Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I would like to raise the issue of the Murray-Darling system. A number of mixed messages are coming from the current government. I would like to place on record, as I have before, some concerns that I have about the way in which the government is responding to the issue of climate change. I believe climate change is a reality, so I am not approaching this matter from a climate change sceptic’s point of view but from the point of view of looking at some of the practical applications of potential policy on the Murray-Darling within the rhetoric of climate change being used.

In the last few days in the parliament the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts has used the add-on of drought and climate change—and it is part of a process that many ministers are using—and the fact that the Murray-Darling system is in crisis because of previous policy decisions that were made by governments over many decades. It is this add-on of climate change that I would like to address. The current rhetoric suggests, as I said, that climate change is having an impact on the inflows into the Murray-Darling system. If that logic holds, the government—or the Minister for Climate Change and Water or the minister for the environment—should have a figure that relates to the loss of inflows into the Murray-Darling system which have been caused by climate change. You might have noticed, Mr Deputy Speaker, that in the parliament yesterday I kept interjecting, asking the environment minister: how many gigalitres of water are attributable to climate change? Because, if you cannot quantify the gigalitres then the credibility of the argument that the inflows into the Murray-Darling system are due to climate change becomes somewhat dicey. So I call on the government to quantify how much has climate change, an unnatural event, caused the reduction in the amount of water in the Murray-Darling system?

I would like to take that a step further. If it can be shown that half a million megalitres or one million megalitres of inflow has stopped and that has been caused not within the system but outside the system and is due to human global emissions then the government should look at adding some water to the system. That is fairly simple. People will say: ‘Here we go again, bringing water from the coast or down from Queensland.’ If human greenhouse gas emissions outside that valley have had an impact on that valley then that is an option that needs to be looked at. In the past when people have talked about bringing water into the Murray-Darling system the argument has been that that would be unnatural and would have an impact on salinity and a whole range of other things. If the government is going to run this line that climate change has caused part of the reduction in the inflow and that most of those causes are outside that valley, then surely one of the options should be to bring water into the system.

I would also like to address briefly these other arguments about the barrages at the end of the Murray mouth, Lake Alexandrina and the crisis that is occurring in South Australia at the moment. I have been to that area on a number of occasions. It is an absolute disgrace what the South Australians have done at the end of the Murray. Most people do not know that there is a dam. A lot of people condemn Cubbie Station, and I do too—I think the government should purchase that piece of land—but exactly the same thing has happened at the end of the Murray. The Murray is dammed with a series of barrages. I agree with the government on climate change, but they are going to have to establish some rhetoric that actually fits the system. (Time expired)