Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to contribute to this debate on the Water Amendment Bill and to put very clearly that the Greens do not support this piece of legislation. We think that it is incredibly irresponsible for the Senate to be even debating, let alone passing, this bill today, particularly when the South Australian royal commission has said that this legislation if it passes will be unlawful, that it is in direct contradiction to what is required under the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and that, indeed, we might end up in the High Court as a result of its passing. So on that assumption I urge both the Labor Party and the Senate crossbench to be very wary of passing this bill today.

This bill is a result of the dirty deal done between the Labor Party and the coalition government, mainly at the behest of the National Party. It's a deal that effectively achieves nothing but cuts to environmental flows. Let's not forget that this legislation is allowing the government to take billions of litres of water out of the environment to hand to big corporate irrigators in the northern basin. Labor has achieved nothing in exchange for its support for this legislation. During the debate on the previous disallowance, after the deal had been announced, we went through all of the things that the Labor Party had suggested they'd achieved. We knew at that time that all of those things had already been put in place. I don't know who was negotiating on the side of the Labor Party but they didn't do a very good job. They've achieved nothing but what the Labor Party perhaps believed at the time to be the resolution of a political problem for them, because of the conflict involving the Victorian Labor Party and the position of the Victorian government.

Labor's cowardice has effectively granted the National Party everything they wanted from the deal. That should be enough to cause suspicion. Let's have a little bit of a recall of the rap sheet of the National Party—part of the coalition here and in charge of the water portfolio under Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Let's have a little bit of a look at what the National Party have achieved since being in charge of the Murray-Darling Basin and look at where all the water is going. We know that the in-laws of the Nationals current federal water minister, Mr Littleproud, are currently being investigated for what's alleged to be the biggest water theft in the Murray-Darling Basin Plan's history. That is fact. That is the truth. The idea that we are now passing a piece of legislation that gives more water to corporate irrigators in the northern basin, while that investigation is underway, is absolutely beyond belief.

We also know that the National Party have been appointing irrigation lobbyists to plum public service jobs in New South Wales—lobbyists like Perin Davey, who was recorded in a backroom conversation with a water bureaucrat, a matter which is currently before ICAC. When the bureaucrat offered her secret departmental documents to help irrigators exploit the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, she said: 'Yeah. That would be fabulous.' Those are just some of the things that have been going on since the Nationals in this place have been in charge of the Murray-Darling Basin.

That puts them as the biggest risk to making sure we have a system that is put back on track. The entire point of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan was to ensure we had a sustainable amount of water for the river, to keep the river alive, to have it flowing right through to the end of the river system, at the end of the Mayo electorate, down at the mouth of the Murray, and to ensure that all of those communities that live throughout the Murray-Darling Basin would have assurance that this river system can survive. Once you start ripping out more water from the environment and saying that big corporate irrigators can keep it, you undermine the plan and the purpose of the plan from the word go.

We often hear about the plan being put at risk and that, if we do what the plan asks for, which is to return water to the river to ensure that the environment gets its fair share, somehow that will put the plan at risk. I can tell you, Mr Acting Deputy President Sterle, it wasn't those of us who are advocating for the environment and ensuring that the river is sustainable who stood up in a pub and boasted that we'd been given the water portfolio just so that we could stop water being taken off irrigators and added to the environment. Of course, that was the former water minister, Mr Barnaby Joyce. His job was to implement the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, and yet he believed that actually his job was to stop it, to undermine the plan—and he did a pretty good job on that. The current water minister, Mr David Littleproud, in his first speech in parliament, said that the balance the Murray-Darling Basin Plan strikes between the environment and irrigation is not fair and that the plan needs to be rewritten. Again, the person in charge of this portfolio is actively undermining the whole purpose of the plan. From his first day in parliament, that is what he said that he would do.

This is a system that desperately needs more water returned from those who have been too greedy, who have taken more than their fair share. It needs to be returned to the river so that everyone has an opportunity to rely on a healthy system into the future. The Nationals have never supported returning the river to a sustainable footing. They've tried, every step of the way, to undermine reform of the system. They are doing the bidding of the big corporate irrigators in the upstream states, and they are unashamed about it. They are absolutely unashamed about it. We had the former Deputy Prime Minister bragging in a pub, and we had the current water minister saying in his first speech that he wanted the rules rewritten. To stand in this place today and to see the Labor Party doing a deal with the Nationals, and with the government, to take even more water out of the system, undermining the plan even further—and its purpose, its objective, which is to help sustain the environment—is just shameful. And it is irresponsible when we know that we might just all end up in court on this because the royal commission in South Australia has said that this Water Amendment Bill may be unlawful.

Let's just have a look at the context of the South Australian royal commission into the Murray-Darling Basin. We now have the government in this place and the Murray-Darling Basin Authority—which is meant to be an independent association—fighting tooth and nail to not have evidence presented to the commission. What are they hiding? What do they not want the Australian people to know? In a time when we've seen corruption, water theft, active undermining of the plan, and rorting of the billions of dollars that have already flown out the door, why on earth would we stand by and allow this government and the authority to say, 'No, we're not going to show up, and we're going to gag our staff from being able to give evidence'? It's gutless, at best, and a total lack of transparency and hiding the truth, at worst. It's contempt for the Australian people and contempt for those South Australians who live at the bottom of the system.

