Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

At the last Federal Council meeting of the Liberal Party in Canberra last year, a motion that I had the privilege of submitting was passed unanimously. That resolution, carried unanimously, requested of this government that section 51(xxxi) of our Constitution, the power of acquisition on just terms, be extended by referendum—in other words, we would have to test the people—to all state and local government decisions that represent a diminution of the property rights of individuals and persons, as the Constitution describes them. I have to admit that I have not had a written reply from the government on the passage of that motion, but it stands there as put by the Western Australian division on the ground that we are fed up with the treatment of the people of Australia, not by the Commonwealth in taking decisions where compensation is due under our Constitution but by all the planning and other decisions, particularly of state and local government, that can materially affect the value of a person’s property.

The issue before us today relates to the treatment of compensation where both the state and the federal governments have agreed. I could probably take the whole afternoon discussing the various aspects of these matters. I am well aware of the time I have available, but I think it is worth putting on record that, just as I was prepared to argue a case at the Federal Council of the Liberal Party for a proper responsibility of all governments not to steal from the people—to use the previous member’s words, and I endorse those words—the fact of life is that we do have a problem where compensation is paid and the proceeds are subject to taxation. There are so many complex issues around this I have discovered, having looked at it. I understand that, if it is classified as restructuring, it is not taxed. I understand that the Commissioner of Taxation himself has put out a discussion paper looking at some of the complexities of this issue.

But I really wanted to spend my last couple of minutes asking: how often has it been duly necessary to take away people’s rights in the name of the environment, in the name of a healthy Murray River? I participated in an inquiry that found out that most of the decisions related to its health were taken by computer modelling. You go and take a four-gallon bucket of water out of the river and you come to all sorts of conclusions. But we as a committee, with one dissenter, advised the government in an interim report that they should go back and get some serious data.

When it comes to underground aquifers—and I know that is particularly where the member for New England’s concern rises—it is very difficult not to have to say, ‘Stop.’ I have been an observer of that in another part of Australia. It is a serious problem. It comes down to compensation. But when the authorities have failed to replace every open channel in the Murray-Darling irrigation system with pipe and when we are allowing 50 per cent of the water that flows into South Australia to evaporate in a recreational lake—that is a statistical fact; it is called Lake Alexandrina—why are we going around trying to steal people’s water entitlements when they are turning them to a productive benefit for Australia? What is more, why are we sneaking through the backdoor, Mr Parliamentary Secretary—I have written to you on this matter—and starting to stand in the marketplace to buy water from distressed growers? Fix the problems first. And when we have secured every drop of water, we can let some flow on a river that used to dry right up before man’s intervention. (Time expired)

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