Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on an extremely important issue facing Australia. We face one of the most complex and difficult social, economic and environmental crises ever in the Murray-Darling Basin. The basin is the food bowl of the nation, and there are many communities in the basin that are dependent on its water for their industries and their town supplies. The basin’s ecosystems, including 17 Ramsar wetlands of international significance, are also highly threatened, and 80 to 90 per cent of its wetlands have already been lost as a result of overallocation and poor management. The Greens believe this is truly a ‘wicked’ problem, in the mathematical sense of the term. It involves a series of complex interrelated systems which are only partially understood, where difficult decisions need to be made based on incomplete and conflicting data. It also crosses a number of jurisdictional boundaries and brings together a range of different stakeholders with intersecting and competing interests.

We appreciate that the government are making some effort to do something about the issue through the Water Amendment Bill 2008 and acknowledge that they have got a little further along than the last mob did. But the change, when it finally comes, will be too little too late if this bill proceeds unamended. We remain concerned that the model of whole-of-basin governance set out in the Water Amendment Bill has been overly compromised by the need to get the states onboard and goes for the lowest common denominator. While it is an incremental improvement on the previous Murray-Darling Basin agreement, it is still restricted by too many issues. In particular, it is restricted by, when it comes down to it, the veto power of the states. And there have been too many compromises along the way—such as the $1 billion food bowl bribe to Victoria and delaying the implementation of the Basin Plan until 2019.

The reality of the referral of powers that supports this legislation is that, at any point, the executive of any one of the states can decide to withdraw that referral without needing to draft a bill or put a motion through their state parliament. They can simply say, ‘I don’t want to play ball anymore; I’m taking my bat and ball and going home.’ It is then ‘game over’ for basin reform. This is the risk we face going down the path of ‘cooperative federalism’ on water reform. The government has handed over huge buckets of money—such as the $1 billion Victorian bribe and the rest of the $12.9 billion Water for the Future fund. The government has compromised on a whole range of measures—such as the existing water-sharing plans remaining in place until 2019 and allowing the definition of ‘critical human need’ to extend to such things as piggeries and golf courses. Despite all these compromises and delays, we still face the risk of finally getting to 2019 and then having one or more of the states baulking at the final hurdle, pulling the pin and cancelling the referral of their powers.

Our leading scientists are warning that we need to significantly reduce water use within the Murray-Darling Basin in the face of a significant and serious reduction in projected levels of run-off as a result of climate change. The Wentworth Group told a recent Senate inquiry that they believe we will need to cut consumptive use of water in the basin by 42 to 53 per cent to remain viable. Dr Tom Hatton, the Director of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation’s Water for a Healthy Country Flagship and leading scientist on the sustainable yields project, has also told us that the relationship between rainfall and run-off has changed dramatically and that, combined with a shift in seasonality, we could expect to see significantly less run-off in the future, probably in the order of 50 per cent. The flagship released the final report of its sustainable yields project yesterday. It had some pretty dire and gloomy outlooks for the basin.

Besides the compromises already mentioned, there are two fundamental problems with the current approach to reform in the basin. The first problem is that basin communities have not been part of the consultation and negotiation process for the new arrangements. The only key stakeholders, from the government’s point of view, have been the state governments. The second problem is that the Commonwealth investment in water buyback, infrastructure improvements and structural adjustment are being rolled out slowly and in an ad hoc fashion with no consideration for the social, economic, environmental or structural impacts in the places where water is bought or infrastructure investments are located.

The Greens believe that a far more consultative and democratic approach would generate a fairer, more robust and more sustainable outcome. The kind of perverse outcomes we have seen from the intergovernmental agreement process reflect the narrow self-interest of the states and would not have survived a more open process of public debate—for example, the new pipeline to extract an additional 75 gigalitres from the system at a time of crisis. The definition of ‘critical human need’, which is not restricted to the core survival requirements of ‘drinking water, health and sanitation’ but could include piggeries and golf courses, probably would not have got through that public consultation process either. And you may not have seen agreement to a plan that only requires us to return extraction levels to sustainable limits by 2019.

The Australian Greens are very well aware of the need to move quickly to establish the Murray-Darling Basin Authority and get the Basin Plan underway. That is why we are so frustrated and disappointed that, after dragging their feet in the reform process for so long, our governments are now attempting to undermine and circumvent the normal democratic process of legislative review by saying that we cannot alter this legislation because it has been agreed under the IGA. They argue that amendments to this legislation are not possible or desirable because they would require renegotiation with the states over the details of the powers referred. That is, of course, undermining the role of the Senate yet again. We are told it is a done deal—that only players such as the ALP state governments need to be consulted. The community has been sidelined.

