Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I was looking forward to the detailed policy framework from the opposition today, but we heard none of it from the member for Grayndler. Apparently, it is in a document which he has there, but he has not told us what is in it. But before I came to speak on this MPI, I thought I would do some research of my own as to what the Labor Party’s policies on water were. It is, after all, our biggest environmental challenge. So I went to the Labor Party’s website, as one does, and clicked on the heading ‘Policy’. There are a number of policy documents there. The first one which referred to water was a speech by Mr Beazley on 24 November 2005. Mr Beazley said:

I also at this point indicate my intention to have more to say about water policy. ... I will be addressing the challenges we face in water management in 2006.

That was all he had to say. Well, 2006 came along, and the next great address that we had from the then Leader of the Opposition was in March. I am afraid to say that there was not much about water there either. In a very long and tightly spaced document, it is not until we get to page 13 that he mentions water, and it is in the context of praising Sydney Water for offering $150 cash back on front-loading washing machines. That is a great answer to the drought.

Finally, on 15 November 2006, Mr Beazley gave a speech to the National Press Club, headed portentously ‘My blueprint for prosperity’. I have been through that document several times and with great care. Water is not mentioned once. The only statement I could find from Mr Beazley in the course of the last year or so about water was a statement on 9 November 2006 in which he called on the government to immediately commit $500 million to the Queensland government’s Western Corridor Recycled Water Scheme. As it happened, I was in Brisbane that day meeting with the Queensland government, as I have met with every state government, to discuss their water plans, and this recycling scheme was on the agenda. The Queensland government had been in close discussions with the Australian government and the National Water Commission, and they had asked for financial support. They had asked for $184 million. So Mr Beazley was proposing that we should give them nearly three times what they had asked for. That is how Labor proposes to end the blame game. That is how Labor proposes to reform federal relations: give state governments that have neglected their water policy and infrastructure for decades three times what they ask for. That is the sort of recklessness with taxpayers’ funds that we can expect from the Labor Party.

One would hope that now that Mr Rudd has replaced Mr Beazley as the Leader of the Opposition a different approach might be had to water. We heard none of it today from the member for Grayndler. Perhaps that is because he is on the way out, about to be replaced by the member for Kingsford Smith. But the member for Griffith, the Leader of the Opposition, has quite a distinguished track record in the annals of water management failures in Australia. Mr Rudd was the chief of staff in opposition and the head of the cabinet office in government to Wayne Goss from 1988 to 1995. The Goss government was elected in 1989 in part based on a platform which included as a central plank a decision not to proceed with the Wolffdene Dam.

The Wolffdene Dam was the next big water storage facility proposed for south-east Queensland, the fastest growing urban area in Australia. It was a proposal of The Nationals government, and it was canned. It was terminated by the Goss government—no doubt under the advice of Mr Rudd. They failed to build the dam and then did nothing else—and that is really the key point here, because south-east Queensland is our fastest growing urban centre, and it faces a shocking drought. It goes into a long, hot summer, with El Nino conditions predicted, with its most important storage facility—Wivenhoe Dam—below 25 per cent full. There is no big city area in Australia more stressed for water than Brisbane and south-east Queensland. In large measure, the responsibility for that lies on the shoulders of the Goss government and its chief of staff, now the Leader of the Opposition, because in 1989 they decided not to build another dam.

Of course, they not only failed to build that dam but also failed to do anything else. There was a parliamentary inquiry into the dam, and the Labor members were opposed to it. But they recommended that Queensland should progress recycling and reuse and do something else. If you are not going to build a dam, do something else. Dams are not compulsory. There are all sorts of options for urban water. But they chose to do nothing, and that is why south-east Queensland faces the challenge it does today. That indeed is why Sydney, my own city, faces the challenge it does today. In 1995, Mr Carr was elected, decided not to build a dam and then did nothing else. In both of those two cities, our biggest and our fastest growing, there has been no substantial augmentation of water supplies for 30 years—incredible complacency and neglect. That is Labor’s track record.

What has the Australian government done under John Howard? As Paul Kelly wrote recently in the Australian, John Howard has been prescient on water. He led all the governments of Australia into the National Water Initiative, the blueprint for Australia’s water reform. The member for Grayndler has said it is sound policy. I thank him for that compliment. It is the policy of every single government in Australia. But it would not be the policy of every single government had it not been for the leadership of John Howard.

