Mark Coulton (Parkes, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to speak on the Water Amendment (Water for the Environment Special Account) Bill 2012, which allocates 450 gigalitres to the Murray-Darling as part of the arrangement that the Prime Minister announced in South Australia a couple of weeks ago.

I have considerable concern about a couple of issues with this bill. One of those is that the minister's rhetoric on this has been that this water is to be returned to the basin through works and measures. However, there is a clause in this legislation that will allow water to be purchased should the works and measures not be successful. That is of great concern for me. The other thing that concerns me is that there is no indication as to where this water might come from. As we have seen in the past, large-scale water purchases without a community assessment of the economic and social detriments of these purchases can be devastating.

There is no clearer example of that than in my electorate, with two major purchases by this government in the last few years. One of those was the purchase of Toorale Station, which delivered very little water back into the system but had a major effect on the economy of Bourke, with 100 jobs lost, over 10 per cent of the rate base of Bourke Shire Council removed and a negative environmental outcome. Toorale Station, once the gem of the Bourke shire, has been reduced to a wilderness that is infested with noxious weeds and feral animals.

The other purchase was of $300 million worth of water from the Twynam Pastoral Company. A large amount of that water was from Collymongle Station at Collarenebri on the Gwydir River. The purchase of that water has devastated the community of Collarenebri, to the extent that, I suspect, Collarenebri will never ever return to what it was prior to the loss of the Collymongle water.

I do realise that there is a lot on in this House tonight and other things need to be done, but I must say that the coalition will introduce amendments that cover the concerns that I have raised tonight. I also note that if those amendments are not successful, if the government does not accept those amendments, then we have a commitment from the coalition that, should there be a change of government in 2013, those amendments will be introduced as legislation to become law.

There is a lot about what is happening in the Murray-Darling Basin, with the water plan and with this legislation to remove an extra 450 gigalitres through works and measures, that I am not comfortable with. But I will acknowledge that we have come a long way from when the first draft of the plan was introduced a couple of years ago, and that a lot of work has been done by a lot of people. I will acknowledge that the people of my electorate are not happy with this plan. I will also acknowledge that probably not a lot of other people are. But I believe that the danger of letting this plan go and letting it get into the hands of the Greens could lead to a devastating outcome.

This afternoon I was watching Senator Hanson-Young's speech in the Senate on the disallowance motion on the Basin Plan and, to be frank, it was bone-chilling. The speech from Senator Hanson-Young—a member of a party that is supposed to represent the entire country and be focused on better environmental outcomes—was the greatest example of nimbyism I have ever seen in this place. I acknowledge the difficulty that we have in this place with the different interests in the river depending on where you are. I acknowledge that that has been an incredibly difficult situation. I also acknowledge that the divisions in this place are not necessarily along political lines but along geographical lines. I acknowledge that, and I acknowledge that the people in my electorate have given away, handed back, a lot of water through the first state water-sharing plans and also through this plan. My wish is that, when this debate is finalised in this last week, we draw a line under this plan. If we find that we are going to have green activists chaining themselves up to red gums in 12 months time and saying that this plan does not go far enough—and Senator Hanson-Young's chilling words certainly indicated to me that that was going to be the case—then I think that the people of my electorate will not be so compliant next time.

There is work to be done with the states, and I acknowledge there is probably more work to be done with my home state of New South Wales and the relationship with the minister than probably anywhere else at this stage. What those in New South Wales are looking for, apart from rhetoric from the minister, is a set commitment from the minister that there will be no more buybacks beyond what has been agreed to in this plan and that, as to the 450 gigalitres in this bill that we are speaking to today, that is done through works and measures and not through buybacks as is allowable in the clause in this bill.

It is with great irony that we talk about a healthy river. And I ask: what is a healthy river? I represent 24 per cent of the Murray-Darling Basin. I represent every river from the Lachlan to the Macintyre, and they are ephemeral streams. From the beginning of time they have flooded and they have gone dry. The idea that we have to have the river brimming full of water at all times for it to be a healthy system is an absolute nonsense. We found that, after 10 years of the worst drought in modern history, the environment of the river returned much more quickly than the communities that live on it did. I would ask any member of this place to travel to the west of New South Wales and visit the Macquarie Marshes, the Gwydir wetlands or the Narran lakes—wonderful iconic environmental locations—and look at the abundance of life there. But I would also encourage them while they are there to look at the farms, the communities and the contribution that this part of Australia makes to the Australian economy. I might add that during the global financial crisis there were two industries that carried Australia: agriculture and mining. Both of these industries feature strongly in my part of the world, and both of them battle constantly against legislation which is introduced in this place and which seems to be aimed at bringing them down rather than encouraging them.

