural system, argue that, but don't argue that it should only be true in South Australia. But then don't pretend that South Australia is the only place that is going to be let down by the way the government is holding back on the implementation of the plan, because, right through New South Wales and Victoria and all the way up to Queensland, communities are getting closer and closer to a situation where tough decisions have to be made and those decisions will be much worse because of the inactivity year after year from this government. There are programs that were meant to happen over a decade—the process of acquiring 450 gigalitres and they're at 2.1, and projects to get the 605 gigalitres of down water are now looking like major ones not going ahead, and with no incentive to deliver on it.

What this government has done is think you can take a document that brought people together and only take the bits that are the easiest to sell, only take the bits that are easiest to message into your local papers. Communities and the health of the rivers are all at stake here, and negligence from this government continues to put them at risk.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

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