Paul Calvert (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In accordance with the usual practice and with the concurrence of the Senate, the government’s response to the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee’s report Rural water resource usage of 2004 will be incorporated in Hansard.

The document read as follows—

SENATE RURAL AND REGIONAL AFFAIRS AND TRANSPORT REFERENCES COMMITTEE REPORT

‘Rural Water Resource Usage’

GOVERNMENT RESPONSE

October 2006

GOVERNMENT RESPONSE TO SENATE RURAL AND REGIONAL AFFAIRS AND TRANSPORT REFERENCES COMMITTEE REPORT:

‘Rural Water Resource Usage’

Preamble

The Australian Government has considered the ‘Rural Water Resource Usage’ report from the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee and is pleased to provide the following response. The Government would like to acknowledge the efforts of the Committee in preparing the report that seeks to address a range of issues relating to future water supplies for Australia's rural industries and communities.

The Australian Government is committed to the efficient and effective management of Australia's water resources as its role in developing the National Water Initiative (NWI) and the Murray Darling Basin Agreement attests. On 25 June 2004 the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) agreed to the NWI which contains a number of national water reform actions to be implemented as priorities by the Australian, State and Territory governments over the next 10 years.

Implementation of the NWI will be overseen by the Natural Resource Management Ministerial Council in line with detailed implementation plans to be developed by each State and Territory and the Australian Government and accredited by the National Water Commission.

Consistent with the National Water Initiative, the Australian Government has established the National Water Commission as an independent statutory body. The National Water Commission Act 2004 came into effect on 17 December 2004. The Commission will accredit State and Territory implementation plans, assess progress in implementing the NWI and advise on actions required to better realise the objectives of the Agreement. The Commission also undertook the 2005 assessment of progress with implementing water reform commitments under National Competition Policy and administers the Water Smart Australia and Raising National Water Standards programmes under the Australian Government Water Fund.

The Committee’s recommendations are addressed in turn below.

A copy of the Intergovernmental Agreement on a National Water Initiative is at Annex A.

COMMITTEE’S RECOMMENDATIONS

Recommendation 1

The Committee recommends that a cap for water extractions in the Queensland part of the Murray-Darling Basin should be decided by the beginning of 2005.

Response: Supported.

The Murray-Darling Basin Ministerial Council discussed the establishment of a Cap for water extractions in the Queensland part of the Murray-Darling Basin at its meeting on 26 November 2004.

The Council noted the progress being made by Queensland towards the establishment of its Cap and acknowledged that the establishment of a Cap forms an integral part of Queensland’s water resource planning process, a prescribed process in accordance with Queensland’s Water Act 2004.

Queensland has now gazetted water resource plans for all its Murray-Darling Basin valleys. Resource Operations Plans, on which Caps will be based, are currently being developed with an expectation that they and their relevant Caps will be finalised over the next two years.

In the meantime the moratorium imposed by Queensland in September 2000 effectively places a cap on works and diversions. The moratorium prevents further storages or pumps from being constructed or works authorised under licence which would increase the take of surface and overland flow water.

Recommendation 2

The Committee recommends that COAG should negotiate an ongoing shared program for funding the reforms in the Intergovernmental Agreement on a National Water Initiative.

Response: Noted.

Recommendation 3

The Committee recommends that COAG should develop a policy on rules to control the water market to prevent profiteering or speculation by non-users, including foreign interests, to the detriment of water users or the environment.

Response: Not Supported.

The risk of profiteering or speculation by non-users was considered during the development of the National Water Initiative, which includes a staged approach to removal of barriers to open trade and close monitoring of impacts.

The Australian Government considers that the Trade Practices Act 1974 and related State and Territory Fair Trading Acts already provide an appropriate national framework capable of addressing any concern in relation to anti-competitive or unfair trading practices in relation to water entitlements.

Recommendation 4

The Committee recommends that COAG should commit to a jointly funded program of structural adjustment assistance to communities whose economies are contracting because of water trading, and agree to provide adequate financial support for projects to promote environmental recovery in degraded areas.

Response: Noted.