I endorse this bill not with enthusiasm but with qualification. I am sometimes alarmed at the mixed messages the minister puts out when he talks about a sensible plan which looks after everyone along the river and then, when he gets in front of a television camera, seems to be entirely focused on environmental outcomes. It is not a great day for Australia when the rights of a frog supersede the rights of an Australian farmer. It is my fear that, unless a balance is worked out in the implementation of the plan in this bill, in the end the frog might win.

Tomorrow we will be discussing a disallowance motion on the basin plan which will be introduced by my colleagues the member for Riverina and the member for Murray. While I fully understand their position and why they are putting up their disallowance motion, I place on record now that I will not be supporting it. I agree that the form in which the basin plan is implemented is important in getting the outcomes we want, but I believe that we have reached a point where we need to draw a line under the basin plan and move on.

The member for Kennedy will also put forward a disallowance motion tomorrow. I find it extremely galling that a member who comes from a place far from the basin and who has been completely divorced from the pain, the hardship, the negotiation, the dealing, the plain hard work and the sweat which has been put in by people in my electorate and people in other electorates in the Murray-Darling Basin as well as the hard work that has been done in this place on both sides to get to a point of compromise would waltz into the debate on this bill when it is pretty well done and dusted and try to pick over the bones of the plan. I find it extremely galling that he would cause great hardship and considerable upset to the people of the basin for no outcome other than lifting his profile in a vain political attempt to have some relevance at the 2013 election. I certainly will not be supporting the member for Kennedy's disallowance motion either.

Andrew Southcott (Boothby, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Primary Healthcare) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to speak on this bill. It provides the money for the extra 450 gigalitres of water which was announced in October for permanent environmental water entitlements and for infrastructure improvements. Three bills on the Murray-Darling Basin have been considered by the parliament this year: firstly the legislation which made arrangements to allow the minister to have some flexibility in adjusting the plan upwards or downwards depending on the science; secondly the legislation on the basin plan itself, which was tabled in parliament; and thirdly the legislation that provided for an additional 450 gigalitres of water for infrastructure improvement. I put on record my support for all three of these acts.

My support for a sustainable Murray is not new; I have been interested in creating a sustainable Murray the whole time that I have been a member of parliament. I have been through the Living Murray initiative, the National Water Initiative of 2004, the Water Act of 2007 and the $10 billion package which was announced in January 2007. At the moment we are at the culmination of a six-year journey which started in 2007 with John Howard and Malcolm Turnbull. The idea then was to have national management of the Murray-Darling Basin by an independent authority: the Murray-Darling Basin Authority. I put on record my very strong support for the principle we came up with in 2007.

The MDBA could be thought of as similar to the Reserve Bank of Australia, which took over 100 years to develop as a central bank clearly independent of government. It became very clear as we went through the long, 10-year drought that the old system of having the Murray-Darling managed by the states was not working and would not be not sustainable into the future. This bill provides $1,775 million over 10 years from 2014-15 for the Water for the Environment Special Account. This account will be used to make infrastructure improvements: improving the water efficiency of infrastructure; improving infrastructure that currently constrains the delivery of environmental water; increasing the capacity of dams and storage; and entering into easement agreements.

In the electorate I represent, which is the seat of Boothby in Adelaide, among the issues uppermost in people's minds are water security and the environment. In a drought year Adelaide draws 90 per cent of its drinking water from the Murray, and, when a drought is on, these two issues are very much at the top of people's minds. Certainly, the concern about the state of the Lower Lakes and the Coorong was very much a talking point through 2007 and 2008.

The three pieces of legislation that we have been asked to consider are, I think, really the first substantial, concrete steps towards national management by an independent authority. It is a principle that I have long supported and I am very happy to support the bill in this form.

John Cobb (Calare, National Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture and Food Security) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Water Amendment (Water for the Environment Special Account) Bill 2012. This bill is to commit another $1.7 billion in spending that, to be quite frank, the government does not have to spend and imposes a liability on a future government. Before the 2007 election, Labor leader Kevin Rudd publicly admonished the Howard government, saying, 'This reckless spending must stop.' Given that the Rudd government started with a $20 billion surplus and $70 billion in the bank and that this has now been reversed—with, last year, a $44 billion deficit and debts of $150 billion—that was some statement! The current government, with the new leader, has not changed; it has just got worse. Five years on, the public can see the absurdity of that.

