Kay Hull (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Water Amendment Bill 2008. From the outset I would like to speak about the concerns that I have for the future of the Riverina and particularly for the future of irrigation, especially with the Labor government’s decisions on water acquisitions that the member for Port Adelaide just spoke about. Whilst we may have buybacks and, as the previous member has just indicated, when it does rain there will be water for wetlands and habitat, we have obviously forgotten about food for the people. I would like to bring back into the debate the issue of the people.

It is true that irrigation has brought life to many communities across Australia. John Oxley, over 100 years ago, when he arrived in the Murrumbidgee irrigation area, said that this was the ‘worst godforsaken place’ he had ever seen and there was absolutely no chance that anything could come of this horrific place. He said that he could not imagine anywhere worse to be. It was a dry and dusty bowl with absolutely no potential for any future. Of course, years later came the advent of irrigation and the Snowy hydro system, which fulfilled two purposes: (1) to generate electricity and (2) to drought-proof the area and ensure that there were irrigation waters available for the production of food. Then we had the building of the MIA system, and years later we had the development of the area of Coleambally by the New South Wales state government. In fact, they celebrated their 40th anniversary of being a township just a few months ago. So it has been a significant concern of my electorate to be very involved and cognisant of water—the benefits of water, the efficient use of water, the cost of water and, more importantly, the reliance of communities on water.

Over the years we have been able to achieve enormous outcomes and efficiencies. My concern, as I pointed out to the minister just recently in a meeting when she visited Wagga Wagga to address a dinner—the minister was kind enough to allocate me a short time beforehand—was the fact that there needs to be recognition of how much we have progressed and how much we have achieved. From where I stand, it seems that everyone thinks we are coming from ground zero in irrigation areas. Everybody thinks that nothing has been done, that water has flown out over the paddocks and fields in quantities of flood irrigation and that it is still happening—everything is inundated with water and there have been no efficiencies gained. The perception is that this is a government starting from ground zero; this is a government that has to take harsh measures because nobody else has done anything about being efficient, conservative and understanding of the balance of needs between the environment and irrigators.

I stand in this House today to say that is simply not true. As a matter of fact, we have made extraordinary gains in efficiencies in water delivery and water technology. It is important for the House to understand that irrigators do not waste water. They cannot afford to waste water.

I might point out to the House that the irrigators in my electorate have had no allocation now for well over three or four years so there have been enormous efficiencies. We talk about water here as if it is all surface water in my electorate. We do not hear about the groundwater preservation that has taken place and the cuts that have been made to entitlements of the groundwater users, who produce myriad crops and food resources from groundwater. We never hear anything about the understanding of catchments; the understanding of how groundwater has been used, has been allocated and has been withdrawn; and the savage cuts that have been applied to the many people who are reliant on those areas—quite correctly reliant. They have done nothing wrong. We talk, we listen and we hear about these irrigators who are out there wasting this water—achieving no gains; achieving no efficiencies—as though they are some sort of criminal on the black market. That is simply not true. They are doing this within the legal framework that has been provided to them over the years of successive governments in many states. I can specifically talk about New South Wales. These irrigators have done nothing wrong. In fact they are at one with the environment—they are at one with water use.

We talk about the crops grown, such as rice, and people say off the top of their heads, in ignorance, ‘We should never grow rice in Australia. It is a dry and arid continent and we should not be growing the most water-thirsty crop.’ I do not mind if somebody has come into my electorate, understood rice from paddy to plate and then comes away and makes some comment—so long as they are speaking from a base of knowledge. I disagree with and vehemently oppose people who come into this place and speak about something as if they had knowledge when in fact they speak from ignorance. I abhor that type of behaviour. If you want to talk about rice and whether or not we should grow rice in Australia then come to my electorate. I invite everybody to come to my electorate to see how rice is grown, and you will leave with a different point of view. You will leave saying, ‘Why aren’t we growing rice in more areas in Australia?’

Rice is a crop that only grows when there is water available. Rice does not need watering every day; unlike stock, which need water every day just to stay alive. Rice is a crop that feeds 40 million people a day. Rice is a crop that is part of one of the four food companies left in Australia. Rice is a crop that does not export its jobs; a crop that value-adds in a regional town, Leeton; a crop that has every one of its products leaving the port of Melbourne, and is the largest exporter from the port of Melbourne, branded with an Australian brand name; a crop that promotes and generates Australian jobs. Not one bin of rice goes out of this country; it is branded. Rice is a crop that may use a sheet of water as a warmth blanket to generate the first process of growth, but from there on it has a totally waterless value-adding process—it does not use water in one part of that process. Rice is a crop that invests in an environmental champions program; a crop that is so highly regulated that not just anyone can go and put a crop of rice in. You have to have the right conditions. You have to have impervious clay liners. You have to have entire reticulation schemes. You have to be approved to grow rice and you have to have the right soil conditions to grow rice. You tell me how many other crops in Australia are regulated like that.

Yet I hear people come into this House and speak about rice when they would not have even seen rice growing. I have seen people come into this House and speak about not buying Australian grown rice but rather buying imported rice. They would be shocked and disturbed to know that the countries they are buying it from have the worst environmental conditions and are the worst environmental bandits. They are supporting that environmental vandalism. I find that entirely unacceptable. I make my offer again: if people want to make comments about crops like rice then they are welcome to come out into my electorate. I will personally take people around and show them the truth of the matter. Then they will have knowledge, not ignorance. Then I am quite happy for them to have their views, because I know they will not have any adverse views about crops like rice. I object to people believing that there is a requirement for this kind of legislation to overcome those environmental bandits like irrigators.