We note, however, that there are large and important parts of the existing Water Act and the Water Amendment Bill which are not dependent on the referral of powers. We fully expect that the government will argue that amending these bits of the legislation will somehow breach the spirit of the agreement with the states and may threaten the deal they have done behind closed doors with the state governments. We think this would be a disingenuous response from the government and we are putting them on notice that we will not wear it. It is not the role of this house to rubber stamp intergovernmental agreements between the states and the Commonwealth that result in the lowest common denominator and, in this case, compromise the health of the basin.

We are being told that we have to rush this legislation through this place so that we can set up the authority, but the government is also saying, ‘Oh, by the way, did we remember to tell you that the Basin Plan doesn’t come into existence until 2019?’ By my calculations that buys us 11 years. By bringing forward a reform package for the Murray-Darling Basin that relied on the referral of powers, the government made it clear from the outset that it was important they secure not just the support of their state colleagues but also the support of the communities—communities that the people in this place represent. Our concerns and the concerns of the basin communities, irrigators, floodplain graziers, scientists and environmental advocates have clearly been on the record since the ALP came to government.

The Greens will be putting to the Senate a series of amendments, some of which were first put to this chamber last year when we were first debating the Water Act 2007. These include amendments dealing with the independence of the authority, ecosystem health, averages and shares of environmental water and mining—and I will come to the Sugarloaf pipeline shortly. Many of these amendments arose from the committee inquiry held into that legislation and also from the water policy initiatives inquiry held by the Senate Standing Committee on Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport two years ago. They are also based on the advice to those inquiries from the likes of the late Professor Peter Cullen, Professor Mike Young and Dr Arlene Buchan.

The government is relying on our concern and commitment to securing a sustainable future to compel the Senate to accept a flawed but slightly better outcome against the risk of a significant delay to introduce a fairer and more robust system. The deal effectively means that the cap on sustainable diversions will not be operating in Victoria until 2019 and will not be operating in other states until 2014. This fact undermines, as I said earlier, the argument of urgency. The Greens believe that the Basin Plan should be in operation as soon as possible, and certainly long before 2019. Again, we will be moving amendments to ensure that this occurs.

We want to see the Murray-Darling Basin Authority up and running as quickly as possible so that the Basin Plan can be released and used by basin communities to help them to make informed decisions about the future shape of their communities and to plan for a sustainable future. However, we recognise that under the current arrangements the only power that these plans will have—while existing state water-sharing plans are recognised and continue until 2014 or 2019—is one of polite moral suasion in pointing out how unsustainable the current levels of overextraction under the existing state plans are. At the moment, moral suasion is the only way that we can persuade these states to bring their water use into line with the Basin Plan. We do not believe this is good enough, so we will be moving amendments in relation to this to ensure that the Basin Plan is implemented way before 2019.

The irony of the problems that have been brought about by the Rudd government taking a ‘behind closed doors’ approach is that the very problems that are undermining current arrangements—that is, the states clinging to narrow self-interest and forcing compromises—would have been amenable to the moral suasion of an open and robust public debate into the pros and cons of these particular measures. As I said earlier, we believe that, if the issues around critical human need had been exposed to the light of day and had been available for public discussion, they would have been strongly focused on actual critical human needs rather than on the expanded definition of ‘critical human needs’ that applies at the moment. The Greens intend to introduce amendments to strike out the inclusion of ‘other industrial purposes’ and limit the definition of ‘critical human need’ to the minimal provisions required for human health and sanitation.

Then we come to the other problems related to managing the water resources in the Murray-Darling Basin, and one of them is strongly affected by the Sugarloaf pipeline. The Australian Greens believe that, as a matter of principle, water resources recovered within the basin through necessary investments in efficiency improvements need to be used to address the pressing needs of the basin. We need all the water we can get within the basin to ensure the health of the river and the survival of threatened basin ecosystems; to help farming communities adapt to significantly reduced irrigation entitlements; and to support high-value, efficient irrigation, which we need to feed Australia into the future. There is only so much water that can be recovered from the basin, and we need every drop of that in the basin.