Under Clause 97 of the NWI, all parties have agreed to address significant adjustment issues affecting water access entitlement holders and communities that may arise from reductions in water availability as a result of implementing the reforms outlined in the National Water Initiative. States and Territories will consult with affected water users, communities and associated industries on possible appropriate responses to address these impacts, taking into account factors including:

• possible trade-offs between higher reliability and lower absolute amounts of water;
• the fact that water users have benefited from using the resource in the past;
• the scale of changes sought and the speed with which they are to be implemented (including consideration of previous changes in water availability); and
• the risk assignment framework referred to in Clauses 46-51.

States and Territories have also agreed that in relation to facilitating intra and interstate water trade, they will implement measures to facilitate the rationalization of inefficient infrastructure or unsustainable irrigation supply schemes, including consideration of the need for any structural adjustment assistance as noted in Clause 60 (vi).

With respect to the provision of financial support for projects which promote environmental recovery in degraded areas, the Australian Government and the Southern Murray Darling Basin States and Territories have committed $500 million ($200million from the Australian Government) over five years to the Murray-Darling Basin Intergovernmental Agreement which will consider a range of measures to recover water for the environment including investment in water infrastructure. In addition, the Murray-Darling Basin Commission (Commission) has made available $1 million to fund pre-feasibility studies of cost effective infrastructure improvement projects that would recover water for the environment. The Australian Government also announced in its 2006-07 Budget, additional funding of $500 million to the Commission for expenditure between the period 2006-07 and 2010-11. This additional funding will boost the capacity of the Commission to undertake essential works in the Basin that are necessary for the river systems to operate at optimal efficiency. The Commission will also fund further projects under the Living Murray Environmental Works and Measures Programme to make best use of recovered water. The additional funding will also assist Governments to meet the water recovery targets of the Living Murray Initiative by 2009.

The Living Murray Works and Measures Program is an eight year $150 million programme to deliver works and measures to improve the health of the system by making the best use of water currently available, optimising the benefits of any water recovered in the future and targeting investment towards the best environmental outcomes.

In addition, the $2 billion Australian Government Water Fund will support the achievement of the principles, outcomes and actions of the National Water Initiative through its three programmes: Water Smart Australia, Raising National Water Standards, and Australian Government Community Water Grants.

The Raising National Water Standards programme will invest in Australia’s national capacity to measure, monitor and manage its water resources, including through working with local communities to improve the conservation of water systems with high environmental values through measures such as planning, voluntary conservation agreements and improved knowledge.

Under the $200 million Australian Government Community Water Grants programme, community organisations will be provided with grants for on-the-ground work to increase water use efficiency, improve river or groundwater health or improve community education on water saving.

$1.4 billion has been committed over seven years under the National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality to tackle salinity and improve water quality in 21 priority regions.

The Rivercare programme of the $3 billion Natural Heritage Trust invests in activities that contribute to improved water quality and environmental condition in our river systems and wetlands.

In December 2000, the New South Wales, Victorian and Australian Governments signed a Heads of Agreement outlining a plan to boost the Snowy River’s flow to 28% of its original level. The plan includes a target of restoring 21% of the original flow to the Snowy River within 10 years. The Australian Government agreed to contribute $75 million, in particular to secure environmental releases of 70 GL for the River Murray. Water for environmental flows will be acquired primarily through investing in water savings projects and if necessary, through purchasing water entitlements and water rights.

Recommendation 5

The Committee recommends that water management authorities should take steps to properly assess in all catchments the amount of water necessary to maintain environmental health and the amount available for trade

Response: Noted.

Under the NWI, State and Territory Governments have agreed to planning frameworks that, once initiated, will be characterised by planning processes in which there is adequate opportunity for productive, environmental and other public benefit considerations to be identified and considered in an open and transparent way (Clause 25 (iii)). Parties to the NWI have agreed to undertake water planning that, broadly, will provide for:

• secure ecological outcomes by describing the environmental and other public benefit outcomes for water systems and defining the appropriate water management arrangements to achieve those outcomes; and
• resource security outcomes by determining the shares in the consumptive pool and the rules to allocate water during the life of the plan (Clauses 36-37).

