Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Today I rise very proudly in this place not just as the National Party Senate leader—and I do foreshadow second reading amendments, and I'll step the chamber through those—but as a Victorian senator who lives in a basin community and was raised in a basin community, and as a senator who was in this place when Penny Wong was water minister and when the Labor Party went into our communities, purchased buybacks during a millennial drought and devastated not just families and communities but also industries who are only just now recovering.

What really galls National Party senators—you heard it from Senator Davey and you'll hear it from me—is those who choose to portray us as somehow not interested in a triple bottom line, not understanding how important ecosystems and environments are to the sustainability and health of the river and our communities. It is incredibly galling, because we live there and we know it. What you're seeing here today is a repeat of the debate that we had 10 years ago, and in the two years before that, as it was mooted, about a bald set of numbers that we know weren't based on science. We know that. The numbers were just picked out of the air. There was no modelling behind them. Really it was about winning city seats for the Labor Party, supported by the Greens. We knew the river needed work, and we were prepared to put in place a plan that would be adaptive and flexible, that would rely on the science and that would deliver great outcomes for everyone.

You don't need to be a rocket scientist—and you've even heard it from Labor senators today—to know the trauma that the implementation of this plan has wrought right throughout the northern and southern basin communities. It is our job, as National Party senators and MPs, to do something about it. We know that the council of water ministers is responsible for the operation and management of water at a state level, but our communities have been ripped apart. It is Senator Davey who hears that, day out and day in. It is Senator McKenzie who holds the hands of farmers who have had to sell up because they cannot afford their water because of this plan. We are the ones who deal with the human and economic toll that this plan has wrought on our communities and on industry, and it is incumbent upon us to try to do something about it.

Senator O'Neill interjecting—

I will take the interjection, Senator O'Neill. We are in government, and that is why we are moving amendments today, as the second party of government. I look forward to your support, Senator. I look forward to the Labor Party supporting these amendments.

The plan was continually described as an adaptive plan. The Basin Plan was never to remain static. That is what our communities were told 10 years ago. It was supposed to adapt to new information as the science came in, because we knew we hadn't metered all the rivers. We didn't have the data available, as a Commonwealth and as states, to really map it out. So the plan was supposed to gather the science, gather the data and adapt along the way. Today is an example of the plan adapting, as we consider the establishment of the independent office of the Inspector-General of Water Compliance.

I believe it's important to correct a number of falsehoods suggested by federal Labor and the Greens regarding water recoveries in the basin. They would have you believe the environment still needs more water. That's their primary argument. They say the environment needs more water, with volumes as high as 40,000 megalitres, because that was the figure quoted in the Basin Plan guide back in 2011. The guide's figures were just a guide, and that's a direct quote from the guide. They were based on a rule of thumb of the environmental requirement at predevelopment levels. There was no science behind these numbers. This was an unrealistic approach, given there were no plans to remove the many dams, weirs, locks and barrages that regulate the basin and have done so for 100 years. The MDBA modelling, reviewed by CSIRO in 2011, found that the 3,200-gigalitre plan delivered 'few additional benefits, relative to a 2,800-gigalitre option'.

As I stand here today, the Basin Plan has recovered over 21,000 gigalitres for the environment. That is 21,000 gigalitres of water that is no longer used by agriculture to produce food and that is now flowing to the environment. We need to be proud of that. Given these numbers had no scientific basis, that is a hell of a lot of water. It has devastated the southern basin. Labor and Greens would have you believe the pain endured by these communities has been for nothing and that the Murray River is still dying. Well, it's not. Go check it out. I'm here to correct those falsehoods. The MDBA, in its 2020 evaluation, stated:

It's not me saying that; it is the Murray-Darling Basin Authority saying it. The 2,100 gigalitres that have been recovered have done what they were supposed to do. It devastated our communities, but the actual environmental degradation that would have occurred through the last drought hasn't.

Today I put forward a number of other adaptations required for the Basin Plan, incorporating the latest science and new information. The National Party have listened to rural communities and the pain caused by the plan and believe we are long overdue to be putting people back into the plan, front and centre. Our rural communities in the basin have been producing the bulk of the nation's food for home and overseas. Food production keeps people in jobs. It keeps our rural communities thriving. Just as our farmers adapt their practices based on new information, the Basin Plan has to adapt. It's required to ensure food production can continue with confidence and certainty.

As I said, there are four key amendments that as National Party Senate leader I will be foreshadowing in this speech in the second reading debate. The first is to remove the 450-gigalitre water buybacks. It's to get them off the table and get out of the legislation the notion that government can just walk back into our communities and grab the 450. We know the socioeconomic detriment. That's No. 1. The second is we are going to put confidence back on the table for irrigators and remove the threat of buybacks. If the Labor Party have the water portfolio, they will be racing back into our communities to buy back water, decimating irrigation systems. They are proud of it. They can't wait to get their hands on the chequebook.

