Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I will not be supporting the Water Bill 2007 or the Water (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2007 and I would like to spend the next 20 minutes outlining why. On 7 February 2007, I put out a press release saying that I endorsed the proposed water plan that the Prime Minister put out. I was hopeful at the time that it was more about legitimate policy than politics. In the last few months, in terms of the outcome—or the ‘nonoutcome’—of the original proposal and now the referral-of-powers outcome that has produced this piece of legislation, I think we are seeing quite clearly that this is not about policy at all; it is about politics.

We just listened for 20 minutes to the member for Gwydir and I think we can understand why the Prime Minister removed water arrangements from the National Party and gave them to the Liberal Party to try and see through this process. But I do not think the current Minister for the Environment and Water Resources has seen it through at all. In fact, I think he has fallen prey to the Prime Minister’s pathway of trying to create some sort of wedge in relation to the Labor Party.

I do not think the Labor Party comes out of this looking good at all either. I have constantly heard today that this is the second-best option and I would agree with that. But if it is the second-best option, why are they supporting it? The Labor Party knows full well that this particular bill bears no resemblance at all to the original water security concept that the Prime Minister had. I do not think any of us in this place would agree that the way in which water policy was put in place over the years and the state boundary issues et cetera did not need to be addressed.

However, if any member whose electorate has water interests were to support this piece of legislation, with its motivation, with the good motherhood statement it contains that can be backed up by very little policy substance, with an associated intergovernmental agreement arrangement with the states that no-one has even sighted and with the way it addresses the issues at present—something like 26 amendments were introduced by the government today—I think they would be negligent to their electorate. For that reason, I will not support this bill and quite possibly I will be the only person in this place who will not support it.

There is the intergovernmental agreement. Victoria has not agreed to it and debate is occurring at the New South Wales level—I know that discussions are happening at the moment in Sydney—about whether it will come in, due to the rules being changed regarding who will meet the compensation arrangements. The bill’s clause 255, which applies to compulsory acquisition, can be removed at the stroke of a pen. The National Farmers Federation are of the opinion that clause 255 will suddenly remove some of the obstacles that they believe are within the general concept; but, particularly if there is no IGA in place, how will those things be driven?

This is a great piece of Labor Party legislation. This is the sort of thing that water users would have thought the Labor Party, with a centralist attitude, would have delivered in trying to gain control of a resource. In my view, the way in which this has been perpetrated—the lack of consultation there has been with stakeholders; the lack of consultation there was at the start with Treasury officials and others, such as members of cabinet; the way it was put together on a piece of paper; and the documents that were transferred from the Prime Minister to the premiers for consultation purposes—has been atrocious. I have seen those documents. The way they were presented was an absolute disgrace. It was as though it all happened within half an hour and someone scribbled something that said: ‘We’ve got to do something about the Murray-Darling because Rudd just did something about climate change. We’ve got to divert this argument to where we can gain something. So let’s have a water bill. Let’s do something with the Murray-Darling. Let’s blame the states.’

Let us blame the states. In 1994, a COAG process was put in place. The member for Gwydir spoke about this earlier; the minister and many others have spoken about it also. That process allowed for reform, one part of which was water reform. That process was through the Council of Australian Governments, with the states coming together and agreeing on reform for major areas, water being one of them. So we had that process to start with. What was the binding process with that? Why did they come together? The member for Gwydir talked about property rights being recognised. In 1994, it was put in place that two things essentially would happen—other things would also happen—so that competition payments would not flow to the states unless the states recognised a number of conditions. The two major conditions were: firstly, a market would be established; and, secondly, property rights would be recognised. Because of the nation’s constitutional problems, the property rights would have to be recognised at a state level. The Commonwealth, through its control of the competition policy payments, had the whip hand. The deal that was done was that the money would not flow unless the states recognised their responsibilities under the deal or the arrangement; so the Prime Minister turned around a few months ago and said, ‘The states have been incompetent; we need to move in and take this thing over and get it right.’

Let us look at what the Commonwealth actually did over that period. I do not know how many intergovernmental agreements, bilateral arrangements and catchment management blueprints there have been—almost one a year. There is the National Water Initiative; the member for Gwydir was upset that the minister had forgotten that it had even happened. Myriad arrangements were put in place under the auspices of those guarantees. Hundreds of millions of dollars, billions of dollars, have been transferred from the Commonwealth to the states, when the states have not complied with the original arrangement. The Member for Parkes knows about all this.

See this speech in context