Alison Penfold (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

The Murray-Darling Basin is not one place. It is a system of rivers, floodplains and communities spanning four states and the ACT.

The basin produces around $30 billion in agricultural output each year. It supports more than one-third of the nation's food production and more than 8,000 irrigated agriculture businesses.

What happens in this basin matters to all Australians.

That is why I am bringing forward this bill and why I urge this parliament to support it.

This bill establishes a commission of inquiry into the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder, or CEWH.

The commission will examine how Commonwealth environmental water is managed and whether it is delivering the environmental outcomes that are claimed. It will also look at the impacts on farming, regional economies and basin communities.

The CEWH is the single largest water holder in the Murray-Darling Basin, controlling more than 2,000 gigalitres of water.

Environmental water now accounts for around 72 per cent of river flows across the system on average.

The CEWH decides when and where to deliver that water, whether to carry it over and whether to trade. Those decisions affect river operations, environmental outcomes and water markets from Queensland to South Australia.

The CEWH must therefore be held to the highest standards of transparency and accountability.

Too many basin communities do not believe it currently meets that standard.

Since 2022, the Albanese government has pushed basin policy heavily towards water buybacks. The Water Amendment (Restoring Our Rivers) Act 2023removed the 1,500-gigalitre cap on Commonwealth water purchases.

Multiple buyback programs are now running at the same time.

This is happening even though the government has acknowledged that major complementary works, including constraints relaxation and floodplain restoration projects, will not be delivered in full or on time.

The original basin plan was built on the idea that recovered water and complementary works would go hand in hand. That is not what is happening.

The result is a growing imbalance across the basin. Productive water is being removed from communities before the works that were meant to justify that removal have been delivered.

The effects go beyond farms. Previous buyback rounds saw the population of communities severely decline. Towns like Wakool in New South Wales watched football clubs close and their RSLs fall into financial difficulty. Schools lost enrolments, and freight, retail and hospitality businesses contracted. These outcomes are the direct result of policy decisions that have never been subject to a proper socioeconomic test.

The coalition is fighting for five key principles for the basin. We want to reverse detrimental changes that the Labor government has made to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan; to ban any further buybacks and further reductions to the amount of water available for productive use; to balance the socioeconomic neutrality test with environmental outcomes; to ensure there are no further reductions to the consumptive pool and seek to increase the consumptive pool by delivering efficient water infrastructure to secure the future of basin communities; and to reform the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder (CEWH).

This bill targets the fifth principle.

People across the basin are not arguing against caring for our rivers. Communities understand that rivers need water. What they are asking is whether the basin plan is being implemented fairly and transparently, and whether it is delivering real environmental outcomes.

At a water forum in Narrandera earlier this year, irrigators, rice growers, cotton producers, local councils and industry groups spoke loudly and we listened. They are not opposed to environmental water. They want to know what it is achieving. They want to understand how decisions are made and what happens when things go wrong.

People want practical answers. What watering action is planned?

What does success look like? What are the risks? What impacts on third parties are expected? And how will communities be told what actually happened?

Too often, decisions are announced after the fact, in language that the people most affected cannot easily engage with.

This is not an argument against environmental water. It is an argument for better planning, consultation and accountability.

Basin communities are telling us that the CEWH has not demonstrated the performance needed to justify the trust being placed in it.

A commission of inquiry can test the evidence independently. It can compel documents and hear directly from communities and experts across all basin states, rather than relying on internal reviews or selective reporting.

The commission should examine:

Water users across the basin comply with complex rules, metreing requirements and reporting obligations.

That same standard must apply to the Commonwealth.

The coalition believes there should be no further reductions to the amount of water available for productive use.

The existing level of water recovery has already caused significant economic and social harm to basin communities. Any further reduction to the consumptive pool must be accompanied by a full socioeconomic assessment covering the whole basin, not just the farm gate.

The sustainable communities fund is competitive, and small towns cannot match larger regional centres for grants. The full cost of water policy decisions must be counted.

Rather than continuing to spend Commonwealth money on reducing the consumptive pool, the coalition will invest in infrastructure and bulk water supply to grow effective water availability.

Basin infrastructure is ageing. In some cases, it is approaching a century old. The Murray-Darling Basin's own Basin Plan discussion paper flags the risk of critical assessment failure, including at Lake Victoria in New South Wales and the Dartmouth Dam in Victoria.

The coalition also supports reforming the CEWH to return surplus water, water not needed to meet priority environmental outcomes, to the temporary consumptive pool.

Water that is sitting unused should be supporting basin communities, not sitting idle.

This is not about selling off environmental water. It is about managing a major public asset with the same discipline and accountability expected of any other public institution.

If the Labor government is confident that the Commonwealth environmental water is being managed well, it should welcome this inquiry. This parliament should not need to fight the executive for accountability on an issue that affects the livelihood of communities.

I recognise there is review fatigue across basin communities. Several reviews are already underway. But this bill is different. It is targeted specifically at the CEWH, and at the lack of trust that communities in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia have in how that body operates.

The commission must be credible to the communities it serves. That means commissioners with the right mix of legal and investigative expertise, alongside real knowledge of basin communities and river operations.

It means terms of reference that reflect the questions people are actually asking, and a process that gives stakeholders across all four states confidence that they will be heard.

The commission will report to parliament so that basin communities can see the findings and recommendations in full.

The Murray-Darling Basin is a shared resource of national importance.

Scrutiny is not a cost to government. It is a safeguard for the businesses and families whose futures depend on fair and transparent water management.

I commend the bill to the House.

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