The problem with this bill is the same as the problem with the government: they say one thing and do another. They commit to infrastructure projects but actually deliver buyback. Everyone knows that the Howard government $10 billion water plan was based on investing in the infrastructure and irrigation of the Murray-Darling Basin and making savings. It was concerned with what could be recovered for the environment while ensuring we had a productive and innovative irrigation sector that could underpin economies for the next 100 years in these communities. There was $5.8 billion in infrastructure and irrigation efficiencies, with $3 billion for restructuring and buyback, as a last resort—not, 'Let's start buying and worry about a plan later,' which is totally untargeted buying.

When Labor were elected they shelved the infrastructure investment and stripped water from local communities. I will give you two clear examples of this. On the Lachlan River they started buying up large volumes of water before they even worked out what the water was to be used for. Of course, everyone with any understanding of the system realised that the Lachlan River is a terminal waterway. Yes, it does get into the system—twice every 100 years. Let me tell you: buying lots of water on the Lachlan does not deliver a single megalitre to South Australia in most years. In fact, in the years that it does get into the system, the last thing they need is more water, because it means they are facing one of the two biggest floods in 100 years. The government have bought more water than they can use within this catchment, taking water away from food and fibre production and depriving communities of economic activity.

The second example is the small village of Caldwell, 60 kilometres west of Deniliquin. The buyback has decimated this farming community. It is an untargeted, unplanned buyback—'Let's just see what we can get. Let's show that we've done something. If we destroy it or it's wasteful or not needed, so what?' There are a small block of farm south of Caldwell. Since 2007, around 10 of these farms have changed hands, with seven of the farms sold without water. This has meant that three farms on a stretch of about 10 kilometres of channel need to support the irrigation upgrades and costs of running the channel previously supported by 10 farms. Three now have to support the same infrastructure that 10 used to. That has left Murray Irrigation with a channel that is simply unsustainable—certainly for the people who are there. What do they do? Do they shut down these three highly productive farms or continue to lose money on maintaining a channel system? This example is repeated over and over throughout the irrigation district of New South Wales and Victoria.

The loss of business—the loss of critical mass—in these areas is just enormous. Also, the loss of irrigators has meant that, instead of 10 families, we have three. There are fewer kids at the local school. The school bus route has stopped. There are fewer people to retain the critical mass for services. Hospital services in Deniliquin have shrunk, so, instead of going 60 kilometres to Deniliquin for many services, locals now drive 250 kilometres to Albury. What has changed for the people in Canberra who make these decisions? Nothing. They have not lost income or services. The member for Watson lives in Sydney. Nothing has changed for him. He has no skin in the game. The Labor Party has no skin in the game.

The point I want to make here is that, while the government has made a commitment to concentrate on investments, the reality is it will just go in and buy back the water, which will further decimate rural communities. Burke and Wills are famous for exploring this country and opening up the nation's eyes to its potential. Now Burke and Wong will long be remembered for selling out our rural communities with untargeted buybacks.

I strongly support the amendments, to be put forward by the coalition, which will ensure that water purchases must be tied to infrastructure upgrades and system works and measures, with no social or economic detriment for the communities that the water comes from. This bill seeks to appropriate $1.77 billion until 2024 into a special account, which includes $55 million over the forward estimates. It is a good way to have a plan without paying for it.

I am really struggling with this bill—I will be honest. I have spent my whole life in the basin. I have lived on it and never been an irrigator, but I have lived with irrigators my whole life. The Prime Minister and the water minister announced this bill in Adelaide on 26 October 2012 with a promise that it would recover an additional 450 gigalitres of water for the environment. In the basin plan, which is supposed to be based on what science says, 2,750 gigalitres is the magic number. We might question the science because, without an environmental water plan, the figure does not deliver any tangible outcomes. However, the government says the basin plan is based on sound science to bring the river system back to health, yet this bill is providing more water for the environment based on what? The government has given a commitment that water will only be recovered in an economically neutral way via on-farm structural projects. What credence do we give to this commitment?

