Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I come from the Goulburn Valley, an incredibly productive valley that is built on agriculture and irrigated agriculture. People have come from all over the world to make businesses, lives and families, and employ people, create wealth, create food for Australia and create food and food products that are exported around the world. We should be really proud of that, but that's seriously under threat with the way that this government is approaching the final stages of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.

The Murray-Darling Basin Plan has had an impact on my electorate already, economically and financially, but we've accepted it because we accepted that there was a need for the Commonwealth to return water, via the Commonwealth water holder, to the environment. Over 2,000 gigalitres per year have been taken out of the Murray-Darling Basin, and that has led to a significant reduction in irrigated agriculture and significant risk for businesses, but we've worn it. The add-on to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan was the sustainable diversion limit adjustment mechanism—in my area it's called the SDLAM—to deliver 605 gigalitres worth of projects. The states have been working on those projects, but they haven't been given the chance to be developed and finished. They've been disrupted by COVID, disrupted by floods and disrupted by wet years. But they can make some really good environmental steps forward in a sustainable way.

The other part of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan that is frightening—it's not too strong a word—everyone in my region is the 450 gigalitre per year extra amount that was mooted to be returned and given to environmental outcomes down in South Australia. That was only if it could be proven that there was no socioeconomic impact on the basin communities. That was the deal: 'You can have the 450 gigalitres if you can prove there's no negative socioeconomic impact.' In 2018, the basin states agreed that any additional water recovered under the plan—the 450 gigalitres—would be subject to a socioeconomic neutrality test. Successive Victorian Labor water ministers have stood firm for basin communities, and rightly so.

Recovering water for the environment must be balanced against the impact on basin communities, who face a loss of productivity, jobs and economic activity if there is overreach. I just can't emphasise enough how fearful, frightened and devastated people in my community—not just the farmers but the people who work in factories, making products from milk and fruit—are about the economic destruction that this will yield if it happens.

So my questions to the minister are these. Why won't you extend the June 2024 deadline and pursue those sustainable diversion limit adjustment mechanism projects? It would achieve better outcomes for the environment in a sustainable way. Why won't you extend the deadline and give the states the chance to continue developing those projects? I also ask the minister: Is there research showing that recovery of the additional 450 gigalitres would not have a negative social or economic impact for basin communities? If so, will you release it? If not, when will that work be done and released publicly before any water buybacks occur? The deal was for the 450 if there was no negative socioeconomic impact, and I encourage the minister to think about that term 'socioeconomic'—society and economy. Is the impact going to be negative? And if it is then I think the minister needs to stand by the deal that was done when the Murray-Darling Basin Plan was first put together: that that was the only circumstance under which those extra 450 gigalitres—extra, on top of what we've already given—can be taken away.

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