The Raising National Water Standards programme of the Australian Government Water Fund will support the development of a nationally consistent system for collecting and processing water related data to create confidence in decisions by investors in the water market and the water industry more broadly, and to improve the setting of sustainable flow levels in rivers. - Such a system could involve automatic data collection at monitoring stations, national standards for water accounting and metering, and improved hydrologic modeling of priority water sources.

Recommendation 6

The Committee recommends that water management authorities should give priority to establishing the systems necessary to account for the total water balance of catchments to allow better management of water-intercepting activities.

Response: Noted

Parties to the NWI have agreed to water resource accounting with the outcome of ensuring that adequate measurement, monitoring and reporting systems are in place in all jurisdictions, to support public and investor confidence in the amount of water being traded, extracted for consumptive use, and recovered and managed for environmental and other public benefit outcomes (Clause 80). To achieve this outcome, Parties have agreed, among other things, to develop and implement water resource accounts that include:

• a water balance covering all significant water use, for all managed water systems;
• systems to integrate the accounting of groundwater and surface water use where close interaction between groundwater aquifers and streamflow exist; and
• consideration of land use change, climate change and other externalities as elements of the water balance (Clause 82 (iii)).

The parties to the NWI have also recognised that land use change activities have potential to intercept significant volumes of surface and/or ground water now and in the future (Clause 55). Parties recognise that if these activities are not subject to some form of planning and regulation, they present a risk to the integrity of water access entitlements and the achievement of environmental objectives for water systems. The intention of the NWI is therefore to determine whether the volume intercepted from any land use change activity is ‘significant’ in the catchment of the water system in which it occurs. This assessment will necessarily be based on an understanding of the total water cycle, the economic and environmental costs and benefits of the activities of concern, and.to apply appropriate planning, management and/or regulatory measures where necessary to protect the integrity of the water access entitlements system and the achievement of environmental objectives (Clause 56).

State and Territory Governments that are signatories to the NWI are responsible for implementing the Agreement in their respective jurisdictions.

Recommendation 7

The Committee recommends that relevant Commonwealth funded research programs should give priority to researching the total water balance of catchments to allow better management of water-intercepting activities, with particular reference to the effects of large scale plantation forestry on runoff,

Response: Noted.

The Parties to the NWI recognise that a number of land use change activities, such as intercepting and storing of overland flows and large scale plantation forestry, have potential to intercept significant volumes of surface acid/or ground water now and in the future. The NWI recognises that if these activities are not subject to some form of planning and regulation, they present a risk to the future integrity of water access entitlements and the achievement of environmental objectives for water systems. The Parties have committed to assessing the significance of such activities on catchments and aquifers, based on an understanding of the total water cycle, the economic and environmental costs and benefits of the activities of concern, and to applying appropriate planning, management and/or regulatory measures where necessary to protect the integrity of the water access entitlements system and the achievement of environmental objectives (Clauses 55 – 57). As noted above, State and Territory Governments that are signatories to the NWI are responsible for implementing the Agreement in their respective jurisdictions.

• The NWI recognises that there are significant knowledge and capacity building needs associated with ongoing implementation, including in the areas of regional water accounts, assessment of availability through time and across catchments and changes to water availability from land use change (Clause 98). Parties to the NWI have agreed to:
• identify the key knowledge and capacity building priorities needed to support ongoing implementation of the Agreement; and
• identify and implement proposals to more effectively coordinate the national water knowledge effort (Clause 101).

The Australian Government and other jurisdictions make significant investments in knowledge and capacity building in water, including through: the Cooperative Research Centres programme; the CSIRO, including through its flagship program, Water for a Healthy Country; Land and Water Australia and direct investment by State agencies, local government and higher education institutions.

The Bureau of Rural Sciences’ Water 2010 project will provide information on the relationships between rainfall, evaporation, transpiration, runoff, and drainage to ground and surface water, or on the linkages between catchments and storages. The project will capture information on the water balance (water availability, reliability and use) at the finest scale possible for the continent (including groundwater); construct a national water balance and identify catchments of concern; investigate the impact of likely or desired changes in land use, demography, climate and policies/practices on water resources; and identify the challenges (risks and opportunities) for communities, industries and regions, to underpin policy development.

