Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Environment and Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the amendments be agreed to.

In doing so, I want to say to this place that, as of today, the Murray-Darling Basin Plan is officially back on track. At the election, Labor made a promise to deliver the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in full. We promised to rescue the plan after a decade of sabotage, and today we are writing that promise into law. This is an historic day for Australia's largest river system, and it's a bright day for the future of our basin communities. It's a massive day for the environment of Australia and one of the biggest things that any Australian government has done for nature—certainly this decade.

The Murray-Darling basin produces 40 per cent of Australia's agricultural output, it supplies three million people with their drinking water and it sustains over a million square kilometres of our inland environment. By passing this legislation today, we are voting to keep these rivers healthy. We're making sure that our water is shared sensibly between very different and vital uses: between farmers, industry, communities and the environment.

Like so much else they touched, the Liberals and Nationals left this plan in a hopeless mess. We made good progress in the early years of this plan and achieved a lot, but that progress, under those opposite, just stopped. The Basin Plan was meant to be delivered next year, but, at the pace the Liberals and Nationals were going, the plan would have been delivered sometime around the year 4000. Of the 450 gigalitres of additional environmental water in the plan, they delivered just two in nine years. Of the 10 reports they received telling them that the plan was off track, they ignored those warnings every single time.

The truth is that they never intended to deliver the plan, and they misled Australian communities about that.

This bill gets the plan back on track, so we can finally deliver on our water recovery targets and protect our rivers. This bill offers more time to deliver the remaining water; more options to deliver that water—including on-farm and off-farm efficiency projects and, of course, voluntary water purchase; more funding to deliver the water and to support communities where voluntary water buybacks might have flow-on impacts; and more accountability for Murray-Darling Basin governance, including our own government, on delivering the remaining water on time.

I thank members of parliament who worked constructively to pass this legislation. To my colleagues in the Labor Party, particular my colleagues from South Australia: I acknowledge your passion and your advocacy. I thank crossbench members both in this place and in the other place for the way they approached the negotiations on this bill in such good faith. I was very happy to work with you to address your concerns and to strengthen the bill where we could agree.

We know that water will always involve difficult conversations in Australia but we can't forget why we designed the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in the first place. If we didn't act now to revive this plan, if we continued with the Liberals' and the Nationals' policy of sabotaging the plan, we would have seen our basin towns unprepared for drought. We would have seen our food and fibre production become increasingly insecure, our native animals facing the threat of extinction and our river systems, our ecosystems, risking environmental collapse. With the next drought just around the corner, we have to make sure there's enough water to go around. We don't want communities to wake up one day to dry riverbeds and dead animals and realise that their parliament could have done something to stop it and chose not to. That's why this plan is so important, that's why this legislation is so vital and that's why Labor refused to back down—because we know how critical this is.

I thank everyone who worked on this bill, I thank those who voted for it and I commend— (Time expired)

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I join with the fantastic Minister for the Environment and Water in celebrating this day. The 'restoring our rivers' bill is so important, and the passing of this legislation will mean that progress is flowing as well as water. At last year's election we promised to deliver the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in full, and passing this legislation means our government is keeping that promise. It guarantees 450 gigalitres of water for the environment and gives community certainty to plan for the future.

In nine years the former government delivered just two of the 450 gigalitres the basin needs. They said they were on track to complete the plan, but, unfortunately, they were on track to deliver sometime around the year 4000. They promised $40 million in First Nations water entitlement but did not deliver a single drop. They promised $1.33 billion for off-farm efficiency projects but only delivered around $350 million. Where we make promises, we deliver.

The Murray-Darling is Australia's biggest river system, home to more than 2.3 million people that supports 7,300 irrigated agricultural businesses. It produces $22 billion worth of food and fibre every year. Delivering the Basin Plan is vital for the environment but is also an economic necessity for basin communities. The legislation provides more time and more options to deliver the remaining water, including infrastructure projects and voluntary water buybacks; more funding to deliver the remaining water and to support communities where voluntary water buybacks have flow-on impacts; and more accountability for basin governance on delivering the remaining water on time.

This legislation builds on the work we've already done to deliver water-saving infrastructure and purchase water from those who want to sell to help meet the plan's targets.