This bill seeks to put aside money to pay for additional water to allow the 2,750-gigalitre figure to increase to 3,200 gigalitres. Delivering more than the 2,750 gigalitres of water back to the environment requires removing a number of physical constraints on the system—doing such things as lifting bridges and moving roads to avoid flooding. This is enormously important. This is the actual practical part of what they are talking about. To deliver this water they have to, as I said, lift bridges, move roads to avoid flooding, purchase easements on private lands and change water operation rules which limit water flows. The challenge of removing such constraints is obviously huge—and it is totally untalked about and unproven.

Does anyone really think that the states of New South Wales and Victoria, the states which would actually have to release the water and cause the flooding, are going to put themselves in a position where they might be sued to their back teeth for deliberately—I am saying they are doing it deliberately!—causing this kind of chaos? Are we going to spend $1.7 billion removing constraints which will most likely involve raising bridges and doing those other ridiculous things I mentioned? The minister has left open the option of buying back the water if the constraints cannot be removed, despite the fact that the basin plan says that 2,750 is the maximum which can be delivered without removing constraints. The reality is that Labor can and will spend the $1.7 billion on buybacks, despite the basin plan saying extra water is not deliverable.

The coalition has two amendments to move which are aimed at holding the government to its word. Those amendments require that water only be recovered in a way that does not cause the sort of chaos I am talking about or social and economic detriment. It rules out water buybacks and only allows repurchase of water access. The shadow minister will go into that in more detail. We need to hold this government to account, as they have shown they cannot be trusted in this . One reason the government cannot be trusted is that they have no skin in the game in the Murray-Darling Basin. I implore the parliament to think of the rural communities and to support the coalition amendments. These amendments will ensure the intent will be met and avoid the chaos.

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Communications and Broadband) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

These are historic times. The reaching of agreement on the basin plan is the completion of a process which began on 25 January 2007, when John Howard, in the midst of the worst drought in Australia's history, announced his National Plan for Water Security. I was a minister in his government and was indeed at the time responsible for water resources, among other things. The big idea in the National Plan for Water Security was that we should rectify a mistake which had been made in the 1890s, when the founding fathers—regrettably, Madam Speaker, in those less enlightened times, they were all fathers—of our Constitution failed to place jurisdiction over interstate waters with the federal government. The South Australian delegation, needless to say—plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose—argued for it to be under federal jurisdiction. The New South Wales and Victorian delegates scorned and scoffed at that. Parochialism won the day.

The consequence was that, for the subsequent century and longer, water planning was a state responsibility and each state government regarded the passage of any drop of water across the border as a failure in planning policy. The objective was to maximise the use of water resources, with no regard for anyone downstream. This is no more than human nature. As Mark Twain famously said, 'Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over.'

I recall, many years ago, visiting Bourke in the midst of a drought. There was very little water in the river—a barely discernible trickle at the bottom of this huge ditch. I remember standing on a wharf with some irrigators and they said: 'Look at all that water. And we are not allowed to take any more out of the river. Look, it is just heading downstream, all wasted.' They had been berating me for the previous hour about the greed and avarice of all the people upstream—the diversions they had been taking. I said, 'What do you mean when you say it is all being wasted going downstream?' They said: 'It is being wasted. Where is it going? It is going to Woop Woop.' I said: 'Woop Woop? You are talking about Adelaide.' They said, 'Adelaide or Woop Woop—it is all the same.'

This is the bottom line and this is the melancholy duty of any water minister—and I note the Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities, Tony Burke, is sitting opposite me here. The melancholy duty is that you have to grapple with one of the most basic human emotions, one of the most basic human instincts—to control access to water, which is, after all, the source of all life. It is an impossible business.

That is why there had been no proper water reform. That is why they could not get their act together in the 1890s. Then there was this colossal drought in 2007, when we were seriously looking at cities and towns in the Murray-Darling Basin running out of water—and not just provincial towns. I know in Bourke they think Adelaide is Woop Woop, but Adelaide itself could have run out of water. Adelaide has a tiny catchment of its own. Its own catchment, even if it is full, can only carry a year's worth of water. It depends on the River Murray. The River Murray could quite easily have run dry at that time. The only reason the River Murray has not run dry in the last few generations is the dams. Dams are no more than artificial glaciers—they do exactly what glaciers do in colder climates: they store the water up in the winter and release it in the summer. If those dams empty, you are essentially back to the preregulated environment. The River Murray has run dry, as any visitor to the Riverland knows. You see plenty of pictures in the pubs of people picnicking on the dry riverbed.