Recent research into effects of plantations upon the total water balance of catchments includes CSIRO Forestry and Forest Plantations Report ‘Water Use By Tree Plantations in South-East South Australia, (Technical Report No 148, 2004); the Bureau of Rural Sciences ‘Plantation Impacts on Stream Flows- the need for a whole of landscape approach’ report and the Forests and Wood Products Research and Development Corporation ‘Plantations and Water Use: a review’ paper.

Recommendation 8

The Committee recommends that the Commonwealth should, as a matter of urgency, address the impact of Commonwealth-licensed oil drilling on the Latrobe aquifer and propose solutions which respect the rights of groundwater users.

Response: Noted

The Australian Government notes the report by the CSIRO, Falling Water Levels in the Latrobe Aquifer, Gippsland Basin: Determination of Cause and Recommendations for Future Work, published in September 2004. The report concludes that water levels in this aquifer have been falling for several decades, impacting on irrigators and potentially on the wider community through land subsidence.

Whilst acknowledging the impacts of withdrawals by the mining (including coal), irrigation and offshore oil and gas industry, the report was unable to accurately determine the proportion of impacts due to offshore or onshore abstraction and recommended further analysis be undertaken.

The Government has made a commitment, as part of the $2 billion Australian Government Water Fund, to provide funding for research and structural adjustment for the Yarram Irrigators adversely affected by the fall in water levels of the Latrobe Aquifer. Funding would be subject to matching Victorian Government funding. This commitment supports the CSIRO report recommendations, which identify a need for additional scientific research into this issue. The proposed further research will determine how best to answer the problem of declining water levels in the aquifer.

Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

This inquiry was referred to the committee on 21 October 2002. It received 78 submissions and held 11 hearings, in Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Darwin, Kununurra, Griffith, Moree, St George and Berri. The inquiry dealt with the important topic of the state of rural industry based water resource usage and options for optimising water resource usage for sustainable agriculture—an issue that I note we are talking about yet again. The report addresses the issue of water access entitlements, environmental management needs, water trading arrangements, structural adjustment assistance, unintended consequences of water trade and the recovery of overallocated water. Does this sound familiar to anybody? These are all clearly important and outstanding issues.

The committee report was tabled in August 2004, but it was January 2007 before the government response was tabled out of session, which leads me to question whether the government was truly interested in water before the issue became a political hot potato in the polls. Does this seem like the actions of a government that had its eye on the ball and, until very recently, had been taking the issue of water resources seriously?

Bill Heffernan (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yeah.

Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It has taken 2½ years to respond, and this is all of a sudden an issue, is it? So it was not an issue until it became a poll issue. Looking at the response to the committee’s recommendations, it strikes me that the government have not been engaging with the substantive issues. There is an air of defensiveness and reference to a number of recent initiatives that do not directly address the committee’s concerns. In fact, they list a range of initiatives that have not been fully implemented, or implemented at all, such as returning any environmental flows to the Murray. Not one drop has yet been returned. They have not even found the 500 gigalitres they are supposed to find.

It is worth noting that the committee raised the issue of speculation and profiteering in water markets. The government response denies there is an issue and that it is likely to be a problem. I very strongly suggest that they revisit this response, given their announcement of $3 billion being made available for buying back water entitlements and the comments that there will be a need for a strategy to deal with this so that profiteering does not occur. I strongly suggest that they need to rethink this.

Around the time that this inquiry commenced in 2002, another Senate inquiry into another aspect of water concluded. The Senate Environment, Communications, Information Technology and the Arts References Committee inquiry report into urban water management was entitled The value of water. That report dealt with the management and resource security of water supplies for our cities, including projected population growth and consumption, sustainable water use and demand resource strategies, urban stormwater management, improving water quality, water recycling initiatives and the effectiveness of market mechanisms for achieving efficiency gains. Again, these are all outstanding and important issues. What was the government’s response to this inquiry? How much did they value it? The answer is: I do not know, because four years later they have still not responded to it.