The third one is to allow new 605 projects, to put flexibility in there for states so that they can meet those targets—because right now they can't. The Murray-Darling Basin Plan has them so wrapped tight in a quite legalistic interpretation of the plan that there is none of the flexibility required now that we have more science and more data. And no further water is to be taken from our communities when the Basin Plan is reviewed in 2024. So I say to those people that want to flag the 2024 review and say we are going to get basin plan No. 2, no, you're not. You will never, ever be able to come back into our communities and take water. We have the science and the data to ensure that the water we have right now, the 2,100 gigs I spoke about, is used better and to water environmental assets differently so that they get the environmental outcomes that they need and our communities continue to produce food. It's about being smarter, not using the blunt instrument of numbers alone to justify your commitment to the environment, which is what they're doing.

The 450 was never guaranteed as Labor and the Greens would have you believe. It was always conditional on no negative socioeconomic impacts. When we actually did a review into the socioeconomic impacts of the plan on our communities it said, 'The need for change is pressing.' These are our own government reviews. The need to change this plan is pressing. So that's why we are here today. There is no point us as National Party senators drafting a private senator's bill to sit on the Notice Paper in some pious approach to actually dealing with the substantive issues. We have been waiting patiently not for a change of leader, as they would have you believe. We have been waiting patiently for the Water Act and the Murray-Darling Basin Plan to come before the Senate so we would have the opportunity to move the amendments our people have sent us here to make to save our industries and our communities from the devastating impacts of these plans.

The science underpinning the requirement for the 450 for the Murray mouth and Lower Lakes in South Australia is flawed. We learnt in 2019 that Professor Gell's work in 2007 had been altered by other scientists in 2009 to support their claim that Lake Alexandrina was a freshwater system. However, recent scientific reviews have shown us that Lake Alexandrina was always an estuary, for over—wait for it—7,000 years. For 7,000 years it was an estuary. But here we are, decimating communities and families, for some purpose that's not even backed by science. It can only be defined as a freshwater system based on construction of the barrages in 1940. So, you're not returning the lake to its natural state; you're returning it to its wartime state. This led to an independent review of Lower Lakes science in April last year, which found:

Without the barrages, the Lower Lakes would be seasonally estuarine with prolonged periods of high salinity during droughts.

That's not me, not the National Party, but scientists. So it makes no sense to send all the fresh water from upstream that's being used to produce vital feed to South Australian Lower Lakes that will evaporate by over 800 gigs every single year.

Wetland ecologist and associate professor at Charles Sturt University Max Finlayson is arguing for change—another scientist. I heard firsthand from him at our Senate hearing in Shepparton, along with local communities, about the devastation on our communities from the plan. The hard truth that science is telling is us that salty water entered the Lower Lakes over the top of the barrages. The 450 is not achievable, and therefore we are proposing that it's removed from the legislation.

As Robbie Sefton's report into socioeconomic impacts says:

Buybacks have also exacerbated the reductions in drier years, and this effect worsens the price impacts on irrigators and irrigator communities.

The difficulty for local communities is where buyback leads to the long term loss of economic resources and community wherewithal and increased exposure to risks that are not offset by other compensatory gains.

So the milk factory closes. The rice mill closes. The cotton gin closes. And then when you can afford water again you don't have the local infrastructure to employ people.

So we are asking that water buybacks be removed; they must be removed. ABARES said in September that buybacks reduce the supply of water available for irrigators, so therefore increase allocation prices unless there is a proportional reduction in demand for irrigation water. Rural communities remain fearful that any shortfall in the plan will see water buybacks back on the table. We've heard it straight from the mouths of Labor Party MPs in the other place. They can't wait to get their hands on the chequebook and enter our communities and purchase that water.

Flexibility: our third reform relates to the sustainable diversion limit adjustment mechanism, and we want to see much more flexibility for that. Time and time again we've heard from rural communities that we need flexibility in these projects, and the legislation doesn't allow for that. We need a more common-sense approach that allows us to back the science. Certainty: our final amendment focuses on ensuring that farmers and communities have certainty about the plan. John Howard said, back in 2007, that these reforms were a once-off. So we cannot continually be going back into communities, reviewing the plan—mark 2, mark 3, mark 4. We've got the water. The assets are being watered appropriately. That's a triple bottom line.

I'm committed to putting people back in the plan. That National Party is committed to putting people back in the plan, and I look forward to moving my amendments. (Time expired)