The Prime Minister has committed $2 billion to the Australian government water fund, the largest commitment of money to Australia’s water resources by a federal government in our history. Right around Australia, over half a billion dollars has been committed to projects which are improving our knowledge of our water systems, promoting recycling, and replacing, as they are in the Wimmera-Mallee, 16,000 kilometres of leaky, wasteful open channels with 8,000 kilometres of pipes. The Prime Minister has called for a revolution in the way we think about water, and he is delivering that with sound policies and with the largest contribution of cash to water that we have ever seen from a federal government.

In addition to that, the Prime Minister committed $500 million in the last budget to the Murray-Darling Basin Commission. This was probably the most disappointing part of the member for Grayndler’s address to us. He complained, as he often does, that not one drop of water has found its way back into the Murray. He refers to the Living Murray initiative, which is a program to acquire 500 gigalitres of permanent water—long-term cap-equivalent water—for the river by 2009. He points to a page on the website of the Murray-Darling Basin Commission—a page which, I might say, was placed there by resolution of the ministerial council on a motion I moved largely because I wanted everybody to understand exactly where we are up to with the Living Murray initiative.

The most important thing to bear in mind about the Living Murray initiative is that the Commonwealth is not obliged to deliver one litre of water. The reason for that, Mr Deputy Speaker Causley—and you, with your background, know this better than anybody in this House—is that the Commonwealth does not manage water resources. The water resources of Australia are managed by the states and the territories. As one water expert often says to me, the Commonwealth has not delivered a bucket of water to anyone. That is a feature of our constitutional structure.

So the scheme for the Living Murray initiative was that, over that period—the five years through to 2009—500 gigalitres would be acquired in one form or another, and that would come entirely from the states. New South Wales’s target was 249 gigalitres; Victoria’s, 214; South Australia’s, 35; and the ACT’s, two. The reason Queensland is not mentioned there is that the focus of the Living Murray initiative is a number of important ecological sites along the Murray River, in the southern Murray-Darling Basin. All of that water is the subject of a considerable number of projects. They are not designed to deliver water tomorrow; they are designed to deliver water within their time frames. The majority of these projects are designed to acquire water for the environment but at the same time not diminish the amount of water that is actually or practically available for irrigation. We know that there is an enormous amount of water lost through wastage, through seepage, through evaporation and through inefficient practices in the irrigation areas. Every irrigator, including those in the public gallery here today, knows that a great deal of progress is being made and will be made in using water more efficiently. So our aim has been to achieve win-wins—a win for the environment and a win for agriculture.

The water that is in the process of being recovered is well over half that 500-gigalitre target. But the Prime Minister earlier this year, notwithstanding the progress that was being made, was dissatisfied with that. He was not happy to sit by and say, ‘I will stick to my commitment of putting $200 million into this $500 million fund’—$500 million to buy 500 gigalitres. He demanded that we do more. We have committed, out of the additional $500 million that has gone to the Murray-Darling Basin Commission, an additional $200 million to the Living Murray initiative.

The Australian government has gone further. We have, out in the market today, a tender to buy water for the Living Murray initiative. Contrary to what the member for Grayndler has said to the effect that we are not buying any water, we have a tender out there in the market. I saw a press release by the member for Grayndler recently which said that a tender was not buying water. Most of us would recognise that that shows a touching commercial naivety. A tender is an offer to purchase water—but it is an offer to buy water on the basis that the water has become available by reason of water efficiencies. There are enormous quantities of water that can be made available through efficiencies. Simply piping open channels can, in some circumstances, save up to 90 per cent of the water, particularly where water is being directed over long distances through channels for stock and domestic purposes. Often the wastage—and this is certainly the case in the Wimmera-Mallee—can be as high as 95 per cent. So there is a lot that can be saved through investment which can then be made available.

But, if there has been a slowness in seeking to acquire water for the Living Murray initiative, that is clearly at the feet of the states. I know the new Labor approach, which Mr Beazley foreshadowed in the remarks I referred to earlier, is never to say a bad word about state governments and preferably to give them three times what they ask for. But the simple fact of the matter—and it is clear on the web page that the member for Grayndler refers to—is that the obligation under the Living Murray initiative to deliver water is from the states. The obligation from the Commonwealth is to pay 40 per cent of the cost of that. We have increased that to the point where we are now committing more than half the funds to the Living Murray initiative and we are seeking to buy water directly ourselves. No Australian government has been more committed to the water security of Australia than this one. (Time expired)

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