Some of our big cities and towns, including the capital city of Adelaide, faced an existential crisis. That galvanised action. John Howard, to his great credit, then took such action—encouraged by a few of us, myself included, and Senator Bill Heffernan was a very keen on this as well. John had the vision and the leadership to recognise that you should not allow a crisis to go to waste, so he took advantage of the opportunity and we seized the nettle and said we were going to take federal control of the Murray-Darling Basin. I recall saying to the Prime Minister, 'We do not need the states to agree with this; we can do it under the powers vested in the Commonwealth, in this case the external affairs power flowing from various environmental treaties.' I remember the Prime Minister saying to me at the time, 'I believe I can get the states to refer powers.' I said to John Howard he could not be serious, that that was not going to happen, but he reckoned he could make it happen.

We got three of the four Labor states—Queensland, South Australia and New South Wales—to agree to refer powers but Premier Bracks, and this was a great lost opportunity, refused to do so and so we ended up legislating relying solely on federal powers. I recall Terry Moran, who was then the head of the Victorian premier's department, saying to me in Victoria after a rather fruitless meeting with the Premier and himself, 'John Howard does not have the guts to legislate using the federal government's own jurisdiction.' I thought, 'Well, you are not a very good reader of character, Mr Moran.' That is exactly what John Howard did. We had a workable scheme, but I have to say it was not elegant, and getting the agreement of the states, which was achieved after the Labor government came in in 2007, certainly made the scheme more elegant—but I think that Mr Rudd made concessions to the states that gave them more say in the process than was part of our original scheme for a national plan.

We sold this proposal to the irrigation communities very much on the basis that, yes, there had been excessive extraction of water from the system, and yes this massive natural floodplain has a great effect on the whole system. Remember, we are the flattest continent on earth. Our rivers are all very slow, lazy, winding rivers. The drop in elevation over the 2,500 kilometres of river length from the Albury dam down to the river mouth at the Lower Lakes is 175 metres, as I recall. It is flatter than the table in front of me. That means it is a natural floodplain system, and the vast majority of water will never go out to sea. The more that mankind extracts for his own use, for irrigation, the more that is lost to the environment. Too much had been extracted. There had been a tragic failure to understand the interconnection between groundwater and surface water, and it is staggering that that went misunderstood for so long. There was enormous overextraction in some areas. The Victorians did a better job of managing the water than New South Wales did, and the Queenslanders came into the game late in the day. If they had started a few decades earlier they might have been able to extract even more water.

The Basin was a mess and clearly water had to be reacquired. The economic rationalists in the Treasury would say that the cheapest way to do that was just to buy it back, but they failed to understand both the hydrology and the politics of the Basin and both of those things dictated that the recovery of water had to be coupled with an investment in irrigation infrastructure that enabled us to look farmers in the eye and say to them honestly, 'We will provide for you the resources that will enable you to grow as much if not more food and fibre with less water than you have done before'—and we would use the same intelligence and the same engineering to ensure that when we watered the natural floodplains, as opposed to the irrigated farming floodplains, we would use that water more efficiently too. In other words, we would make every drop count.

This was where, sadly, there was a mistake. After the government changed, we left the vision and we left the legislative tools there but the government failed to recognise the importance of investing in infrastructure. Until the current minister became the minister there was a failure to understand the nature of the bargain with the irrigation communities. I recognise that Senator Wong was totally preoccupied with the carbon-pricing issue, and I make no criticism of her. I just observe that that vision was lost and, as a consequence, a plan that in 2007 had had near universal support from the irrigation communities in the basin became so toxic that the guide to the Basin Plan was being burnt at public meetings through the basin.

There was a change of minister. Minister Burke became the minister, and he recognised, to his credit, the wisdom of the original John Howard plan. Now the wheel has come full circle. There is now a commitment to ensure that, as far as possible, water is recovered through investments in infrastructure and, where there are buybacks, they are strategic buybacks rather than just being from here, there and everywhere else. Because the original plan for buybacks that I negotiated with the irrigation cooperatives was: 'We will spend millions of dollars on upgrading the infrastructure in your irrigation district, but there's this area over here, for example, to the north-west, where the soil is not that good and it is a long, long way away. So we'll make three-quarters of your area much more productive using less water, and we'll buy out that corner over there and properly compensate the landowners, and you'll end up with a smaller district that is much more manageable, much more productive, and you'll be able to produce more food and fibre with less water.' That was the big idea. It was lost for some years, and now the government seems to have recovered it. I think that is a great credit to the minister and to the shadow minister, my very good friend the member for Flinders, for the work that he has done with Senator Joyce from Queensland.

