Cory Bernardi (SA, Australian Conservatives) Share this | Hansard source

The Water Amendment Bill essentially amends a disallowance motion that was passed in this place some months ago. I supported the disallowance motion because my concerns—they are very real and legitimate concerns—were about abuse of water, the theft of water and the corruption of the water allocation process, both politically and economically, that was happening in New South Wales. No-one denies that there's been a problem in New South Wales; it's only the scale of the problem that people are in debate about, if I can put it like that. There are many who ran around like Henny Penny when that disallowance was supported, saying that the Murray-Darling Basin Plan would collapse. Nothing was further from the truth. In fact, quite frankly, I think the alarmism and the scaremongering then was more about the political cover-up to save the skins of some of the people who are deeply, deeply involved in the theft and corruption upstream that is damaging the Murray-Darling Basin agreement.

And I'm disappointed that, rather than let the disallowance run its course of six months and then allow the inquiries that have taken place to report—and then to consider, in the totality of the information, whether changes should be made to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan or the Northern Basin plan—the government has sought to bring this on. And it's done. Nothing I say or do is going to change the outcome of this legislation, because Labor have decided that they're going to support the government, because apparently they've extracted some concessions. The concessions seem to be only words to me, because I haven't seen anything more substantive than that we're going to provide for Indigenous water or cultural water or we're going to do better in this or that. It seems to be a lot of platitudes.

But the simple concerns that I have remain. There are deeply embedded problems in the Northern Basin. I believe that these problems include political corruption. I believe that they include bribery. I believe that they include donations that have gone quid pro quo for some of the support that has been received. Yet, apart from what we've seen on the ABC and apart from what we've seen in some reports, whereby people have resigned, we haven't had a comprehensive conclusion to the investigations that have taken place.

I also have to say that the alarmist predictions about New South Wales withdrawing from the basin agreement haven't come to pass. The people who perhaps squawked the most about the changes to that disallowance were conflating multiple issues—and quite deliberately conflating them. They were talking about the Southern Rural Water changes from Victoria and conflating those with the Northern Basin changes. When you explain to people that this is not the case and that they're succumbing to an alarmist scare campaign, they have to acknowledge it. Even the most knowledgeable people in my home state of South Australia accepted that what they were putting to me wasn't entirely true but could happen; it was hypothetical. Well, what we know is true is that people were stealing water upstream. We know that meters hadn't been turned on. We know that payments had been made to political parties for them to turn a blind eye. We know that people had backdated approvals or backdated legislation in order to excuse people very close to politics from the abuse, misuse and theft of water. How can anyone excuse that? And the links go very close to figures in the New South Wales government and figures who, quite frankly, are involved in this government.

Rather than stand and make this stuff up, why don't we wait for the results of the inquiries—the ICACs that are going on, the parliamentary inquiries and the royal commission that is taking place in South Australia? Another alarm bell: when you've got a royal commission going, initiated by a state, how is it that the Commonwealth government tries to stand in the way of discovery of evidence and appearances of witnesses to stymie the investigation of that royal commission? If that doesn't ring an alarm bell that the fix is in and there is something really stinky in this whole process, then I don't know what does.

I accept the fact that the former Premier of South Australia, Jay Weatherill, established a royal commission probably for political purposes. I also accept the fact—and Minister Ruston has made a very good point to me—that the changes in the Northern Basin system don't really have that much impact on South Australia from a water flow perspective. I accept that. But I'm interested in having the right thing done, and the right thing is to come to the root cause of the problem. If it is political corruption, cronyism or this culture of theft and distortion, we need to get to the bottom of it before we make changes to one of the most significant agreements in, I think, our country's history.

So I'm deeply concerned, and my concerns have not been allayed. Notwithstanding that these changes are going to get through, I think it would be far preferable for us to revisit this—and I would have an open mind on it—at the conclusion of the investigations that are taking place. It's not so much the minimal amount of water that would get through to South Australia; it's about the conduct and the process surrounding the implementation of the northern basin agreement. But that's not going to happen. Labor have got their concessions to justify the change, and I understand that there's some political expediency in that. I'm just disappointed that I don't think we're going to get to the root cause of this before this bill passes. In fact, I'm very sure. It's going to pass whether I support it or not, but I will not suspend my legitimate concerns about it.