This new law comes at a critical time. After a decade of delay and inaction, the deadlines to the original plan are about to expire. By passing this bill, we're ensuring a healthy and sustainable future for Australia's largest river system. We are building consensus. We're restoring the health of the Murray-Darling Basin. We're getting things done. We're bringing together state governments, local councils, traditional owners and farming communities to map the way forward.

On the other side, Australians can see that relentless negativity always takes you to a dry gully. A dry gully is what those over there are stuck in. From one end of the Murray-Darling Basin to the other, we see proof that those opposite have nothing positive to offer the country. Our government is working for Australia. By saying no to everything, those opposite have left themselves up the creek without a paddle. Our government is getting things done. We're bringing people together. We're delivering for farmers, for producers and for our environment. We are working for Australia. Our approach is working. I commend this bill to the House.

David Littleproud (Maranoa, National Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is a sad day for basin communities, with the amendments to this important Water Amendment (Restoring Our Rivers) Bill 2023 that are being sent back. This is a piece of legislation that was first put in train by the member for Watson, and today the 450 gigalitres form a significant part of that. A mistruth that has been espoused by the minister here is that for some reason we have only delivered two gigalitres of the 450 gigalitres. This goes to the very heart of the design of the Murray-Darling Basin plan, the design that the member for Watson actually put in place. He put in place, in 2012, a safety mechanism to protect the social and economic viability of those communities that were going to have an additional 450 gigalitres ripped away from them.

The original plan is 2,750 gigalitres. We have recovered 2,100 gigalitres, and the last element of that can be recovered through infrastructure, not water buybacks. Buybacks destroy communities. They don't destroy farmers; farmers walk away with a check. The communities that are left behind are the ones that are decimated. That's the lack of knowledge and understanding of this plan and its intricacies and its impact, economic and social, on these communities: this minister walked in here yesterday and made it clear that not even one ounce of economic modelling had been done about the cost of this fairytale that she is taking us on, nor about the flow-on effects to our communities. What responsible government takes away the very legislation that they put in place, with appropriate safeguards for the 450 gigalitres of additional water to the plan, and tears that up without any economic modelling for the lives and livelihoods of people living up and down the Basin? Are they just collateral damage sitting at the altar of political expediency, for city members to walk out and say, 'We did something'? Not one ounce of modelling—nothing done to understand exactly the impact of what they are doing in tearing up their very own legislation.

While the member for Watson stands here before me, can I say that we acted in a bipartisan way in delivering the Northern Basin Review and the sustainable diversion limits, and then we were able to get the neutrality test, in agreement with every state, including South Australia. You have torn up that bipartisanship, a plan that was going to be delivered. The 2,750 gigalitres were going to be delivered. This nonsense of 'year 4,000' on the 450 was because of the very safeguards that the member for Watson, who is leaving now, put in place. You are actually tearing up your very own plan, the plan that was there to protect communities.

This is the lowest moment for those communities up and down the basin. And you sit here and don't even show respect but show contempt—contempt for them, their future and their livelihoods—without even doing modelling, without even going out to these communities and having the courage of your convictions to eyeball them and to explain your courage of your convictions. No: you made every effort to only invite certain people.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Leader of the Nationals will pause. The member for Lyons on a point of order?

Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A point of order, Mr Speaker: the Leader of the Nationals is continuing to not direct his comments through the chair. I'd ask that he do so.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Resume your seat. I'll uphold the point of order and just tell the Leader of the Nationals to direct his comments through the chair.

David Littleproud (Maranoa, National Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm happy to do that. But we're upset. We're upset because we live in these communities. We know the people. We know them by name. These are their livelihoods that are just being ripped up by the stroke of a pen and some deal done over there with senators who live in the sanctuary of this town, who wouldn't know what the Murray-Darling Basin Plan means to the ACT. In fact, the ACT hasn't delivered any water back to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. Yet you want us to lie at the altar of political expediency? There is a human toll to this, but there is an economic toll to this as well. Every Australian will foot the bill for this, because this means that you have taken away the tools that Australian farmers need to produce the food and fibre that you enjoy. When supply goes down, prices go up. You don't need a 6,000-word essay to work that out. This is tearing at the very heart of regional and rural Australia. This is nasty, vindictive politics. That is all this is, and unfortunately regional Australia will foot the bill for it again.

Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Women) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Basin Plan is no longer a plan; it's a death sentence. It's a death sentence that has been delivered by this government. Do you know what really hurts me? It's not the obvious political delight that the minister and the Prime Minister have just taken in this achievement. Do you know what really hurts me? It's the faith that has been broken with the communities that I represent. They all came here. They asked nicely. They sat and explained what they do. They tried. They said to me and all of my colleagues: 'Let's try and work with this government. Let's try to make them understand.' It's their hearts that have been broken today. It's those people who get up every morning and work so hard to deliver food, to deliver fibre, to deliver regional jobs. It's people in regional communities, people in small schools, people who care deeply. It's people in a community like Griffith, which the member for Riverina knows well, who came here after the war, who dug irrigation ditches with a horse and cart and who broke their backs and dug the soil in the heat and toiled for a future for themselves, their family and their children. It's those people who have been trashed here in this parliament today by this government. It's a bitter pill to swallow.

The basin's heart has been broken by a government that has ignored communities. They haven't even bothered to visit them. We know the politics that goes on in this place. We know the glee with which the environment minister looks at all of us and laughs at us. We see it every day in question time. We know that she hasn't set one foot in the basin and hasn't demonstrated one shred of care for the communities that she's tearing apart. This is a really bad, bad day, and the smile on your face, Minister, says it all. It really does say it all. I don't care what you think of me. I don't care what you think of my colleagues. I don't care about the Prime Minister's carefully prepared speech when he comes in here. He didn't even mean it. He had no passion in his voice, because, deep down, I think someone who has been in the parliament as long as he has, as long as you have—you know exactly what you are doing, for base political gain.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! I just ask members to direct their comments through the chair.

Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Women) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The minister and the Prime Minister know exactly what they are doing, for base political gain, because they have banded together with the Greens to take more water out of communities that I represent—out of Griffith, Leeton, Deniliquin, Finley, Barham, Moulamein, Balranald and Wentworth. Do those places mean anything? They're just places on a map. They mean nothing to you, Minister. Transitional funding is your code for: 'We don't care if we shut down your town.' It's just such a nail in the coffin to single-handedly trade off the lives and livelihoods of the farmers that we represent and to not even to have the courage to look them in the eye and tell them what you had planned: buybacks, the simplest, laziest form of water recovery, with the biggest impact on regional communities. The regional communities I represent will not forget this. We will not forget this betrayal. I don't think every Australian will agree with what you have done.

I think Australians in the cities will wonder why a government has used billions of taxpayers' dollars to try to take water away from farming with no positive result at all. Every single Australian will tune into this. Australians in Western Australia and Australians in Far North Queensland will wonder why you have done this and wonder what the point was. If it means what you say it means, tell us how much it will cost. But the minister couldn't say how much it would cost and how many billions of dollars would be allocated to this buyback.

I know why. I know that it is a sham that you will try to do socioeconomic measures, that you will try to do infrastructure and that you will try to work with communities. I know it's a sham, because I know this government too well. What you will do is get money out of your budget process and lazily go into the basin and buy water, just so you can say you've delivered on a political promise. That's the only reason that the minister cannot say how many billions of dollars taxpayers will pay for something that achieves nothing, that takes the country backwards, that takes every regional economy in the basin backwards and that adds to the cost of fresh food and groceries in our country. The government refuses to recognise that Australia is also the Murray-Darling Basin and that Australians care about food, about farming, about the people who live in these communities and about the people who love these communities. We love our communities. It's so sad that this Labor government does not.

Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Environment and Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the question be now put.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Barker will cease interjecting.

A division having been called and the bells being rung—

Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Settle down, silk!

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Lyons and the member for Barker will cease interjecting for the duration of the division.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On a point of order, I ask that the member for Lyons withdraw that last remark.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I didn't hear what the member for Lyons said.

Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I withdraw.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the question be now put.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

SPEAKER (): The question before the House is that the amendments be agreed to.