While there is never going to be complete agreement on this, we are as close to the original approach that we had on 25 January 2007 as we have been in the intervening nearly six years. So it is good that we have come back to that, and that is why I have been very pleased to speak briefly about this—and I hope to have the opportunity to speak about it at greater length on another occasion. But I think it is important to recognise the history of this project and its national importance and, in that respect, the vindication of the original vision that John Howard, in that terrible drought, was able to bring in in an act of real leadership, taking an opportunity out of what was a shocking crisis.

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

I was interested to hear the member for Wentworth's speech, although I do not think he mentioned the bill once! He did make an attempt to recreate history to some degree in terms of this debate. One of the things I remember, because I was in the parliament at that time, is that I was the only one, out of all the parliamentarians, who voted against the Water Act that this whole process has been based on. The history, as I recall it, of the $10 billion cigarette-paper plan, as it was called at the time because it was put together in such a rush, was not so much about the Murray-Darling; it was about the environmental vote. I can recall that Kevin Rudd was making a lot of ground politically in terms of climate change, and the coalition were scratching around, looking at how they could get Kevin Rudd off the front page of the paper with an environmental plan. After a couple of meetings came this plan, which became known as the $10 billion cigarette-paper plan, which then morphed into the Water Act.

In this debate about the Murray-Darling, there has been a lot of talk about the triple bottom line. I know the member for Wentworth mentioned the bottom line, but there has been a lot of debate about the triple bottom line. The problem with the original bill—and the member for Wentworth had carriage of it—was that it was not about the triple bottom line. Although there is talk now that it was about a contract with people in the basin, it was actually to come to grips with the environmental vote that Kevin Rudd was gaining ground with on the climate change issue. I think everyone has their own version of history.

I congratulate the member for Wentworth on his role in it, even though I did not vote for the bill. I did not vote for it because I thought it was put together for the wrong reasons. And I do congratulate the current minister—I agree with you on this, Malcolm—on picking up on the notion that people in the basin should have some say about what happens in their locality.

The bill before us today is about 450 gigalitres of additional water that may be returned from on-farm works and measures, and some constraint removal, to the environment. I chaired the committee that looked at this bill, and there were a couple of dissenting reports. To his credit, the shadow minister was not one of those dissenters and the member for Wannon was not either, and I thank them for their support in relation to that. The 450 gigalitres is an amount of water above the baseline of 2,750 gigalitres proposed in the Basin Plan that will be endorsed—although there is a disallowance motion coming up on that, probably tomorrow; but I am told that, apart from a couple of people in this place and the Greens in both places, the 2,750-gigalitre plan will essentially be accepted. That will be an amazing breakthrough for everybody, whether it be John Howard, Malcolm Turnbull, Tony Burke, the Prime Minister or anybody else along the system, because that will be a piece of history in itself. For 100 years there has been this debate as to how you actually look after a system and share that system, not only between the states but with the various competing forces and the environment. I think this plan goes very close to doing that.

Everybody will find an area where it is not totally satisfactory. I congratulate the minister. There has been a lot of fear created in a lot of communities and in a lot of people's minds about this. I remember when this started and people were burning books at Griffith, and Senator Joyce and others were out there promoting this fear that the government was going to come along and take their water. And no-one in the opposition circles corrected that. That was the way to create the fear. Now those very people are going to vote for the plan. They may have some amendments in relation to this 450 gigs, but they will vote for that plan after creating all of those fears within those communities. I think they owe those communities an apology for the way in which genuine people on the river system have been frightened into believing that someone was going to come along and take their water.

The Regional Australia Committee, which I chair, conducted an exhaustive inquiry, and I thank the committee. We spent about half of January—I think it was last year, but it might have been the year before!—going up and down the Murray-Darling, talking to people in those various communities. I think many of the recommendations in that report were picked up by the community. The minister, again to his credit, and the government have picked up on many of those recommendations, whether they be about environmental works and measures, on-farm works and measures, investment in infrastructure, the constraints issue, the various rules issues in running the river or the monitoring of the river system, and even some of the issues around the environmental water holder. A lot of those issues have been addressed in the final plan. I thought Craig Knowles was a brilliant choice for this. I know we got off to a very rocky start, and there were some political people out there who wanted to make it as rocky as possible. But the politics was in the fear rather than being about doing something about certainty. I congratulate Craig Knowles for the work he has done.