The Murray-Darling Basin Authority are doing everything they can to dodge the royal commission and they have the green light from the Turnbull government. The authority don't want to hand over papers to public scrutiny and they don't want to let their staff or former staff appear before the commission. The Murray-Darling Basin Authority says they are committed to accountability and transparency—and then go to the High Court to avoid having to do it. You can't keep saying you recognise the need for more public scrutiny, while dodging it at every point. You can't seriously claim a commitment to restoring public confidence—which is so desperately needed in this process—when you're using the courts to keep the public in the dark. Remember that the Murray-Darling Basin Authority trying to dodge the royal commission are the same agency that continue to say that they want more transparency, yet they won't bother returning the calls of journalists or senators. They won't bother to hand over documents to show people in this place exactly what the impact of the passage of this bill will be or, indeed, the impact of the amendments to the SDLs that passed this place only a number of weeks ago. They've never been forthcoming with the documents. They don't want the public to know. And now they're using the courts to hide.

You have to wonder why the Murray-Darling Basin Authority need 29 media advisers when they're not prepared to tell the public anything. It sounds like a waste of public money to me. But to deny the state in South Australia transparency into how our state, our residents, our part of the river system, and our communities are being impacted by the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and its implementation is just revolting. It's cowardice, and it's contempt for the people of South Australia because, no matter what the government says, and no matter what the MDBA says, the authority has questions to answer, and genuine questions to answer. David Bell, a water planner who worked for the authority from 2009 until his retirement only last year, said in his submission to the royal commission that he was:

… hastily given the task of identifying the key—

environmental—

sites in the Basin and to go away for half an hour and come up with an estimate of the SDL—

that is, an estimate of what the sustainable diversion limits should be. That is evidence given to the royal commission. The figure he came up with was around 4,000 gigalitres, based on the best available science. In his submission to the commission, he says that the number was reduced by more than 1,000 gigalitres or 1 trillion litres per year—not because it was the best available science, which is what is required by law; no, it was reduced because, in his view, those, 'responsible for landing the plan politically didn't they think could sell it'. This is the evidence that is being given to the royal commission in South Australia as we speak, and here in this place the government wants us to just tick off on this permanent change, and Labor's rolling over to let it happen. Yet the key bureaucrats who worked on the plan in the beginning said it was fundamentally flawed because of political interference.

South Australia was, of course, bound to lose out when you've got jokers like this pulling the strings. David Bell said he was pressured to come up with a number that everyone could live with except the river. He was pressured to appease hostile states, vested interests and flawed science. Again in this place we see a piece of legislation designed to appease hostile states and vested interests, and it's got nothing to do with the best available science. It's going to do nothing to help save the river for the future.

Mr Bell's original estimate was very similar to the estimate of the CSIRO, which found that anything less than 3,000, which is what we have at the moment, would not preserve the river. It's been condemned to death. Politics has weakened the plan at every step of the way. Every time the plan gets weaker, the river loses and the river's life system gets worse. It's now dying. That is what we're dealing with: a system that is in collapse, dying from the mouth up. South Australia is the canary in the coalmine when it comes to how the Murray-Darling Basin is managed, and we are seeing a river dying right before our eyes. Down at the Lower Lakes and at the Coorong, the mouth of the Murray, dredging has not stopped. The river is still sick. What we're being asked today is to take even more water off the environment so that big corporate irrigators can continue to be greedy.

The royal commission in South Australia is asking questions about this: about the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, about the government, about decisions that have been made and about the undermining of the objectives of the plan to save the river system and to protect the environment. Rather than participating in this process, the government and the MDBA are saying, 'Nope, we'll take you to court so that we can keep our mouths shut, so we can keep the South Australian people and the rest of the nation in the dark.' Our river is dying, and apparently we're not even allowed to ask why.

Billions of taxpayers' money has been spent. Billions has rolled out the door, and yet the river is not recovering. It's not money that is being seen in the communities either. Travel anywhere throughout the Murray-Darling Basin, and you can see that communities are still battling with how they manage to live within an existing industry and with a river that is sick. But there are some people who are getting a good bulk of the money that's rolled out the door, like those that are currently being investigated in Queensland under fraud charges—members who are in-laws of the current water minister. How much money has gone into the pockets of that farm? We're not seeing the water coming down the system. We're not seeing the system recover and—boy, oh boy!—the communities downstream are not seeing it.

In February 2018, the Senate voted to disallow the northern basin amendment. The ultimate effect of the proposed amendment would have been to reduce the amount of surface water required to be recovered for the environment in the northern basin from 390 gigalitres to 320 gigalitres. This in turn would have reduced the total amount of water required to be recovered for the environment under the Basin Plan from 2,750 to 2,680 gigalitres. We now know that because of the deal that was done between the government and Labor, for which Labor really secured nothing more than hollow promises, even more water is going to be taken from the environment's allocation and allowed to be spent by big corporate irrigators in the upstream states. You can't take billions and billions of litres off the environment and think that a sick river is going to cope. It's just not. When we know that the amount of water that was already put aside for the environment under this plan is far less than science asked for—we have now heard that in evidence from the royal commission, from David Bell, the former water planner who worked for the authority—the whole thing is a house of cards and it's crumbling before our eyes.

Over the next couple of hours you'll hear senators in this place stand up and say that you need balance. I wish there were some balance, because all we're seeing is the big corporate irrigators taking more, taking more and taking more, funded by the Australian taxpayer, and apparently we're not even allowed to ask why. The government are covering up evidence being given to the royal commission, they're gagging staff and they're keeping the Australian public and the South Australian public in the dark. This bill is a sham and it should not be allowed to pass.