What about the 2004 report of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry entitled Getting water right(s)—the future of rural Australia? This report dealt with important issues of water policy, frameworks, water rights, water trading et cetera. This has still not been responded to. Can we conclude from these remarks that the government has not been taking the issue of water in Australia seriously—and, as an aside, the role of the Senate committee seriously? But the ultimate outcome is that the government has still not seriously come to grips with the issue of water resource management. It has only jumped on the bandwagon lately when it has been under so much pressure that it can no longer ignore the issue.

If you take the time to look through the issues covered and the recommendations made by this series of parliamentary inquiries—and it appears that the government has failed to do so—it becomes clear that many people have been giving consideration to the water resource issues of this country for a long time, but the government has consistently failed to deal with the oncoming water crisis. It has not just appeared all of a sudden; it has been growing for years. The response—and we saw it again today—was: ‘Let’s just blame the states. Let’s blame the states, focus on them, and not actually acknowledge that the Commonwealth had a role to play as well.’

Last year we again saw an increase in the number of people raising the issue. The Murray-Darling Basin Commission repeatedly told the government that our storages were getting to dangerously low levels. They reported very frequently. In October, Wendy Craik from the Murray-Darling Basin Commission told the Senate Standing Committee on Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport that, if the situation continues, it looks as though we will be effectively emptying our storages by the end of the irrigation year—that is, by April-May this year, which is three months away, by the way. Did the government respond to this? No, they did not respond to anything until the beginning of November when they called a water summit for three hours on Melbourne Cup Day—where, by the way, one of the solutions canvassed by the Prime Minister was that we could drain wetlands. That is in the face of the fact that 90 per cent of the wetlands of the Murray-Darling system have been degraded. I believe they are likely beyond repair. This is again policy on the run.

The report that came out in January does not at all canvass the government’s new policy initiatives announced on 25 January, committing $10 billion to an uncosted plan. There was no consultation with either the states or, as it now turns out, major government departments who could (a) provide advice and (b) do the costings. We have not been told how much water is going to be returned to the Murray. The Prime Minister’s 10-point plan makes no comments about commitments to how much water will be returned to the Murray. Five hundred gigalitres is the very minimum, the lowest common denominator, that all the states and the Commonwealth could agree to. The Commonwealth was a party to that. It did not stand by like Pontius Pilate and wash its hands and say to the states, ‘You make up your mind.’ It was part of the process of deciding on 500 gigalitres.

But the Prime Minister’s plan does not commit to a target for returning any further water to the Murray. The panel of scientific experts recommended that 3,500 gigalitres of water was needed to give the Murray a good chance of recovery. The Prime Minister’s statement makes no comment on how much water is going to be returned to the Murray. The government want to take control of the states, presumably to try to manage the situation better. But they had a chance in December when the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act was being amended through the Environment and Heritage Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2006. A number of proposed amendments to that bill related to giving the government a trigger for matters of environmental significance. But did they want this trigger? No, they did not. Under legislation they could have had that trigger, with no fighting with the states about whether it is constitutional or not. They did not have to fight with the states; they could have simply added a trigger to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act to give them the power to make assessments and get involved in water management. On 7 December we were debating that very thing in this chamber. The government did not want controls then, but on 25 January they wanted controls. Now they are going to be embroiled in a long fight with the states.

Yesterday the Treasurer made it quite clear that no money will be delivered to this water plan unless the states agree. No money will flow—pardon the pun—until the states agree. By the way, very little money has flowed to the Murray to date. None of the $2 billion has been spent; not one drop of water has been returned to the Murray. Now we have yet another promise of $10 billion for the Murray that is uncosted, with no evaluation yet given on how much water we are going to return to the Murray. We are spending $6 billion on water efficiency, with half of that saving going back to the agriculturalist and the farmer. So we are spending $6 billion to only get back half of the water that is saved in efficiencies. Why aren’t we getting all that water back for environmental flows? We are only getting half of it back—$6 billion for half of the water that is saved.