There is a big challenge out there to actually make the words—the interpretations—work in terms of the long-term plan. The one thing our committee kept running into, irrespective of whether we were in the north of the system or the south of the system, was the fact that people were sick of uncertainty; they were being fed a diet of uncertainty. I think there is a real warning there politically. Now that a plan is being bedded down—and I will get to some of the numbers in a minute—I think we have to maintain that contract with those people, to use the words of the member for Wentworth. If we breach that contract, or if the basin states breach that contract, that will be a great failure of the political process.

The 450 gigalitres of water that this piece of legislation addresses is essentially an amount of water that could be obtained above the baseline figure of 2,750 gigalitres. Those who are trying to create the fear say that means 3,200 gigalitres of water returning to the environment if, in fact, that 450 gigalitres was obtained. It does not mean that at all. A recommendation of the committee, from our second inquiry, was that an adjustment process be put in place, with a five per cent up-or-down variation on the 10,000 gigalitres—and that was passed by the parliament. Within the context of that, two things have happened. Bear in mind that the 2,750 gigalitres is the baseline. The basin states have a valuable role to play in this, and they all agree to it. I congratulate the Victorian minister, Peter Walsh. I have met Peter Walsh only twice, but I think he deserves some congratulations for his leadership and his knowledge on this particular issue. He may well have some concerns out there.

Returning to the 2,750-gigalitre baseline figure, the basin states have said to the minister—and the minister has accepted this, and it was part of the recommendations of the inquiry—that, rather than ask the farmers to do all the lifting, perhaps there are areas where the environment can bear that share. Are there areas, through environmental works and measures or on-farm works and measures, where you can more efficiently, with less water, achieve an outcome? The basin states have said in their proposals, which will be funded in the arrangements, that they believe they can obtain efficiencies within some of the environmental icon sites of about 650 gigalitres of water—the same outcome, environmentally, for less water. I know my Greens colleague behind me may have some issues there with overbank flows et cetera. But I think he would know that the Murray River—and here I again agree with the member for Wentworth; I have to stop doing this!—is now virtually nothing more than a managed drain, given all the constraints that have been placed on it. But it is also a beautiful place to go.

If you deduct the 650 gigalitres through environmental works and measures from the 2,750—the baseline figure—the real number becomes 2,100 gigalitres of real water being returned to the system. If you deduct the amount of water that has been obtained already while this process has been going on over the last couple of years, it is something like 1,300 to 1,500 gigalitres of water that has been obtained through strategic buyback, some works and measures et cetera, particularly on-farm. That reduces the real number down to 600 to 800 gigalitres to obtain.

Some people out there are still running around saying that on the passage of this bill another 3,200 gigalitres will be taken out of the system. That is not true. You have to find 600 to 800 gigalitres of water. The 450 gigalitres we are talking about today are in the five per cent variation on the 10,000 gigalitres which is the totality of the system—what is called the upwater. Some people have suggested—and I think the shadow minister may have something to say on this—that the legislation allows for the upwater to be purchased. It does not, and I would suggest that people look at the Hansard particularly for what David Parker had to say on that process.

The bill does not allow the Commonwealth to use buyback within the 450 gigalitres—in fact, it would be in breach of the Water Act. The bill does give farmers the opportunity in the main in a voluntary sense to accept money—not quite $1.77 billion but over $1 billion—to make themselves more efficient within a socioeconomic contract so that there is no loss of productivity within their system. If I have 100 megalitres of water and I have an investment in water-use efficiency and achieve the same productivity with 50 megalitres of water, my payout would be that the 50 megalitres goes back to the environment. But there is still mythology out there that the government are going to come in and buy the water within the 450-gigalitre package, which is a voluntary arrangement. I think the government probably will achieve that, but that does not mean they will. If you do the numbers again and assume that the 450 will be attained, you are looking at somewhere between 1,050 and 1,250 gigalitres of water to go back into the system in one form or another.

I know the shadow minister will move an amendment to put a cap on buyback. If the basin states do their work as they say they will, there is absolutely no reason for buyback in either the 450 gigalitres or the balance, the 600 to 800 gigalitres out there. There are a number of areas where, other than strategic buyback which might be in the interest of various groups in the basin states, through various efficiencies and some strategic buyback this could be achieved. Our inquiry identified about 1,600 gigalitres of water that could be found through various projects—nothing to do with buyback. But we still have a fear campaign about what this means for the buyback.

