Ken Ticehurst (Dobell, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Minister for Environment and Water Resources. Would the minister inform the House of how the government is addressing problems of water scarcity across Australia?

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Water Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for his question. The member for Dobell has a particularly longstanding interest in water, because his community on the Central Coast suffers severe water scarcity. It is appropriate to discuss water scarcity today, which is World Water Day. The theme of World Water Day is ‘Global water scarcity’.

No Australian government has ever devoted more money to or had a keener focus on water scarcity and water management than the Howard government. Paul Kelly correctly described the government as having been ‘prescient’ on the matter of water. The National Water Initiative in 2004 is widely recognised as the international gold standard for water management. But that has been surpassed by the National Plan for Water Security, which tackles for the first time more than a century of dysfunctional mismanagement by state governments of the Murray-Darling Basin, our largest system of surface and ground water, and seeks to commit over $10 billion to ensure that the curse of overallocation, the misallocation, of water as between the environment and agriculture is set right. That $10 billion includes $6 billion to invest in efficient irrigation methods, both on farm and off farm, thereby ensuring a win-win, a more efficient, more resilient, more sustainable irrigation sector, and a better balance and a better return of environmental water for our ecological assets right through our river systems.

Water scarcity is a global problem and we are working internationally with many countries. Only today I met with the Chinese State Environmental Protection Administration Minister, Mr Zhou Shengxian, and we agreed to renew and reinvigorate the collaborative relationship that we have on water management and water science. Australia and China, though very different countries, share similar challenges, particularly in terms of water scarcity and overextraction of groundwater resources and the consequent impacts on rivers and agriculture. The strong cooperation between our two countries in so many areas related to the environment will continue with renewed vigour following the meetings that we have had today.

The scene in urban water is a very different one. Urban water is wholly within the province of the states. Naturally the federal government is focused on interstate water resources that cross state boundaries and where state management is obviously awkward and, as we have seen in the Murray-Darling Basin, dysfunctional. In city after city in Australia we have seen a tragic neglect of investment in water infrastructure. We have droughts in our cities which are wholly the consequences of years of complacency and neglect. We have urban water utilities controlled by state governments that are run as cash cows. The states plunder their customers and do not support them.

The member for Dobell has a classic case in his own area. Not so long ago the Commonwealth government, through the Australian government water fund, committed $7 million as a grant to a pipeline between the Hunter Valley and the Central Coast connecting Hunter Water and the Central Coast. The Hunter Valley has substantial water resources; the Central Coast is facing severe water scarcity and stress. The state government of New South Wales put not one penny into the pipeline. The rest of it was funded by Hunter Water, the state government owned water utility, and the Central Coast shires themselves. Hunter Water’s contribution was $10 million, as a business, and from that $10 million they will generate every year an additional $8 million in revenues. That investment will add $6 million in profit to Hunter Water for Mr Iemma to spend on whatever his mind turns to. Yet Mr Iemma had the effrontery to turn up to the opening of the pipeline and play the big benefactor of the Central Coast because he had made probably the most lucrative water investment ever seen in New South Wales. The constituents of the honourable member for Dobell know how the state government in New South Wales regards them in terms of water security. It regards them as bunnies to be plucked, to be ripped off—

Honourable Members:

Honourable members interjecting—

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Water Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

to be plucked from their burrows and skinned!

John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper.