Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) recognises the importance of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan (MDBP) in returning the rivers to health;

(2) condemns any plans to walk away from the MDBP that will undermine the health of the system and the rivers;

(3) notes the good work of the Member for Watson in his former role as the Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities, who was able to deliver a once in a century agreement of the MDBP;

(4) expresses concern that the Member for New England, as the Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources, is walking away from the plan by refusing to return 450 gigalitres of water to the Basin;

(5) recognises that:

(a) removing too much water from the river is bad for irrigators and communities, and devastating for the environment in the long term; and

(b) South Australians in particular deserve the water they were promised; and

(6) reinstates its commitment to implement the complete MDBP.

This is an incredibly important motion. It's actually a motion I tabled in this House before we saw the revelations on the Four Corners episode in terms of alleged theft of water from the Murray-Darling Basin. And the reason why I originally tabled this motion was serious concern that the Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources was walking away from the commitment to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. This is serious. And, since I tabled this motion in the House, we've seen even further concerns about this minister and his ability to deal with the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.

We are all acutely aware, none more so than people in South Australia, of the issues facing the Murray-Darling Basin, and the most recent issues are serious allegations of water theft from upstream that threaten the future and confidence of the Basin Plan. We are all too aware now, I think, of the reaction of the Deputy Prime Minister when these allegations were made. Faced with these serious allegations, he first dismissed them as a local issue. Then he went to the pub and he suggested there was some sort of conspiracy theory going on with Four Corners. We heard in this House last week member after member trying to discredit the Four Corners program rather than deal with the substantive issue, which was our serious allegation of theft. We saw member after member—it must have been in their talking points—actually try to say Four Corners wasn't telling the truth: 'There isn't truth in what Four Corners had to say.' At the same time, they tried to pay lip-service to the fact that this is an issue.

Now, many people have been very shocked by the reaction of the Deputy Prime Minister, and I know the people in South Australia were very concerned that those Liberal members of parliament, particularly from South Australia, voted against a judicial inquiry last week in this House. It is incredibly disappointing and upsetting.

But I want to take people back a bit. It was only late last year that the Deputy Prime Minister did foreshadow his intention to walk away from the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. This was a historic plan that really sought to address the damage done by overextraction and severe drought for over a century. We're talking about a plan that could not be delivered for over a century. And, when that plan was delivered, it was very clear that the intention was to return 3,200 gigalitres to the river. That was very, very clear.

So, it was awfully concerning that late last year we had the Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources actually writing to the state minister for environment and water in South Australia, saying that this was not going to be achieved. That is incredibly concerning: that this minister isn't taking the plan seriously and isn't actually committed to delivering the plan.

As I said in November, the Deputy Prime Minister did write and say he had no intention to deliver the extra 450 gigalitres that was promised. This letter made it crystal clear that to protect the interests of upstream farmers South Australia would be made worse off. This is deeply, deeply concerning. I would really urge that this government commit to the plan and commit to the figure of 3,200. That's all we're asking them to do, to commit to this. This is an important point to have confidence that we can restore this system to health.

I have regularly said in this place that it is a false dichotomy to say that this is irrigators versus the environment, because we know in South Australia that if you destroy the river it is no good for anyone. It is not useful for irrigators to be pumping salty water onto their crops. That doesn't work. It's no good for the environment and it's no good for the communities that use the basin. It's no good for anyone to have a dead river system. That is why this plan is so important. That is why it needs to be backed in by this government and why it needs to be taken seriously by this government.

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Damian Drum (Murray, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion. It is always interesting following a South Australian Labor person in relation to a debate on water, and certainly the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. The member has spoken about this promise of 3,200 gigalitres for the environment. Quite simply, what we have is a commitment for 27,500 gigs to go to the environment. What we further have is an understanding that if we can work out how we are going to deliver these environmental outcomes better, then we are going to be able to subtract 600 gigalitres from that in relation to works and measures that we're going to be able to undertake right throughout the Murray-Darling Basin to ensure that we reach our environmental outcomes in a more water-efficient manner. That's going to effectively save up to 600 gigalitres from having to be taken down the river in the manner that it would be without these works and measures.

We are talking predominantly about 2,100 gigs that has been delivered to the environment. We understand that the Greens would like to have 4,000 gigs. We understand that there are others out there that would like to have up to 5,000 and 6,000 gigs. There are always these voices that come out of South Australia that want, want, want. All they ever do is come into this place and squawk about what they want, but they are refusing to read the plan as it is. It clearly states that this additional 450 gigalitres of upwater is not to be delivered if it is going to have social and economic detriments on the communities that are going to lose the water. This is the letter that was put forward to the South Australian minister last year, where it was clearly stipulated. Barnaby Joyce, the Deputy Prime Minister, was saying to the water minister, 'If you think you can deliver a further 450 gigalitres of water, you show us how you can do it without substantial economic and social detriment to those individuals and communities that are going to lose this water.'

The member here, who has put this motion into the chamber, has said, 'It's no good having this fight between irrigators and the environment, because we can't effectively have a system where we might have a dead river.' So effectively what she does is defer to the environment side of things. But we cannot have a system where we have dead communities. We cannot have dead communities, which is what we are able to see when we look at the northern review that was undertaken by an independent panel to go in and look at what's happened in the north of the Murray-Darling Basin now that we've had four or five years to let the plan move into its stage of taking water away from irrigation districts and returning water to the environment. Now when we go in and review those regions, quite simply the damage is shocking. There have been independent reviews around the Goulburn Valley that have shown the damage from taking water away from those regions is shocking. If the Labor Party and the Greens want to disregard that personal and human pain, hardship and social and economic damage that has been caused by this ungodly push for environmental flows then we have to at least have somebody in the chamber who's going to question these directions. Quite simply the value of the water that's already left the Goulburn Valley has been valued at around $500 million each and every year.

We have a situation also where the Labor Party in Victoria understand this. The Labor Party in Victoria are totally supportive of the coalition's stance here in Canberra. The Labor Party in Victoria understand that to take an additional 450 gigalitres of water and send it down for the environment is absolutely farcical and a joke. The other day in this parliament, I happened to mention the concept that you, Member for Kingston, want to spend this environmental water to keep the Murray mouth open. That's one of your environmental outcomes. In the last six months of the last year, we had record flows going down the Goulburn River and the Murray River. We had those record flows for six months. That water was pouring out over the barrages, pouring out to sea. Within one month of those record flows subsiding and returning to normal, do you know what happened? They had to get the dredging machines back out to keep the Murray mouth open. It is a non-natural phenomenon. You are trying to use environmental flows. If you had an ounce of practicality, you would know you can never do it. (Time expired)

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will just remind the member for Murray to direct his comments through the chair.

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

That was another interesting contribution from the government to this very important motion by the member for Kingston. The member for Kingston has been incredibly consistent in her defence and advocacy for what is a vital national icon. It doesn't belong to a farmer. It doesn't belong to a city dweller. It doesn't belong to an environmentalist or an irrigator. It doesn't belong to one generation of Australians. It belongs to the nation's estate. It's part of our glorious continent, and we have an obligation to take care of it.

This has been a long time coming. As the member for Kingston pointed out, this agreement has eluded previous generations. In fact, one of my Labor predecessors, the first member for Wakefield, Sydney McHugh, is on the record of the Hansard in 1939 asking a question about the Murray to then Prime Minister Menzies in his first incarnation as Prime Minister. So this has been a long time coming—a concern about irrigation and a concern about water for what is an industrial purpose, essentially. It's not farming in the normal sense of the word; it's agribusiness.

This agreement eluded previous governments. Yet we had prime ministers, from Howard onwards—Howard, with Turnbull as his then water minister, and then Rudd and Gillard—adopting a bipartisan approach with a bipartisan plan in order to make sure that this vital national icon was protected. What did we find? What does this House find? What do South Australians find? What do all those concerned find about our river, our national icon, whether they be graziers, South Australian farmers or environmentalists? They find that this divided government, with its weak Prime Minister, is so desperate. The Prime Minister is so desperate that he is prepared to sign away his own achievement under Howard. That was the price of the Turnbull-Joyce government. You never hear the words 'Turnbull-Joyce', except from National Party ministers. They're very keen on talking about Turnbull-Joyce. The reason why is that what they got was control over this water.

