Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister Assisting for Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

The motion is seconded. In seconding the motion, I take this opportunity to thank the member for Lyne for bringing this matter to the place and congratulate her for the outstanding contribution she just made.

I want to take you back. It's 2012 and I had been asked to be the Liberal candidate in the seat of Barker. That included the communities of the Riverland. As a young person living in Mount Gambier on a family farm I'd spent my fair share of time moving irrigation pipes. In fact, for as long as I can remember I was moving those pipes, or, indeed, from the point at which I could lift one, so I understood the importance of irrigation to farming entities. To be fair, I wasn't someone who'd spent a lot of time in the Riverland, but I was keen to correct that.

I remember one day I was in the Riverland driving along and I saw a strange sight near the bank of a river adjacent to a farm. It was an elderly man digging a trench from the river to a point. It piqued my curiosity. I stopped. I walked down and asked to speak to the man. He was a man in his 80s and he was digging a ditch from the river to a red gum. He said, 'Son, I'm digging this in the shadows of the millennium drought to make sure this tree survives.' In that moment I knew the people of the Riverland, farmers in those communities, care deeply about the environment. This was an elderly man who, quite frankly, should not have been digging at all, let alone that ditch. That is why the people of my electorate are so incredibly disappointed when they see that the sacrifices they make to ensure water has transferred from productive use to environmental benefit is not being treated with the same respect or all the requirements that have to be occasioned onto irrigators themselves.

The people of the Riverland want the CEWH to succeed. They want environmental outcomes, because otherwise that elderly gentleman would never have been there at the end of a long shovel. That's why this motion is so important. That's why this commission is important. We have to give the two million Australians who live within the basin confidence that the water held by the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder is being put to the best environmental use, that the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder is meeting the same sort of transparency and governance that irrigators themselves have to face.

It's not enough, as the member for Lyne said, to say, 'This is environmental water, so of course that's good.' It's only providing a social good if it provides the environmental outcome. Too often my constituents, and I expect others who live and work and represent areas in the basin would have heard this as well, ring me to say: 'Tony, what are they doing? They're irrigating in the middle of summer, in the middle of the day. It's a complete waste.' That's why this commission is so important, so we can hold decision-makers to account.

This is a significant capital asset that is held on trust for every Australian. Whether you live in the basin or not, you're a shareholder in that capital held by the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder. That asset, in a continent as dry as ours, is just so valuable. It was Mark Twain who said, 'Whisky's for drinking, but water's for fighting over.' In that context, this water, this precious environmental water, needs to be managed appropriately. That's why this commission is so important. We need to ensure that people living and working in the basin have the confidence that that shareholding, that capital asset that's held on trust for every single Australian including everyone in this building, is being managed appropriately. It's only with that kind of transparency, that kind of accountability, that we will deliver that trust. And, by the way, without that trust, the work of the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder will fail because it will lose political will.

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