Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities. Will the minister update the House on the latest information from the Murray-Darling Basin Authority? What are the next steps in securing the future of the Basin?

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Wakefield for the question. This morning the Murray-Darling Basin Authority released the revised draft plan. We went through a series of iterations of this document, and this is the latest one. It has a number of improvements, but I still believe it falls short of the ambition that the government has for Murray-Darling reform.

There are some significant improvements in this from the previous iteration of the document—in particular, on groundwater. Many members in this House—the member for New England included, but a number of members from both sides—had mentioned their concerns about the significant increase in groundwater extraction that appeared in the draft plan. None of us want to see a situation where you go to so much effort in improving surface water only to see it undone by overextraction of groundwater. Given the limited knowledge of the science of groundwater, I think there is an argument to make sure that we have a very precautionary approach to this matter. I raised this view at a number of the public meetings around the Basin. It is one of the few issues where you have irrigation communities and conservation groups arguing the same thing.

The authority certainly have made significant adjustments back in a much more cautious approach to groundwater, and I commend them for doing that. But there are still limits to the ambition of the reform, and in their covering letter in presenting it to me they have flagged a couple of issues which will now go to the ministerial council for us to work out how much further the reform can be taken. One issue they have raised—something that has been consistently put forward by the Victorian government, in particular—is about wanting to see just how far we can press the issues of the river rules, environmental works and measures and infrastructure measures to see how far we can go in using non buyback methods to bridge the gap.

There have been demands, in particular from the South Australian government, about wanting to see how much further we might be able to go with achieving environmental outcomes. Many of the environmental outcomes are well met by the document in front of us. When you go through the accompanying documentation, you see that the Coorong, the Lower Lakes, Hatter Lakes and a series of places have been well catered for. There is a number, like Chowler, that still fall well below, and the authority has provided a pathway by way of a request for government to consider further infrastructure investment to be able to take that to levels that begin with the number 3,000 while, by doing it through infrastructure, not having the knock-on impact to communities.

So we know what the authority thinks and we know the government's intention as to where we would like to take the reform. But it must be something that can survive this parliament, and to date I still do not know what the opposition believe. Barnaby Joyce stood up at a media conference and said, 'I'll tell you what we believe: we disagree with what the Greens are saying,' and nothing more. We need something that can survive the parliament. We cannot be yet another generation that falls short on Murray-Darling reform. (Time expired)