What they decided was, if they couldn't rip this agreement up, because that was too obvious, they'd take the cheese grater to it. What they'd do was that they wouldn't make sure that there was any compliance; they wouldn't enforce it. And with that agreement—whether it be nudge-nudge, wink-wink or whether it be actual complicity with the New South Wales government and its public servants—I'm sad to say, as revealed by the Four Corners report, what we have is basically a billion litres of water simply going missing. The idea is that these agreements will be enforced in some states and for some farmers and for some communities but not for others. That's essentially what has happened—the New South Wales government has been let off the leash, and it's been let off the leash so that this great fraud against the Commonwealth can be perpetrated.

When someone steals water, it's not like stealing sheep, as the Deputy Prime Minister said. It's not like stealing sheep at all. It's a fraud against the Commonwealth, which is a very serious crime. It's a very, very serious crime; far more serious than swiping a few sheep.

Andrew Broad (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Have you seen the price of sheep?

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

The member interjects about the price of sheep. I'm sure he'd like to sell some to Coles at some point, but that's another debate. What we're debating about is the river. We had the Prime Minister come down on the weekend and give a speech to the South Australian Liberal Party. He managed to get one paragraph out where he charged Anne Ruston, who is an assistant minister, to take up the case and to make sure the rules and regulations are enforced against the Deputy Prime Minister. I mean, what a farce. What a farce, leaving the South Australian government and Anne Ruston, who is a lovely person but a junior minister, to take up the fight against the Deputy Prime Minister of the country and this sectional interest, the New South Wales government, when they are committing a complete abomination against this very important national agreement and this very important national icon.

Andrew Broad (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to be able to talk about the issue of water in this place. I have always said, for a very long time, that, in the driest continent of the world, we should have a water minister around the Cabinet portfolio, not just looking at the Murray-Darling Basin but also looking at the salinity issues with water in Western Australia, looking at the capping of the Great Artesian Basin and looking at putting purple pipe in when we put in new suburbs so that we have recycled water whenever we build our suburbs, because water management is critical.

I just want to run people through a little bit of the journey, because, unfortunately, in this place there has been too much politics around water. The danger of that is that it takes away the confidence for people to invest. And, if people don't have the confidence to invest, we don't get the water efficiency measures that we should have and must have as a country, particularly, as our population grows from 24 million to 40 million to 50 million. The challenges around water require people in this place to have a little bit more vision than we've seen in the debate today.

The allocation of water used to be linked to the land. The only reason you could actually use that water was if you had a legitimate usage for that water. There was a view under the National Water Initiative to decouple that and allow water to be traded separate to land. This, of course, created two things. It actually created a great opportunity for water to go to the places where it had the highest value. This facilitated carrots in my patch; it has facilitated the investments in almonds; it's facilitated the movement of water along the Murray-Darling Basin—you can trade water. But this created a new challenge. And that is that people who had sleeper licences, people who didn't have or weren't using that water, then had something they could trade, and they could put that into the marketplace. So, for the very first time, we saw the impact of the over allocation of water on the Murray-Darling Basin. As a result, the Murray-Darling Basin Plan determined that we needed to return some water back to the river health. Whether it was agreed scientifically that this was the best figure, politically a figure of 2,750 gigalitres of water was determined. Of that, only 1,500 gigalitres—for those who want to know what a gigalitre is, there are 1,000 megalitres in a gigalitre, so one billion litres is a gigalitre—would be done by buybacks.

Currently, the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder holds about just under 1,200 gigalitres of water. The challenge for us, firstly, is: how do we use that effectively? Before we have a debate about getting more water, we need to have a really good discussion about: how do we best use the 1,200 gigalitres of water that currently sits in the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder? That, I've got to say, is in the vicinity of a product worth about $3.6 billion.

