Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to make a contribution in this debate on the Water Amendment Bill 2018. I want to stress at the outset that I don't come with any particular point of view other than that South Australia is pre-eminent in its use of water, its frugal use of water, and its complex and good investment in infrastructure to get exactly the right outcome. That is because we, who are at the end of the river, have learnt through experience that we have to use it well.

My involvement, I suppose, goes back to my membership of the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Committee. By being on that committee, we had the opportunity to take evidence up and down the river and to participate in additional estimates and a number of inquiries over a number of years about the whole complex area of management of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. I do have to pay credit to former ministers Senator Wong and Mr Burke with respect to the absolute endeavour they brought to the table to get this plan into government policy and legislation. I know that there are those in the chamber who will never be in government and who will never be charged with making the complex legislation and policy that goes with an enormous endeavour that took over 100 years to come to fruition. But I do say this: everywhere in the Murray-Darling Basin, every community, will have a coherent, consistent position which is evidence based for their community, but the problem is that we are trying to manage the entirety of the system. That is where all of the divergent views and issues come to the fore and that is where someone at the bottom of the river will say, 'You're stealing water from us.'

I find it intriguing and really inconsistent in this current era of technology that we don't have telemetering, that we don't have a really good, hard system of validation of taxpayers' expenditure with respect to the use of water. If we have capitalised water, as we have, it's extremely valuable; it's a tradeable commodity. But, intriguingly, we don't have compliance systems that enforce the observance of profit metering. A community should not have to get into a boat and sail up the river listening for pumps that are operating. You should be able to see that metering on the internet, in real time, live. People should not be in a position where they can take one litre extra of water. The technology is there to ensure that that doesn't happen.

We know that the plan goes from 2012 to 2019, when the hard markers start coming in. We have to start delivering that taxpayer investment in better environmental outcomes for the river. Senator Wong went completely through the performance of the former water minister, which was nothing short of disgraceful. A minister of the Crown was trying to dismantle complex policy that has taken generations to achieve. They were trying to overturn it all, throw it all out, for cheap political stunts in some areas and they were misleading whole communities about what was actually going on in this complex area of government policy. It is, I think, an occasion where people can have shallow political views in a complex area of really good government policy. So, unless we can actually meter, monitor and publicise who is taking the water that they've paid for and not a litre more than they're not entitled to, we will always have these allegations.

The allegations are well publicised. You have to pay credit to the ABC. I know some on the other side don't like the ABC, but the work they've done in this space is exemplary. They have presented factual information about untoward activity in certain areas of this river, which needs to be fixed. It needs to be fixed by the New South Wales regulators and it needs to be monitored by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority. And all of the competent respective authorities up and down the river need to assure the taxpayers that what they're paying for is delivered and no-one is taking a litre of water that they're not entitled to.