I endorse the bill. I congratulate the Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities. And I thank the people of the Murray-Darling for the kindness they showed the committee over a number of inquiries. (Time expired)

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

I want to sincerely thank all members of the House for their contributions to this debate. This is not an easy debate for a large number of members of parliament. Many people have very strong views represented within their electorates which they have sought to make sure they are presenting. By and large the views that have been presented on all sides of this chamber have shown a willingness from the parliament to do what has not been available within Australia for more than a century—that is, to find a way through and manage the Murray-Darling as a national system.

There are a couple of issues in debate that I should clarify for the purposes of the summing up. Firstly, this bill includes the words 'up to' with respect to the 450 gigalitres. I explained at the National Press Club and have since said here that the government's promise from when the Prime Minister first announced it was to provide the money required for450 gigalitres. The words 'up to' are included as a drafting device but were never part of the original commitment. Since then we have been trying to find a way of reflecting in legislation the exact commitment that was made. This is being circulated in an amendment which I will get to after we have dealt with the second reading.

Secondly, the issue was raised about why Menindee Lakes has been so slow, why it has not been built yet and why the work has not been done there yet. I copped a fair bit of criticism on the way through for that. The answer is simple: Barry O'Farrell unilaterally terminated the agreement on coming to office. Since then, we have talked him back to the table, and they are now fairly well advanced on putting together a significant Menindee Lakes project. The challenges with Menindee are now back on track and have been pushed very heavily by the government.

I would like to simply acknowledge, for the benefit of the record, who is present in the chamber. I am very pleased that the member for New England was the final contributor in the debate. On the work of the Windsor committee and the different reports that it has produced, I have to say that it is not as if every one of those reports has come out and I have been particularly happy with all the recommendations, but we have tried quite faithfully to follow them through. I believe that doing that has been a big part of getting to the relative level of consensus where we appear to find ourselves in the chamber today. I want to thank quite personally the member for New England for the work that he led with his committee in getting here. I do not believe that we would be in the situation throughout the parliament that we are in today were it not for the work of that committee.

Secondly, there is the member for Wentworth. I am pleased not only that he came into the chamber to make a contribution but also that he is here within the chamber itself when we are having the second reading debate. His fingerprints are all over the legislation which has formed the underpinnings of the plan. I am pleased that he is here. It is right that he is here. There are many people who share ownership of what we may well be able to achieve tonight, and the member for Wentworth is absolutely one of the key players in that.

People may be aware that the Chair of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, Craig Knowles, is present at the moment in the gallery. When I rang Craig and offered him the position, I began the conversation by saying, 'This is the best and the worst phone call you will ever receive.' When Craig agreed to take it on, it was just after the first run of meetings had happened, where there were burnings of books, which have often been described, and the levels of passion out there were absolutely at fever pitch. Craig took this on not because it was a great gig but very much because he had been in water reform since the National Water Initiative, working with John Anderson, and here was a chance to see through a very significant reform. His role has been extraordinary.

There are a number of people who very often—except for that handful of Australians who are fascinated by Senate estimates—have a fairly anonymous role. But the member for Wentworth and I were chatting a little bit earlier about the significant role in bringing this together that has been played over the years by Mary Harwood and Tony Slatyer, and I would like to acknowledge their presence in the advisers gallery, together with that of my own personal adviser, Mr Sean Halse, who over the last year has been given the easy issues in my office: Murray-Darling reform, oceans reform and the forestry issues in Tasmania! I think the role that he has played in bringing people together on a range of issues, including this one, is worthy of putting on the record.

We will have some disagreements on the amendments, but what we are about to deal with in the second reading is the principle itself. There is a question now before the House, Speaker, where we are asked the same question that has been asked of Australians for a hundred years. I really wish Henry Jones could be here. He is very ill at the moment. I spoke to him on the phone today. He is now in a personal fight for his health. If he fights that nearly half as effectively as he has fought for the health of the Murray-Darling Basin, then he has a very, very strong number of decades and centuries ahead of him. He is an extraordinary individual. I really hope that he, as well as all the people in different communities up and down the basin, is among the people who feel very proud of the fact that the parliament feels similarly to how Australians feel. Australians are sick of this one not being solved. We are too, and it is time now for the parliament to behave differently to how Australia has behaved for a century.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Message from the Governor-General recommending appropriation announced.