Kerry O'Brien (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Primary Industries, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

It is pretty plain that, at a federal level, Labor has consistently called for a national approach on the issue of water. We think that the Commonwealth has a strong responsibility to take a leadership role on water. We think a minister for water should be appointed in the federal government. We think a single Commonwealth water authority should be created. We think the commitment of more funds for water management and efficiency programs right across Australia is the right decision. We think the development of water trading and economic instruments to drive reforms is important. We want the government to maximise its purchase of overallocated water entitlements. And we want the existing $2 billion Australian water fund to be used on practical projects.

Having said that, the Prime Minister’s plan for national water security is clearly consistent with many of these objectives and therefore received federal Labor support. We welcome the government’s adoption of proposals for a minister for water, the creation of a single Commonwealth water authority and the commitment of more funds for water management and efficiency programs in rural Australia. However, we think it is reasonable for all stakeholders to have an opportunity to scrutinise the national water plan and continue to ensure that the details are correct—that the government is getting its plan right. We want those details out there for the public to scrutinise, and that is the reason that we will be supporting this motion.

It is curious that the government on the one hand has used its numbers in this place to refer an inquiry on water to the very same committee. The Senate Standing Committee on Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport has an inquiry into the options for additional water supplies for south-east Queensland. So it is right to have an inquiry into a proposal to build a relatively small, but very important, water project in south-east Queensland so that that part of Australia does not actually run out of potable water—apparently it is right because some members of the government think they can play a bit of politics in the state of Queensland—but it is not right to allow the parliament to examine, in a committee chaired by a member of the government and with a government majority, the details of a $10 billion national plan, which has attracted criticism from the National Farmers Federation, the New South Wales irrigators and a host of other organisations that normally support the actions of this government. Apparently it just is not right for the Senate to look at something like that.

I think Senator Siewert hit the nail on the head: it is not right because the more you look at it, the more you discover that the government still have not worked out exactly what they are going to do. And if we have this inquiry, then there will be more instances of the bureaucrats—the public servants employed in the Department of the Environment and Water Resources—being unable to answer questions about exactly how the scheme is going to work; how money is going to be spent; how much will be paid for water; whether it will need to be compulsorily acquired; and what will happen in the catchments where, after CSIRO determines what cap each of the 22 catchments in the Murray-Darling Basin needs to have, water was allocated beyond the cap of those catchments. It would be nice to know. It would be a very appropriate role for a committee of this parliament to have. It would certainly advise the public. It would probably advise the parliament pretty well about what the government’s intentions were. But I guess the government’s main problem is that it might embarrass the government. It might actually show that all of the issues that need to be considered have not been properly considered.

It is very clear from the evidence that more effort went into the writing of the Prime Minister’s speech than into the government’s financing and time lines of the original national water plan. The plan did not go to cabinet—the plan on which there was no economic modelling by Treasury or Finance; and the plan which, less than a week before the announcement, the department of finance was asked to ‘run an eye lightly over the costings’, I think that was the terminology used. Surprisingly, the cursory review by those key agencies was dismissed by Senator Minchin, who said that $10 billion was not really all that much money. As I recall, that was not the way the matter was announced by the Prime Minister. I thought $10 billion was a very large amount of money. But apparently for the department of finance it is small change.

On top of all that, none of the water commissioners were briefed until the morning of the speech. It is interesting, of course, that Mr Ian Sinclair has stated that the Murray-Darling Basin Commission was not asked for any advice. Indeed, the states and territories were given contrary advice at the time of that famous Melbourne Cup day water summit. So, on the first Tuesday in November, this grand scheme was not in contemplation—or enough in contemplation for the premiers of the states and territories to be given any sort of heads up on the matter.

Finally, the government had after all introduced a piece of legislation—the Murray-Darling Basin Amendment Bill 2006—in December 2006. That bill asked the parliament to assume that the existing structures at that time would remain intact. Indeed, far from proposing the changes that the Prime Minister announced in January, it was proposing minor changes to the then-existing plans. So there was no contemplation at that time about these measures. What are we faced with in this cobbled together announcement—the plan that is being made up as we go?