Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Water Legislation Amendment (Inspector-General of Water Compliance and Other Measures) Bill 2021 is about implementing the Basin Plan. There's been a lot of talk about what is and isn't the Basin Plan and what is or isn't included in a very important document for our country. It's an issue that has been of interest to Australia for as long as Australia has been around. There's section 100 of our Constitution, which is basically there because of debates at the constitutional conventions around the Murray-Darling. That particular section of our Constitution gives the states the rights to manage their own water resources. They really did manage their own water resources in an independent and uncoordinated way until this process was kicked off by the Howard government in 2007. It took many years to finalise a plan for the basin. There's a lot of talk about what that is and how that came about. But I was somewhat involved at the time the plan went through. At that time, I was working as the chief of staff to the then Senator Barnaby Joyce, who was the shadow water minister. For all the talk over these last couple of days about former Senator Joyce and now Deputy Prime Minister Joyce, he voted for the Basin Plan. The Liberal-Nationals government largely voted for it. The member for Riverina, Michael McCormack, did vote against it. But it was voted for and supported because of some key promises that were given at the time the plan was created. There was a lot of controversy at that time, especially when a draft of the Basin Plan proposed to take away more than 6,000 gigalitres of water from our nation's farmers.

Senator Patrick interjecting—

Yes, it was, Senator Patrick. I will take that interjection. Senator Patrick said it was science. Yes, apparently it was. I'm not a scientist myself but that brings up a really important point here. Science is an input into the Basin Plan. It's important that the plan is based on good science, but it can't make the whole decision here, because this plan is about people too. This plan is about how we produce food as a nation. This plan is about how communities grow and thrive with their own economic prosperity not just at one end of the basin, not just in the north, not just in the south but right through our country. All of those things must be balanced, so the science is a very important input.

But what happened with that draft plan—Senator Patrick is right—was it was science on steroids and science unconstrained from any concept of what its impact would be on our nation's people and on our nation's ability to grow food. What I have said just then is not a distortion; it is what the Murray-Darling Basin Authority said to Senate estimates. They said they had to develop a plan that just prioritised the environment, that put the environment first and that didn't worry about the economic or social conditions of people. It didn't worry about the almond growers in South Australia's Riverland. It didn't worry about the fruit growers in Berri and Renmark; the plan ignored them. It didn't worry about the dairy farmers around the Lower Lakes; it ignored them.

Senator Patrick interjecting—