Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

There is a direct proportional relationship between the loudness of their interjections and the absence of action during their period in office. The situation in the Murray-Darling Basin is serious. There has been some modest reprieve with some recent rains but, with the arrival of warmer weather, evaporation will start again to take its toll, and water levels are again expected to start falling.

If we look at the facts which we are presented with, we have just had the fifth driest winter on record, and that is out of 117 years of records. Normally storages would be starting to fill now but, while there have been some inflows, these are now below the historical average. Active storage in the Murray system is around 20 per cent capacity, and for the basin as a whole it is around 23 per cent capacity. These are the facts that we are presented with. This is a deep challenge to the entire Murray-Darling Basin system; in fact, the system is in real crisis.

I look also to comments made yesterday by the CEO of the Murray-Darling Basin Commission, Wendy Craik. She said that the current water shortage ‘has the fingerprints of climate change all over it’ and she said:

There are features of the current phenomenon that we find ourselves in—water shortage, drought, whatever you want to call it—that are linked to climate change.

We also have statements by the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology in their technical report on climate change in 2007—when those opposite were in office—which say:

Recent Australian droughts have been accompanied by higher surface temperatures due to anthropogenic—

human induced—

warming.

If you look at the 2008 report of CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology, An assessment of the impact of climate change on the nature and frequency of exceptional climatic events, it states in its conclusion:

About 50 per cent of the rainfall decrease in southwestern Australia since the late 1960s is likely to be due to increases in greenhouse gases. The autumn rainfall decline in southeastern Australia since the late 1950s may be partly due to increases in greenhouse gases.

That is what the scientists have to say. The Chairman of the NFF, David Crombie, said, ‘The NFF believes that climate change may be the greatest threat confronting Australian farmers and their productive capacity now and into the future.’

This is the challenge we face with the Murray-Darling Basin system now. We have clear statements from the scientific community, from those representing farm organisations and from those representing the basin authority itself about the direct linkages between climate change and what is occurring in the Murray-Darling Basin. The government’s course of action is clear-cut.

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