Just recently, on 1 September 2008, there was an article in the Australian from the Chairman of the Coleambally Irrigation Area in my electorate. I think what it showed was the desperation about and the exasperation with the non-consultative process that is currently taking place. That non-consultative process meant that the chairman of Coleambally irrigation offered up a whole community, a town, for sale. He said, ‘Buy our town. If you want 500 gigalitres, we will give you 600 gigalitres. That is what our allocation is—not that we can get it, because there is no rain so you cannot get 600 gigalitres.’ There is a furphy here—all of these applications that may be received for the government to purchase entitlements are actually yielding no water because there is no water to give. But 600 gigs have been offered for sale by the Coleambally irrigation community.

What that article did was to create a lot of heat, but the one very valuable role that it played was that, for once, it brought people back into the equation. You will hear time and time again in this water debate in this House about habitat, environment, wetlands and river processes. You will hear a lot about frogs and a whole host of things that should survive in a great environment. But you will hear little about the people. You will hear little about a social impact study on the people affected and the communities affected. The reason you will hear little—in fact you will hear nothing—about a social impact study on the effects of buying out licences in an uncontrolled manner is that there is no such social impact study. There is not one in place and there will not be one, and that is the crime of the process that is being undertaken now.

I go back to this article in the Australian to see whether or not there was real sincerity in this water buyback. That is what Mr Black was looking at. According to that article, Mr Black said:

I’m just trying to see how serious the Government is in its water purchase program …

Of course the government would not take it up. Mr Black said: ‘Give us 3.5 billion. We will give the town people a billion for their businesses and everything and we will give the irrigators and the land and water entitlement holders the rest. Then at least you could have your 600 gigalitres in one fell swoop and they could go away and start their lives. That way you would not be killing them by stealth—a death of a thousand cuts with no concern, no care and no responsibility taken for what happens after that.’

We had a public meeting in Coleambally. There are only 800 people in Coleambally and there were probably 600 people at that public meeting. The meeting place was absolutely filled to capacity. One thing the meeting did was galvanise those people into standing together, because they knew that they could not afford to be divided on this—that united they will stand and divided they will fall. They determined to fight for their township. I guess the telling part of that public meeting was when the young female captain of Coleambally Central School spoke at the meeting and said that 38 students had left the school that year as a result of the shortage of water. But when the 38 students left that meant that the school lost three teachers. That meant that the remaining students lost access to elective subjects and subjects that were vital for them to gain their HSC. The captain talked about her aspirations and what it meant to the students to be left in the lurch, as they have been with teachers having to vacate because of the drop in the number of students at the school. The students are personally affected by the lack of subjects that are available to study.

These are powerful, real issues for the future of our nation, and I am not sure that anyone is taking the time to understand this. I am also concerned about the government’s proposal to buy out small irrigators on 15 hectares or less. It is just total destruction. Many of these 15-hectare farms are citrus groves or stone fruit orchards, or belong to someone who has been contributing financially to the community. It would be different if there were some sort of organised and structurally balanced plan, but there is not.

The water plan was started off by the former Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson—and I congratulate him for that—and the state stood in his way year on year. Then when Malcolm Turnbull, the current Leader of the Opposition, took on this portfolio he understood how this worked. When the New South Wales state government offered a buyback, they just offered a general buyback; it did not have to be for efficiencies. When we offered our tender it had to arise from efficiencies that had been gained. It had to be surplus water gained through efficiencies. It projected that we were working as a team—not to have less irrigation but to have more effective irrigation and more effective crop production. This is the type of attitude that we need to put in place now.

I look at some of the issues involved with this bill, and I note that item 3 of this bill is to strengthen the role of the ACCC by giving them jurisdiction to monitor water transactions carried out under the act. Might I say that that fills me with fear. It fills me with uncertainty, as it does the irrigation companies that I represent, because I do not trust that the ACCC have any idea what they are talking about. I speak specifically about termination fees. Termination fees are payable to an irrigation infrastructure operator when a customer cancels their service—that means they are going to exit the system—and is required because all of the other people in that system have to meet the additional cost of the fixed infrastructure charges, the delivery charges and all of the maintenance. A larger burden falls on a smaller number of people so we have to have a termination fee. The fees provide compensation or recompense towards the future fixed costs that are avoided by these people who choose to have an early exit from a scheme. Thus the termination fee avoids any third-party impacts from water trade.

The methodology endorsed by the ACCC allows our operators to impose a maximum fee of 15 times their annual fixed charges. But this has resulted in a perverse outcome. It means that inefficient regions that have not invested any capital, effort or intelligence and who have failed to institute cost and infrastructure reforms over the last decade, have high fixed charges and therefore have high termination fees—fees of over $900 a megalitre. Efficient regions that have taken the hard decisions in recent years will have lower fixed costs and therefore lower termination fees—as low as $180 a megalitre. The problem is that the efficient regions will become the target. Because they have been efficient they are the target because they have cheaper termination fees, so everyone wants to come and buy out of that area. They are the ones at risk now. This process of applying a maximum fee of 15 times the annual fixed charges has seen perverse economic outcomes. To strengthen the powers of the ACCC to do even more damage and involve themselves in something they have no idea about is an absolutely frightful thought. (Time expired)

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