There is no timetable; in fact, already Minister McGauran is backing away from buying water entitlements. Two days after the Prime Minister made his statement, Minister McGauran was already backing away from the question of how they are going to implement this plan and how they are going to buy back water allocations. No commitment has been given to the urgency of returning environmental flows to areas in crisis, such as the Macquarie lakes and the Gwydir wetlands. There is no timetable set. (Time expired)

Bill Heffernan (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thanks very much for this unexpected pleasure. Senator Siewert, thank you for your contribution. I am sure that you believe what you say, but I do not. I think it is an absolute disgrace that somehow there would be a view around that water and climate change is a Greens issue. It is not a Greens issue at all; it is our issue. It is every Australian’s issue. You do not have to be green to believe. As to some of the things that you dated back to 2002 that suggest there has been some sort of knee-jerk reaction, I think most people know that I have been on this case since the first day I stood up in this parliament in December 1996. These things do not happen overnight, and I am very proud of the fact that the government has made a $10 billion gesture to sort out the Murray-Darling Basin. The Murray-Darling Basin has been completely mismanaged over many years by governments of all persuasions—and nothing the Greens, the Democrats or any other plaited armpit party that came along could do would do anything about it.

The government are doing something about it. There is no use in any rhetoric that returning 3½ thousand gigalitres to the Murray is going to fix the Murray when Mother Nature is going to take another 3,000 gigalitres out of the catchment of the Murray-Darling Basin. You are talking about returning 6½ thousand gigalitres to have any consequence for the environmental outflows and the long-term outlook for Mother Earth in the Murray-Darling Basin. I have to say that the states do not have the capacity to do that. They simply do not have the capacity, and people like Craig Knowles have acknowledged that to me over the years. There are a lot of people genuinely concerned. Senator Siewert is genuinely concerned. We are genuinely concerned, but we do not have to be green to be concerned.

These are issues that will not be fixed by more speeches in this place. They will only be fixed by addressing some of the things that have to be done. As Senator Campbell said to me today, the Barmah Choke could have been fixed ages ago but the Victorian government could not come up with the engineering plan to do it, or they might have funded it.

There are smart alec politics in all of this for everyone, and I hope you all have a wonderful time, but the fact remains that the government has put its money where its mouth is. It is the first government to do that, and hopefully we will fix things like the evaporation of the Menindee Lakes. The Menindee Lakes evaporate two or three times, they tell me—though I always say that for every litre they pump up the river a litre evaporates, so the water evaporates more. Everyone knows my view on the disgusting water plan of the Lower Balonne, and I was pleased to see Peter Beattie today put the kibosh on the auction of that water on the Warrego. I think he has shown some leadership on things like recycling. Certainly, I know what the federal government’s view is on the Lower Balonne—it ought to be sorted out.

I have a very strong view, as you know, on overland water harvesting: I think the system cannot stand it. I am aware and you are aware of our ‘latest’ water hearing, as you referred to it, in 2002. I have been on three of these water hearings since 2002, so to say that we have not done some homework would be a misrepresentation of the facts. I am aware that there are certainly a lot of things that we can do to improve the system. I am aware that, if we do not remove some activity from the Murray-Darling Basin, the sums are never going to add up. I am aware that climate change is going to have a detrimental effect on the rainfall and run-off of southern Australia. I am aware that there are great opportunities in the north. So I hope that you and everyone else in Australia will get behind the federal government’s determination to sort out Australia’s water issues. I had a discussion with Senator Colbeck today about the potential of Tasmania’s water. I am also aware that they do not have any idea about water trading or any other damn thing down there—but, anyhow, they have made great strides in Tassie with laser surgery.

Things like water and climate change, Senator Siewert—I was compelled to get up—are our issues. They are not the preserve of some green party or some other group; they are every Australian’s issues. All Australians ought to be informed that we are not the global culprits in climate change. Someone ought to take a camera and go to the Amazon and see what is happening in the top end of Brazil, go to China and see what they are doing there or go to India. The most telling thing of the report out of London the other day, which I do not see getting a run anywhere, is that within 50 years half of the world’s population is going to be water poor. I keep saying that 600 million people in northern China are going to run out of water not because of anything to do with climate change; they are actually mining the aquifer, which means they are mining their future food resource. These are all our issues if we are going to have a planet we can still live on.

