Bill Heffernan (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I present the final report of the Rural And Regional Affairs And Transport References Committee on the management of the Murray-Darling Basin together with the

Hansard record of proceedings and documents presented to the committee.

Ordered that the report be printed.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

While we have not got time today to discuss the full 23 recommendation of this report, what the committee and the hard-working secretariat have done over a period of time is to have already presented to the parliament an interim report which involved the coal seam gas industry. It is interesting today that a lot of the recommendations of that report are finally working their way through the system to the point where the minister has made some recommendations on water and salt et cetera in the coal seam gas industry.

This report into the management of the Murray-Darling Basin deals with some historical facts. It deals, sadly, with a lot of the political mistakes of the past, because most governments of most persuasions for all time have managed to bugger up water management in Australia—if that is the inappropriate word then 'muck up'. I have to say the present plan is more driven by politics. I think the chairman of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority recognises that to get this into perspective and to get the political parties past the next election there was more consideration given to the politics of the management of the Murray-Darling rather than the science of the management of the Murray-Darling. To the best of knowledge, and we have made some recommendations along these lines, sadly there has not been much thought in a Murray-Darling Basin plan as to the actuarial assumptions of the science of the future. If the science of the future is 40 per cent right, by 2050 there will be very little general-purpose water in the system available per annum and we will absolutely have to reconfigure the way rural Australia manages itself. That is if the science is 40 per cent right; it might only be 10 per cent right, it might be 100 per cent right. The variation in the science most people do not want to know about, do not want to think about, but if you are a farmer you can notice the weather changing and whether it is a 50-year cycle or 50,000-year cycle I will not be around to work that out. But in the event we have to take notice and have a plan to say, 'If it is 10 per cent, this is what should happen. If it is 50 per cent right or 100 per cent right, then these things should happen'. Bear in mind that the Murray-Darling Basin is 23,400 gigs run-off—roughly 6.2 per cent of Australia's run off. The community are sick of hearing this. And 38 per cent of the run-off comes from two per cent of landscape down the back of Canberra here and north-east Victoria. The snow days are forecast to come under 10 per annum. Who is to know if it is right or wrong? If we have a two degrees increase in temperature and a 15 per cent decline in rainfall, we will get up to 35 per cent decline in run-off. If that is 40 per cent right, you can say cheerio to general-purpose water in the Murray-Darling Basin.

These are serious issues which should go beyond the politics. We absolutely should have a 50-year plan that takes into account the vagary of the science. The report mentions things like non-paddy rice. The water is only on the paddy to confine the variation in the temperature of the plant because a cold change at the wrong time for the plant sterilises the plant. They have now got plants where you do not have to do that; the plant does it for itself. It has got an inbuilt thermostat. All those things need to be taken into consideration.

I will not speak at length today but I do intend to speak at great length at another opportunity. I will give other speakers a crack at this because we are confined today, and I hope that the last speaker on this report will be good enough to ensure continuation of the debate.