Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you. I will do that. I foreshadow that I will be moving that the proposed divestment of the Commonwealth’s shareholding in Snowy Hydro Ltd be referred to the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee for inquiry and report by 30 June 2006. We will have a vote a little further down the line in which I expect the Labor Party will join the government in voting out the public’s right to have a say in this matter. Nevertheless, it is very important that we test the government on that and show the lack of faith they have in the Australian people now that they have been voted into this position of overweening power over the Senate.

The Australian Conservation Foundation are experts on the impact of European settlement on the Murray-Darling system. They released research in the last year on the Coorong. I flew over the Coorong a couple of weeks ago on that direct flight from Adelaide to Hobart, which I would recommend to anybody. It is one of the most majestically scenic flights you could do anywhere in the world. It travels down the coast, along the Coorong, then across Mount Gambier to King Island, then to the Tarkine wilderness in Tasmania, then across Cradle Mountain and the central plateau and into Hobart. It is absolutely spectacular.

I will not go to the impact on the Tarkine and elsewhere further along that flight, but let us look at the Coorong, this extraordinary area in the state represented by Senator Minchin. According to this research, at the mouth of the Murray River in South Australia the Coorong is in terminal decline; it is on its death bed. It risks permanent collapse unless more water is provided for the Murray. Senator Allison talked about the government’s pathetic aim to put 500 extra megalitres into the Murray over a 10-year period. What it needs in fact is 3,000 megalitres as a minimum, which would be 25 per cent of the original natural flow of the river. What we are talking about here is 500 megalitres in a river which had an average flow of over 12,000 megalitres. But, as Senator Allison said, there is very little sign of the 500 megalitres anyway. This is a situation that is an absolute ecological disaster now.

Senator Minchin may stare at the desk, but the fact is that he and the government are responsible for not responding adequately to this absolute disaster, which is going to get worse. One of the big reasons it will get worse is because of global warming, and prodigiously out in front—the villains—in creating global warming are the Howard government and this minister.

The Australian Conservation Foundation says that scientific studies and surveys of the internationally acclaimed area—it is not protected—of the Coorong show that pelicans have not bred for almost four years. The Coorong was Australia’s largest permanent breeding colony. Brine shrimp, never before recorded in the Coorong, are now as thick as soup. They need salty water. Fresh water is being replaced as the sea comes in and the natural fresh water flow diminishes. Salinity levels are three times that of sea water—it is moving towards becoming a Dead Sea type of environment. Twelve species of native fish are locally extinct. I am looking forward to Senator Minchin commenting on each of these points.

The number of migratory wader birds has dropped from an already depleted 150,000 in the 1980s to 50,000. The curlew sandpiper has dropped in numbers from 40,000 to 2,000. Ninety-five per cent of them are gone, with five per cent hanging on. Local extinction, at least, hangs over their head, with global extinction not much further down the line.

A healthy Murray River is vital for a number of reasons, including the following: the now constant threat of closure of the Murray mouth; the rising trend in salt levels in the Murray in South Australia, meaning that within 20 years Adelaide’s drinking water supplies will exceed the World Health Organisation’s salinity standards for drinking water every two days in five on average—that is the projected outcome for Adelaide; gravely threatened red gum woodlands across the southern Murray-Darling, and we know the figures there—70 per cent of them are dead or dying; declining populations and diversity of native fish and water birds; and threats to the economic value of tourism and recreation in the Murray.

It does not say this on this sheet, but let me add that unless this is addressed there will also be a broken heart—again—for the Indigenous people, who were the custodians of this great river system through enormous changes in climate over eons and who have effectively been cut out from having a say about the management of their river as we move more and more to leaving it to the market and to people sitting in velvet lined boardrooms somewhere else on the planet.

The ACF have a footnote here which says that a recent shocking report indicates that the percentage of stressed and dying red gums along 1,000 kilometres of the Murray has increased from 51 per cent to 75 per cent over the last 18 months—that is up to the end of last year—which is an increase of nearly 50 per cent.

The point to be made here is that this motion will place the future of that ecosystem in the hands of the careless market, which is not concerned about the environment except to see it as a threat to its profitability. This is the Labor Party joining the coalition to effectively straitjacket future action on behalf of the public interest to try to restore the Murray, which is facing, as Senator Allison said, a further 30 per cent decline due to global warming on top of this disaster.

The question to Senator Minchin—who used the word ‘environment’ once in his speech—is: where is the action plan for this now disastrous situation? When is this government going to get off its bum and do something about this disastrous situation? When is it going to remove the blinkers? It is not going to do that. Moreover, it is going to pass to its friends in big business the plum of the Snowy hydro scheme, this most profitable of energy making public ventures; this great scheme of the Menzies government. At the same time, it is going to remove the ability of the public to—through governments in Sydney, Melbourne and here in Canberra—properly and adequately address the national environmental disgrace of the Murray system. Add to that the Snowy system, with its 28 per cent flow. This problem will forever be unable to be addressed further after this motion goes through this Senate this morning. Sobering, isn’t it?

‘Please don’t look at it’, however, say the government and the Labor Party. ‘Certainly let’s not have a Senate committee so that there can be public input about it. Let’s not have the Australian Conservation Foundation brought before a committee. Let’s not have the environmental brains trust of this nation brought before a committee. Let’s not even have the interests of the city of Adelaide brought before this committee, let alone the people living in Orbost or on the floodplain of the Snowy.’ I have read that the floodplain has been elevated by two metres simply because the outwash from the Snowy has been reduced so dramatically by this Snowy Mountains Scheme. It is the watershed of this Australian icon. It should be part of the Australian people’s destiny, but it is now being sold to unknown people, careless people, people who have never been there. They will be investing from somewhere else in this country and, much more likely in this globalising economy, from somewhere else in North America, Europe or Asia. That is what we are dealing with here today. That is what the Greens have foreshadowed to open debate on this. That is what Labor will support the government in shutting down, as it turns its back on an environmental disaster that ought to be one of this government’s prime responsibilities.