With great respect to you, Senator Siewert, the government has shown a lot of leadership in this, and I am pleased that some of the premiers are coming on board. Perhaps Premier Rann in South Australia spent too much time dreaming with his former boss, Dunstan. Premier Rann can be a big winner out of this, and it will not be the preserve of any political party to hijack the process. It is an issue for all Australians. It is important that we all get together as a team and resolve these issues. I am sorry to have to say, Senator Siewert, that we do have the courage to put the money where our mouth is and to spend it wisely. I just hope that you are part of the solution and not part of the problem.

Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the government’s response to the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Committee’s report. I want to start by briefly responding to a couple of things Senator Heffernan said. I hope he was not speaking of former Premier Dunstan in disrespectful terms. He was a Premier much loved by many South Australians, whose legacy in social justice and reform across a range of areas led the nation. One thing that was interesting about the contribution of Senator Heffernan was that he did not defend the response to the report. The reason he could not defend the response to the report is that the response is outdated.

Bill Heffernan (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Heffernan interjecting—

Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You have not read it, Senator? I will take that interjection. He says he has not read it, and fair enough. The point is that the response is outdated. It reflects government policy as it was just over a month ago but apparently does not reflect government policy anymore. That is the issue I want to speak on, because I am sure my colleagues may want to speak more directly on the issue of water. Certainly Senator O’Brien has had some involvement in these issues. The point I want to make is: we are currently debating a response to a report—and I think Senator Siewert indicated the incredibly delayed time line associated with this response—received in December and tabled I think out of session, which is now completely out of date. Despite the fact that as at December 2006 the government had one position, now all of a sudden magically as at January we have another position.

Bill Heffernan (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Not magically; it took a lot of hard work.

Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Heffernan says it was not magical, and so I ask this: when the response was signed off, was someone lying? Was someone misleading the Senate? If it is the case that you were already planning to do your big $10 billion initiative, which you say was not cobbled together very quickly, how is it the case that the parliamentary secretary agreed to have a response to a report tabled that did not reflect the government’s position? I suggest that the reason is that that was your position then but your position, after a significant period of public debate and public discussion about the water crisis that is affecting so much particularly of southern Australia—

Bill Heffernan (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

More by me than anyone else.

Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You can take that view if you want, but I might make my contribution to the Senate, because Labor has actually been talking about the Murray-Darling Basin for some time. I recall that at the last election we went with a commitment to restore 1,500 gigalitres to the river. As a South Australian, I am keenly aware of the need to restore the Murray to health. Those of us in Adelaide have a very direct understanding of the importance of that river system’s health to our families, to our homes and to the state economy, obviously.

This government has belatedly become aware of the importance of doing something major on water. We know that it announced on 25 January this $10 billion package. That is a good step. We are glad that the government wants to do something in relation to water, but it is indicated by the response to this report that as at December you were still saying that it was essentially business as usual. We can see this if we look at the preamble. We have a statement such as:

The Australian Government is committed to the efficient and effective management of Australia’s water resources, as its role in developing the National Water Initiative (NWI) and the Murray Darling Basin Agreement attests.

Implementation of the NWI will be overseen by the Natural Resource Management Ministerial Council in line with detailed implementation plans to be developed by each State and Territory and the Australian Government and accredited by the National Water Commission.

Page 4 of the response goes on to say:

Under the NWI, State and Territory governments have agreed to planning frameworks that, once initiated, will be characterised by planning processes in which there is adequate opportunity for productive, environmental and other public benefit considerations to be identified ...

That is completely not the position now. Your announcement of 25 January completely superseded that, and that may well be appropriate. But we want to know, if you are saying that this has been in the pipeline for ages, why it is that Senator Minchin is unable to confirm when the costings were provided to his department. Why is it that in your announcement you cannot provide detailed costings, including the time line of the expenditure? Why is it that when the Treasurer is asked why he cannot provide detailed costings he comes up with—may I suggest an extremely lame excuse—‘We don’t know how much it will cost until the states sign up’?

The problem with that argument is that—as Senator Sherry interjected in question time today—if you know what the aggregate cost is, surely you know the bits that make up the aggregate. If you know that it is going to cost $10 billion, surely you know a bit about what makes up the $10 billion. But, no, the government just comes up with a figure; it is not able to say where it is going to be spent and how it is going to be spent nor the time line. We have the minister for finance unable to say when the Department of Finance and Administration actually obtained the costings and we have a report in December which is completely contrary—

Bill Heffernan (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You want us to go to your climate change summit to help you work it out.

Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Heffernan, you actually had your opportunity to make a contribution to this debate. As I understand it, I have the call at the moment.

Guy Barnett (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Senator Wong.

Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you. We had the government in December saying, ‘It is essentially business as usual’—the framework that has been in place for a number of years—and then on 25 January we had a completely different approach. The government want us to believe that this has been properly costed, properly considered and properly thought through, and they want us to believe that this is nothing to do with politics. It is a very difficult position for the government to take and, as I said, I did not see or hear Senator Heffernan defending the government’s response, which is usually what happens in the context of government responses to reports. Perhaps the parliamentary secretary will do so. Perhaps Senator Joyce will do so. We will wait and see. What we have is yet another indication that the 25 January Murray-Darling Basin plan was hastily prepared for political reasons. We on this side of the chamber have real concerns that it has not been properly planned and properly costed. We know, for example, that at the 7 November meeting the Prime Minister said:

We’ve agreed that we have to collaborate and have a basin wide approach to the problem. We’ve quite specifically asked a group of officials to be convened by my Department to report by the 15th of December to us on contingency planning to secure urban and other water supplies during the water year 2007-08 ... We’ve also agreed to accelerate the implementation of proposals under the National Water Initiative ...

What is extraordinary is that just over a month ago the formal response to a government report on rural water usage stated that the way forward on water was business as usual. In November last year—just a short time ago—we had the Prime Minister articulating the same view, saying that we are going to work through this collaboratively. Then we had a 25 January announcement. All this evidence suggests that until at least mid-December 2006 it was clear the Commonwealth was not planning to take over the Murray-Darling Basin. If the government did envisage the direction of the January statement then you would have to ask why the response to the Senate committee report was prepared and tabled in the terms that it was.

We do not want policy on the run on these important issues. Yet we have a Howard government that is very politically clever—very clever at making the announcement when it thinks that there is sufficient public pressure to do so and when the politics are right. What we do not have, with due respect, Senator Heffernan, is a government that thinks long term about the long-term sustainability challenges facing this country. The government is interested in short-term political solutions and that is why we have comments from climate change sceptics such as Minister Macfarlane last year when he dismissed the Al Gore film as entertainment. We now have a government that is trying to portray itself as being serious about issues such as water and climate change. I think people will become increasingly aware of the way in which the government seeks to respond with a political fix rather than with a long-term policy position in the long-term interests of the nation to address long-term challenges into the future.

Kerry O'Brien (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Primary Industries, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will not detain the Senate for an inordinate period of time, and I understand I may have a limited amount. I also want to draw the Senate’s attention to the fact that the Senate Standing Committee on Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport has a reference before it in relation to Murray-Darling Basin legislation. The matter was referred to the committee on 7 December, and it proposes changes to the legislation which are completely inconsistent with the government’s announced approach of taking over control of the Murray-Darling Basin.

Senator Wong has just very clearly indicated the absolute contradiction in the government’s response to the longstanding Senate committee report on rural water usage, which was, as I understand it, prepared and lodged in December and published in January. But on 7 December, the government introduced legislation into the House of Representatives which also confirms that the government’s position in early December was completely inconsistent with the position that the Prime Minister announced in relation to the takeover of the Murray-Darling Basin. When the government gets it wrong, when the government breaks the rules in relation to the time it takes to respond to reports, as it did with this response, and when it produces the response out of session, it is ironic that the production of that response, and indeed the legislation that I refer to, proves absolutely that this government throughout December did not consider its proposal to take over the Murray-Darling Basin and that it has lately come to that view.

Frankly, it is about time that the Prime Minister came clean and admitted that this is an election year plan—a plan to announce spending which they have not properly considered nor properly costed because it gives a good media burst. Frankly, it is not good enough for a government that has been in power for approaching 11 years to now say, ‘We have a solution.’ It is about spending money some way. We are going to explore that. The solution is the important thing. We are also aware that this is a very politically clever Prime Minister and this is a politically clever ploy. It is not in the interests of the Murray-Darling Basin at all; it is in the interests of the Liberal Party. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.