Peter Garrett (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Reconciliation and the Arts) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the amendment and the remarks of my colleagues the member for Grayndler and the member for Fremantle. People listening, particularly in country New South Wales and country Victoria, would be a little astonished by the contribution that has been made, particularly by the government, on this very important issue as we discuss the corporatisation of Snowy Hydro and now its privatisation. The reasons for that would be evident upon reflection. The member for Batman, in his remarks, pointed out the significance of the construction of the Snowy Hydro. It not only provided water for the Murray-Darling Basin but additionally provided secure employment for a significant number of postwar immigrants to Australia and, more generally, contributed to the sense that, following the end of World War II, Australia was capable of taking on an engineering task of this size and magnitude and doing it successfully.

I want to raise some concerns I have about the imminent privatisation and make further comments in relation to specifically what is proposed. It has to be said that, whilst it took a quarter of a century to build, it was a world-recognised engineering achievement, it created great wealth and the water it provided for irrigation sustained a farming community, Snowy Hydro also had some significant environmental disadvantages. Most notably, there was the ultimate state of the Snowy River itself, a river that is steeped in the folklore of Australia. The poem The Man from Snowy River is well known by all of us, yet, towards the end of the 1990s, we had a situation where the river was in very deep trouble. Flows were down to about one per cent and it was clear, from the public clamour to restore that river to health, that something had to happen.

The Snowy hydro scheme is simple in one respect but complex in another. It harvests water from the Snowy Mountains. The water goes west, under the mountains, to the Murrumbidgee and Murray rivers for irrigation and generates electricity as it drops down onto the plain. There are some 16 large dams and 220 kilometres of tunnels, pipelines and aqueduct. We saw on the Movietone News the sight of workers toiling in Cooma and Jindabyne to produce the engineering marvel.

But the drip release of water into the Snowy River itself meant that pressure was inevitably going to be put on the governments that owned the scheme to produce water for environmental flows. The set of negotiations between state governments, the federal government, conservationists and river users, particularly in the Snowy River region in Victoria, which emerged from the commissioning of an extremely in-depth environmental impact statement, meant that eventually, following various scientific studies, there was a recommendation of a return of 21 per cent of natural water flows back to the top of the Snowy River and additionally a commitment for efficiency restructures for irrigation and channelling and a further seven per cent flow to get to the required scientifically identified level of 28 per cent.

On 29 August 2002, the corporatisation took place and the release of water into the Snowy River happened. As the then President of the ACF, I was proud to be there with Premier Bracks and Premier Carr on the occasion of the release of that water.

But I want to draw to the attention of the House some of my great concerns about the subsequent actions of Snowy Hydro, particularly in relation to the on-selling of the agreements that exist within the privatisation, which I think this House and particularly the major shareholders—the New South Wales government and the Victorian government—should be mindful of. In effect, Snowy Hydro went from providing water for irrigation and generating power to trading in water and energy. The agreement to return environmental flows to the Snowy was made, but two issues arise when we consider what happens next. And I think it will be instructive for the House to hear that story in some detail.

Members of the public, conservationists, river users, irrigators, farming communities and others, including me, were firmly of the view that the wording of the agreement, the public announcements and the press releases provided for the Mowamba aqueduct to effectively be decommissioned so that there would be a release of environmental flows into the Snowy River and that these would occur as natural flows. Instead, relying on a technical interpretation of the agreement, after the first release of water from the Mowamba, subsequent flows of water from the Mowamba were redirected back into Jindabyne and the second release of water back into the river system came from Jindabyne and the dam.

I have to say clearly that this was definitely in breach of the spirit of the agreement signed by the governments. On Tuesday night I took leave from the House to speak in Berridale. Every single person who approached me about this issue was wondering why there is not a vigorous debate about it in the parliament and drew my attention to the fact that the spirit of the agreement had been breached and that there was not in fact the provision of environmental flows into the Snowy River as the public had been led to believe.

The argument that comes back is: the amount of water being provided goes back into the Snowy, so what is the concern? I will explain the concern in these terms: the Snowy River was a healthy organism, a river system with its health derived from annual river flows and the variability of weather events, a dry season followed by spring or summer rains, and it is that process—the natural flows and the pulse rates of the river—that generates river health that increases biodiversity.

If you do not have that, if you only supply water when it suits you from the bottom of a dam—or the top of a dam if there is an overflow—you do not replicate as closely as you would otherwise the natural pulse, variabilities and flows of water into the river system. That is very clearly a breach of the public’s understanding of what was going to take place following the corporatisation and of the commitment by the Commonwealth, but more particularly by the New South Wales and Victorian governments, to expend that money into the river system. I think that is an issue that we should not lose sight of. When the Victorian, New South Wales and Commonwealth governments come to sign off on privatisation, extremely careful scrutiny must be made of the actual terms of the existing agreement—in particular, the way in which they might be technically read so as to subvert their total meaning.

An additional question arises as to what happens in the future when we reach the situation stipulated in the agreement about above minimum flows. Minimum flows are locked into the agreement for 72 years, but if there is excess water in a season then there is a question as to when, how and who gets that water. The dollar pressure to hold onto water, to release it for energy or to hold on to it for irrigation in drought at a later time, as opposed to providing for it as a release to make up between the 21 per cent and 28 per cent for environmental flows, will definitely raise its head.

I draw the attention of the House to comments made by the member for Grayndler. He said that climate change creates a very different Australia. The fact of the matter is that rates of evaporation out of our river systems were the highest ever in 2002—the year this corporatisation agreement was signed. But the projections from the CSIRO and other authorities about the likely impacts of climate change mean that the impact on the Snowy Hydro, on allocations, on existing storages and on river health—into the Snowy where we need environmental flows and through the Murray where we need both environmental flows and an adequate provision of water for irrigators—will become the most important issue, and management issue, that a privatised Snowy Hydro will have to face. I say very strongly to the premiers of Victoria and New South Wales and also to the federal government that it is critical that this issue be factored in as an additional component to any agreement that is finally reached on privatisation—additional to the existing agreements that led to corporatisation. It seems to me to be as important as other issues that have been raised by the member for Fremantle and others. This is the critical issue.

The reason for that is that all the figures that exist within the corporatisation agreement are based on an EIS that was undertaken in the 1990s, which had at that point in time sufficient and available data as was known. In the six years since that time, we have learned a great deal more about the likely impacts of climate change. There is a great deal more economic research and there is a much higher responsibility for governments, as there is for corporations and individuals, to adopt a precautionary principle on something as critical as water. I tell you: for those communities in the Murray-Darling Basin and down the Snowy, the provision of water will be the most critical thing of all.

I will confine my remarks to saying that it is these issues that need consideration. I note that it is considered that the privatisation should take place some time in June or July. It seems to me that that is an exceedingly hasty time frame to determine a privatisation of this scale. I also understand that there are additional agreements and negotiations being undertaken between state and federal governments and the privatisation entities. I think that this parliament and the parliaments of Victoria and New South Wales are entitled to know what they are so that we can have a full debate about them. At the very least, in supporting this amendment, and recognising that we have been able to raise these issues in the House, I hope that the full context of the remarks that I have made on this upcoming privatisation can be noted.

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