Fraser Anning (Queensland, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is not my first speech. I rise in support of the government's Water Amendment Bill 2018, which seeks to amend the Water Act 2007 following the Greens' sponsored disallowance of the northern basin amendment by the Senate earlier this year. This bill will introduce a new power to allow the minister to direct the Murray-Darling Basin Authority to make an instrument with the same effect as the disallowed amendment.

In the 2012 Basin Plan, the previous Labor-Green coalition government decided to divert gigalitres away from productive farming to run off downriver. This was euphemistically referred to as an environmental flow. However, the 2016 Northern Basin Review found that this was a fiasco. In particular, it found that the so-called environmental recovery of 390 gigalitres of water was having a devastating effect on farming. Accordingly, the current government previously sought to allow farmers to draw a modest 70 gigalitres more water in accordance with the recommendations of the review. Of course, that still left a so-called environmental water recovery target of 140 gigalitres from Queensland farmers and 180 gigalitres from New South Wales. But it was at least a step in the right direction.

I note that these flows are supposed to give us a better environmental outcome. I, therefore, look forward to greater scrutiny of environmental outcomes in the years to come, because I would like to see water given to the environment put under the same pressure for results as the water used for food production.

Generally, as this bill seeks to reprise that increase in water available for productive use, I, therefore, welcome the introduction of this bill and applaud the government for not being cowed by radical Green objections. I'm also sure that a return of the 70 gigalitres previously denied by the disallowance will be welcomed by rural producers, who have been burdened with uncertainty by the previous ideologically motivated attack on their livelihoods. Given that environmental extremists seem to think that any water diverted to support agriculture is a disaster, I'm sure the usual suspects will be lining up to oppose this bill.

The same anti-agriculture mentality has imposed outrageous bans on agricultural tree clearing in Queensland. Presumably the same people think that food on our supermarket shelves just magically appears without ever requiring land clearing, crop planting, domestic animal grazing and so on. I can just hear some of them saying: 'Who cares about dairy farms? We get our milk from nice clean bottles, not dirty old cows.'

In a broader sense, even though I'll support this bill because it represents an improvement in the status quo for farmers, the bigger problem is the existence of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in the first place. Section 100 of the Australian Constitution specifically states that the Commonwealth is not to restrict the right of any state or its residents to use water for commercial irrigation, which means that you would expect the Water Act 2007, the Murray-Darling Basin Authority and the Basin Plan all would be unconstitutional. Others clearly thought so. In 2014 the validity of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan was legally challenged on the grounds that it was contrary to section 100 of the Constitution. However, unfortunately, the court found that the legislation was valid as it interpreted treaties signed by Australia. Commonwealth legislation implementing such treaty obligations overrules state authority, based on the external affairs power contained in section 51 of the Constitution.

There has been a long history of autocratic federal governments misusing the external affairs power to override state laws and individual freedoms. The most well-known case was in 1983 when a former Labor government used its powers to prevent the construction of the Gordon River hydroelectric scheme in Tasmania, killing economic development and jobs. More insidious, however, was the 1975 Whitlam-era Racial Discrimination Act, which, under section 18C, under the guise of implementing the lofty-sounding UN International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, suppresses free speech. Efforts to resist this on the basis that the Racial Discrimination Act is inconsistent with constitutionally implemented freedom of political expression have proved fruitless, again because the High Court has found that the Racial Discrimination Act derives its authority from the external affairs powers conveyed by section 51.

For one level of elected Australian government to overrule another is one thing. However, for one part of the Constitution to allow foreign agreements to override other parts of the Constitution is something else. If we allow the external affairs powers to be abused to allow foreign treaties to override our own Constitution then our country has surrendered power over itself to foreign governments. If, for example, an extreme left-wing government took power, they could sign a treaty with, say, Iran that obliges us to adopt sharia law, and under this interpretation of section 51 of the Constitution this would overrule our other constitutional rights or any laws enacted by democratically elected Australian governments. Is that what our founding fathers, such as Henry Parkes or Sir Edmund Barton, intended for this country? Is that what the Australian people really want? Is that what our parents and grandparents fought in two wars for?

We may think that we are debating water rights, but the existence of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, in apparent disregard for section 100 of the Constitution, is actually a clarion call for constitutional reform. We need to return the Australian government to the democratic control of the Australian people, in accordance with the founders' intent.