While the water for the Sugarloaf pipeline is allegedly being secured through state government investments in efficiency measures, this is a modernisation activity that Victoria should be undertaking anyway as part of its contribution to basin water reform. The water that is being diverted to the pipeline reduces the amount of water available to help the river survive and the basin communities restructure. Basin communities are hurting. Precious ecosystems are literally dying for a drink. The Australian pubic understand this and are concerned for the plight of the river, its communities and its ecosystems. Pulling a massive 75 gigalitres out of the basin at this time of crisis seriously undermines this commitment and trust. At the moment, the public support the government investing $12.9 billion in basin reform, but this expensive, unnecessary, water-wasting project seriously jeopardises that support. The community know it is nonsense to take water out of the basin to send down to Melbourne when Melbourne continues to waste water and pump 400 gigalitres of stormwater out to sea. To this end, the Australian Greens will be introducing amendments to the provisions of the Basin Plan to exclude consideration of new extractive uses outside of the basin.

We note from the evidence to the ongoing Senate Standing Committee on Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport inquiry into the Murray-Darling Basin and the Coorong and Lower Lakes that Adelaide is moving to reduce its dependence on the basin. We applaud those efforts, albeit that they may be going slowly. By comparison, as I said, Melbourne has been pumping 400 gigalitres of stormwater out to sea. We also note that water will only be available for the pipeline when there is water to be allocated under the Murrumbidgee water licences. This water will supposedly only be allocated when there is water to be allocated. So the pipeline could be empty for a vast amount of time. It is crazy to be going down that line. We are extremely concerned that the Commonwealth government has done nothing to stop the allocation of this water outside the basin.

The Australian Greens believe that a more integrated approach to water buyback, to infrastructure improvements and to structural adjustment is needed to maximise and deliver the benefits of reform to basin governance, as represented by the Water Act 2007, the Water Amendment Bill 2008 and the principles of the National Water Initiative. We share the concerns of irrigation communities, environmental advocates and water policy experts about the ad hoc nature of the current process. The time frame within which the $12.9 billion Water for the Future investment is being rolled out is far too slow, and there is a lack of targeting, coordination and planning. The current ad hoc approach is delivering what Dr Arlene Buchan described to the inquiry as a ‘Swiss cheese effect’, with holes in irrigation infrastructure where individual irrigators have been forced out by financial pressures. When they sell up, it is harder for their neighbours to maintain the existing irrigation infrastructure and even harder to implement improvements. This ‘Swiss cheese’ approach increases both the risk of stranded assets and the likelihood of the economies of local communities dropping below sustainability thresholds.

The Greens want to see an honest and open community debate about the future shape of the basin. We want a process to take the Murray-Darling Basin forward that puts communities at the centre of the decision-making process rather than excluding them from the debate. We believe that a focus on planning sustainable regional communities can allow individual landholders to come together to discuss how they will balance their investments in infrastructure, structural readjustment and the sale of water allocations to ensure that planning is done with appropriate economies of scale so that communities can survive and thrive into the future.

We want to focus on ensuring not only the health of our ecosystems but the viability and ongoing profitability of our most sustainable and productive food-growing areas. We want to see appropriate support given to farmers who want and need to make the transition to more adaptable and resilient farming systems. We want clear and reliable information given to farmers and communities about the kind of future they face, the choices that have to be made and the relative prospects within their region. Basin communities themselves should be empowered to make decisions about their future prospects and the shape of their districts and regions. They need to be given the information, the tools and the support to do so.

We think there are examples of where this is already happening, and the government should be looking at these examples. Moreover, we believe that there needs to be a vision for what the Murray-Darling Basin will look like in 2050. The Greens are promoting and putting forward the plan, the MDB 2010-2050 plan, to develop a vision for the basin in 2050 of a vibrant community that is sustained by a healthy river system that delivers food, fibre and ecosystem services to the nation. We need to get this plan underway now.

We are calling on the Commonwealth to resource and support community planning as a matter of priority; to enable communities to produce plans which integrate infrastructure investment, water sales and structural adjustment; to provide incentives and support for them to do so; to give integrated community planning priority in assessing funding applications; to empower the Murray-Darling Basin Authority to develop an interim, non-binding basin plan while the more permanent basin plan is being developed; and to create community planning support teams and resources to produce decision-support tools, including district maps with overlays of relevant information. We believe that this vision will guide how we integrate water purchasing, infrastructure improvements and any readjustments. This is sensible planning and decision making—not the ad hoc process that is occurring now, with insufficient powers for the Commonwealth to implement real reform in the Murray-Darling Basin. Bear in mind that, by ramming this legislation through this place without amendment, the Basin Plan will not come into effect until 2019. It is essential that this plan is implemented way before 2019, or there will not be a river to save. (Time expired)