Regarding the upper catchment and the lower catchment of the Darling River, I flew it last year because there was a lot of angst going on in my community around the fact that the water wasn't coming down the Darling River. So I got in my little lawnmower engine, actually travelled the full length of the Darling River, landed at Bourke and had a look, and flew over Cubbie Station and had a look at the upper catchments. The reason there wasn't water in the Menindee Lakes in the Darling River was there actually wasn't water in the upper catchment—it hadn't rained. So the angst that was created out there in the community was based on misinformation. That said, it then went on to rain later in the year and the Menindee Lakes filled and the Darling River flowed. I think the thing that is needed in discussions around water management is good information, because a lack of information creates angst in communities. That's what we see South Australia often playing on—that somehow those upstream are robbing them of their birthright because they aren't getting the water downstream—when, in fact, there could be legitimate reasons for it.

There does need to be good metering in the system. If we're going to have a Murray-Darling Basin Plan, we need to have reliability in the metering. We need to have a trust in that, and we need to have policing for those who infringe that. The response by the government has been very wise because it has allowed the policing to be done by New South Wales. They've got not only very stringent laws but also a responsibility to report back to COAG, which is also wise.

There does need to be, I believe, some removal of speculators out of the water market. If you are going to purchase water under the temporary sales and hold water, you need to nominate an extraction point. I think that this is a reform that needs to take place because, ultimately, the first view of the National Water Initiative was for water to flow from a legitimate user to a legitimate user, not for a speculator. But we have the knowledge about this. We're not politicising it, and we're ultimately committed to delivering a healthy river system and surety for irrigators.

Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today as well in support of this motion, which calls on those on the opposite side to ensure that they seriously consider the impact that their actions are having on the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. We all know that we're talking about the serious allegations of water theft that we saw on Four Corners a few weeks ago and how the integrity of the water market—the integrity of the plan—should be upheld and have everyone involved, whether it be irrigators, growers or the environmentalists. We need, absolutely, 100 per cent confidence in the plan itself. I know that the South Australians in the state that I come from are absolutely reeling from the reports that they are hearing and have seen about the alleged water stealing upstream, as was reported on the Four Corners program, and the rumours that this Turnbull-Joyce government is getting ready to water down or walk away from the plan.

In my state, South Australians have fought long and hard to ensure the river is healthy and supported. We had a situation where all political players from all parties got together and signed off on the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. We remember what it was like when those river communities were brought to their knees—their livelihoods severely threatened—during the drought. But this experience also brought communities together. It brought everyone together to fight harder than ever before for the health and the sustainability of the River Murray. In South Australia, the News Corp newspaper The Advertiser ran a campaign for well over 12 to 24 months to save the River Murray and ran very hard on it because they knew that the South Australians fought the loudest and the hardest out of all communities to ensure that we came up with this plan that will sustain the river, our industries along the river and the environmental flows.

We said back then, and we say it now, that we will do everything to ensure that we are never, ever again in the same position we found ourselves in during the drought. The Murray-Darling Basin Plan is the best way that we can ensure the long-term health and sustainability of the river. We on this side, as we've heard today and last week during the debate, will not stand for the Deputy Prime Minister or anyone else making a mockery of something South Australians, in my state, have fought so hard for. We are located at the end of the river system and therefore are very heavily affected by anything that happens along the entire Murray-Darling Basin. We cheered when the Murray-Darling Basin Plan was agreed to by all the basin governments in 2012, then led by my colleague the water and environment minister, the member for Watson. That was an enormous and difficult achievement. This plan ensured the environmental equivalent of returning 3,200 gigalitres to the basin, and that's all we're asking—that 3,200 gigalitres are returned to the basin as agreed in the sign-off of that plan.

The South Australian government, with the strong support of the South Australian people, continues to work hard to ensure that the basin plan is implemented on time and in full. We on this side absolutely object to the Deputy Prime Minister's saying one thing to the cameras on TV, in his interviews, and another thing when he talks behind closed doors. We heard earlier what he said in a pub in Shepparton:

I'm glad it's our portfolio, a National Party portfolio because we can go out and say no, we're not going to follow on that …

He said:

We've taken water, put it back into agriculture, so we can look after you and make sure we don't have the greenies running the show.

