Mary Fisher (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you for this opportunity to speak about the critical issues facing the Murray-Darling Basin with particular emphasis on providing examples of the government’s very disappointing and potentially tragic failure to deliver on its commitment to evidence based policy in terms of saving the Murray-Darling. I earlier outlined in this place concerns about the government’s failure to do so in respect of bringing water back into the system by redistributing water or distributing the little water that becomes available and in respect of better collection, storage, use and reuse of water. I want to focus on this very critical question: once there is some little water, as and when it becomes available, where is the government’s evidence based plan to redistribute that water? Where is the government’s evidence based plan to decide who gets access to that water, on what terms, when they should get it, why they should get it, how they should get it and for what they should be able to use it?

It should be obvious that these questions are very important ones that the Australian electorate at large deserves answers to, particularly from a Prime Minister who has promised, and properly so, the development of evidence based policy—effectively the promise of an evidence based plan and evidence based actions to address the water crisis facing the country.

In assessing, mapping and presumably—hopefully—having some method to decide how water would be redistributed, let us start looking at who or what might have access to the little water that is available. Some of the contenders obviously include the river itself and the environment—a proper cause. Some of the contenders obviously and properly include the users—farmers and irrigators, city people and townspeople, and country people. The everyday users include the communities along the river. At the moment they include those who use water to produce other things—farmers and irrigators. There might be a distinction drawn between farmers and irrigators who produce for consumption in the domestic market versus those who produce consumables for export. What is the government’s plan? What is the government’s process for deciding what its plan is? We have not heard its plan yet, so presumably it is still implementing its process for the plan. We would like to be told. We would like to be included. The Australian people would like to be included in the process.

Once we have decided to whom it should go, the question is: what water will they get? Some of us might think all water is the same. No. Of course, currently we have myriad licensing and allocation systems across the various states. There are permanent water entitlements. There are temporary water entitlements and a range of methods of treatment of water. In the process of working out who gets water the question arises: what water will people get? When will they get it? Now or in the future? Will there be transition periods? How will they get it? Will it be guaranteed? Will they get a minimum with the potential for more in the future, depending upon whether more becomes available in the basin? Where will they get it? From where will water come? Will there be differing treatment or distinctions between cities and towns, between capital cities and rural and regional cities? Will there be distinctions between states? Will there be distinctions between users for domestic consumption, commercial consumption, people consumption or animal consumption? To these questions we do not know the answers.

Why are these questions important? The importance was demonstrated yesterday, effectively, as we heard the government talking of priority being given to certain people and things for water right now. The compelling necessity to have the government’s method mapped out unfolds when you look at it in this context. In the current context you can ask questions like: who will get the water? For example, do towns on the Murray get priority over Adelaide or is it the other way around? If so, why so? Or, will Melbourne and Bendigo get priority over other users once the pipeline is built? If so, why so? Why does Adelaide seem to have first claim, in a contingency sense, to water held in reserve in the Menindee Lakes, when it is highly likely that water will evaporate before Adelaide will lay claim to it in any event?

Thus far, we cannot see any clear plan. It becomes all the more critical that there be a clear plan because, over time, we see the debate morphing into the vernacular use of the term ‘critical human needs’. Understanding what the government means by critical human needs is really important, particularly when the government uses that term with varying meanings and then, once a definition is miraculously ascribed to that term, those to whom water is given for those purposes get that water to the exclusion of all others and with priority over everybody else.

So it does matter. An example of where it does matter is the reserving of parts of the Menindee Lakes for critical human needs for Adelaide—which the minister has highlighted as something that needs to be done. It matters in the context of the Sugarloaf Pipeline, where 110 gigalitres of new water will be taken out of the system. Melbourne is not currently taking it out of the system but it will start to take up to 110 gigalitres of water a year presumably for critical human needs. That escalates the use of that water to the exclusion of others. Not only is it water that has not been used before, it gives it priority that it has not had thus far. Maybe those 110 gigalitres were previously used by irrigators who might have had a 20 per cent security to accessing that water. That gets changed as soon as it is miraculously ascribed as supplying ‘critical human needs’.

What does the minister mean when she refers, as she does, to ‘critical human needs’? This has been given as evidence before the Senate committee, and expert witnesses before the Senate committee have essentially agreed that at no stage have they had the meaning of ‘critical human needs’ provided to them by the government—yet it is a term that is used. We are assumed to know what it means. It is kind of obvious, isn’t it? Why then does the minister vary her language when she refers to it? Why has she sometimes referred to it as drinking water for the cities and the towns that rely upon the Murray? Why should it be provided only to those who rely on the Murray, particularly when it is able to be argued that some of those that rely upon the Murray—as does Adelaide for the majority of its water supply—should not? As a senator for South Australia I am a keen advocate of weaning Adelaide off the Murray. Why should Adelaide continue to suck on the Murray just because it has up to now? And when we are advocating taking Adelaide off the teat, why is Melbourne, another capital city, suddenly going to be put on the teat to the exclusion of others once we have ‘human critical needs’? The government owes it to the Australian electorate to tell them what it means when it says ‘critical human needs’. More than that, that is a really important but time critical example of the government’s failure to explain its method behind its water madness. (Time expired)