That gives you an example of the thinking of the man behind this. This is not a political issue. It should be something that is basically about the importance of the sustainability of the river for all Australians, whether you're in the Nationals, in the Liberal Party or on our side here in the Labor Party.

There will be no industries along the River Murray if we don't sustain the river and ensure that we look after that environment. And to have a minister for water who says, 'I'm glad it's our portfolio, because we can go out and say no,' is something that absolutely kills this plan and does nothing for our river system. (Time expired)

Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As I stand here today as the member for Parkes I represent 30 per cent of the Murray-Darling Basin, from the Macintyre River in the north to the Lachlan and right down to the lower Darling below Menindee. That puts me at a difference to the speakers on the other side, including the member for Hindmarsh, who's leaving the chamber now. His electorate is not in the Murray-Darling Basin. His electorate gets water, due to the good grace of the residents of the Murray-Darling Basin, via a pipeline. So, I'll say this right from the outset: any illegal activity needs to be dealt with in the full force of the law. There is no argument from me. But to have members of the Labor Party saying that the coalition and the Nationals, in particular, are not committed to the basin plan is scurrilous and a great nonsense.

Only a month ago a meeting of all the water ministers, including Minister Hunter from South Australia, agreed to the next stage of the basin plan, the Northern Basin Review. There was agreement right across it. This Four Corners show is being used by some as an excuse to blow up the plan. There is no-one more committed to this plan than me and my colleagues on this side of the House. What's happened is that the Labor Party haven't learnt their lesson from the Four Corners program on the live cattle trade. They make a knee-jerk reaction based on a Four Corners program. The member for Wakefield was talking about billions of litres. Just to put this in context, the A-class water in the Barwon-Darling is 10 gigalitres. That's how we measure water in the basin—in gigalitres or megalitres, not individual litres. If there has been any dispute about that, it's a very small percentage of that. But, unfortunately, residents downstream and elsewhere are now using this as an excuse for other political posturing.

At the moment, in my city of Broken Hill, we have the ridiculous situation where the mayor is calling for the pipeline not to proceed, to have a moratorium on the pipeline. A pipeline from the Murray will for now and ever more secure a regular water supply for the City of Broken Hill. Because of the emotion around this issue, a moratorium has been called. We are so close to getting the basin plan committed in full. We have seen the recent purchase of water from Lake Tandou, which will put more water back into the lower basin, more water into South Australia, and give the New South Wales government more ability to reconfigure the Menindee Lakes so that those people who rely on the water at Menindee will have that water in there for longer.

This is a crucial point: the irrigation communities in my electorate have been undergoing this change not just since the Murray-Darling Basin Plan but since the New South Wales government water reforms that were undertaken 15 years prior to that. This has seen major changes. While our honourable friends from Adelaide might be wringing their hands about what they saw on Four Corners, they need to know that they are the last people to run out of water, not the first. The basin that I represent is an ephemeral stream. When it floods we have water and when there is drought we don't. Western Queensland has not had rain for five years and so water has not run into the rivers. This is one of the reasons why there is a shortage at the moment. The water in Menindee now, which I saw flowing down, is part of the 7,000 gigalitres—we're talking about 10 gigalitres in the Barwon-Darling river system—that flows out to sea over the barrages every year. It came from central New South Wales last winter because of an exceptionally wet winter and the flooding in the Lachlan, Bogan, Castlereagh and Macquarie rivers. The idea that this is some sort of constant system and that we can, just by setting policies in this place, turn water on and off is very short-sighted. It's a complex system. Mother nature is completely in control.

We have come to an agreement. We are nearly there—where everyone gets their fair share. Wait and see where the four inquiries that the Four Corners show spawned go. The first of those is due to report back to the New South Wales minister at the end of this month. Wait and see where that goes before we make any knee-jerk reactions to what was seen on a television program two weeks ago.

Ian Goodenough (Moore, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.