Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Water Amendment Bill 2008. The Water Act 2007, which this bill seeks to amend, is landmark legislation in the history of this House. For the first time the Commonwealth has sought to have a national approach to the management of one of the most important watercourses and physical resources in Australia, the Murray-Darling Basin. Malcolm Turnbull in 2006 recognised the importance of improving water efficiency and security in the Murray-Darling Basin and, in conjunction with the then Prime Minister, on 25 January 2007 introduced the National Plan for Water Security. The Water Act 2007 was introduced by Malcolm Turnbull, the then Minister for the Environment and Water Resources, later that year. We now see a partial uptake of the Turnbull reforms. For 21 months in opposition and now in government Labor has opposed or delayed real reforms.

There are, however, many other unsung heroes of the water industry, many of whom live in Western Australia. In 1994 the Council of Australian Governments agreed that irrigation schemes should be under local management. As a result of this policy, New South Wales and Western Australia transferred the ownership of government owned irrigation schemes to local ownership. Harvey Water in my electorate of Forrest was converted from government to local ownership in 1996. Harvey Water is a two-tier cooperative mutual structure and has specialised membership rules covering the day-to-day operations, asset maintenance and renewals and management of long-term sinking funds. Harvey Water adopted the earliest formal water-trading rules in Australia. These rules became the blueprint for subsequent trading rules. The first trade of temporary water occurred in January 1997, 12 years before these proposed water market rules will come into existence.

Harvey Water has also engaged in water saving. Harvey Water has proposed a simple and sensible means by which the daily water supply for over 100,000 Western Australians can be permanently met by saving irrigation water that is lost in the delivery process between the dams and the farms. The proposal saves water they already have and reduces the need to develop new higher cost sources. The Harvey Pipe Project involves piping the irrigation area at a cost of over $70 million to lay about 200 kilometres of pipes starting from the Harvey and Logue Brook dams. Stage 1 of the Harvey Pipe Project involving the 60-kilometre piping of the Harvey South irrigation subdistrict was completed on time and on budget during 2005-06.

Harvey Water is an irrigation co-op owned by over 750 grower members between Waroona and Dardanup who produce food—dairy, beef, fruit and vegetables—and wine for urban dwellers. Their role and responsibility is to use water efficiently and to support their irrigators to be profitable so that they can continue in business. The irrigation industry supplied by Harvey Water produces food valued at over $100 million per year for Western Australians and for export. As urban people are affected by rising energy costs, so too are farmers. Since they cannot dictate the price at which they sell their products, unlike a lot of other businesses, any drop in the cost of production will help them survive.

The water saved and traded in the Integrated Water Supply System will meet the daily water needs of many people at a cost very competitive with other new sources. There is no doubt that there is always room for improvement in water use efficiency in food production by farmers, and this project specifically provides a great opportunity to achieve more water savings on-farm. The Harvey Piping Project will deliver water to farmers under energy cost free, gravity head pressure available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days of the year. There will be enough free gravity pressure to also drive any known on-farm irrigation system, such as sprinklers or trickle systems, which are much more efficient at delivering water to plants than surface irrigation methods. If farmers do not have to operate pumps and engines to water their plants, this will be a major cost saving which will become more and more valuable in the years ahead. Not only will they be able to produce food more cheaply but also they will be able to save more water on-farm in doing so.

There will also be benefits to the environment, as there will be less water applied with sprinkler and trickle type systems, so the ground water level will not rise as much. Nor will there be as much water and nutrients moving off the paddocks into downstream waters potentially causing problems, because the majority of these will be applied directly to the plants and will be used by them. No power will be used to move the water, so there will be no greenhouse emissions during the operation of the system. In fact, since the water will be used to grow plants, the area will effectively become more like a carbon sink itself. The Harvey Pipe Project has received excellent recognition as being an innovative but simple means of saving water and providing multiple benefits across society. It certainly deserves the strong support it is getting nationally, at the state level and locally as well as the various awards that it has received.

Another locally owned irrigation scheme in Western Australia, the Ord Irrigation Cooperative, adopted the first land and water management plan in Australia. The Ord Land and Water Management Plan was put together by local irrigators and the Kununurra community. It was, and is still today, a voluntary arrangement. The Ord plan predated the compulsory New South Wales Land and Water Management Plans by over five years. Gascoyne Water Cooperative has the highest and most productive use of irrigation water in Australia. The locally owned irrigation schemes in Western Australia have reason to be proud of their track record, all with little or no government funds or assistance. Locally owned irrigation schemes, such as Murray Irrigation, Coleambally Irrigation and Western Murray Irrigation, have actively worked to improve efficiencies in the water market. To this end, MDB grower owned schemes, together with the locally owned schemes in other states, have established and funded an online water entitlement register known as the National Irrigation Corporations Water Entitlement Register or NICWER. In WA, NICWER is the only water entitlement register in existence. The register also provides online access to 30 per cent of the entitlement in the Murray-Darling Basin. This is a major self-funded initiative of locally owned schemes and is indicative of their strong commitment to improving water market efficiencies and providing a service to their members.

On the other hand, one of the greatest problems in the Murray-Darling Basin is the failure of basin state governments to process both volumetric and permanent water trades in a timely and efficient manner. Members of the House with an interest in the water industry would all receive the Waterexchange’s weekly Water Market Report. The Waterexchange processes approximately 70 to 80 per cent of the volumetric trades in the Murray-Darling Basin, and each week it provides a snapshot of prices, volumes and approval times. The Water Market Report shows the problems associated with the state government processing of trades in the system. Large local grower owned schemes can process approvals for internal and external volumetric trades within 24 to 48 hours. State authorities processing similar volumes of trades take between 21 and 54 days. New South Wales and South Australia are hampered by a lack of human and IT resources and, to some extent, by bureaucratic red tape. State Water in New South Wales and DLWBC in South Australia struggle with their workload and the problems associated with underfunding.

A different and greater problem has arisen since the commencement of the current season, with the Victorian government owned Goulburn-Murray Water. Goulburn-Murray Water is the largest irrigation scheme in Australia. Goulburn-Murray Water is currently refusing almost all interstate trades from the date that Prime Minister Rudd announced the intention to purchase water for South Australia. I understand that, to date, Goulburn-Murray Water’s tally of refused volumetric trades since the start of September may be approximately 400. Goulburn-Murray Water’s behaviour has led to the almost collapse of volumetric trade in the Murray-Darling Basin this season. New South Wales and South Australia are struggling to deal with the consequences of Goulburn-Murray Water’s actions.

If the aim is to have an efficient, well-run, water-trading market, the principles must be consistent and fair. It is unacceptable that there is one rule for locally owned irrigation schemes and another for government owned schemes. Government owned schemes should not be above the law and should be accountable for their actions. I would like to address four key issues in this bill: the constitution of the Basin Officials Committee, priority for critical human needs and for conveyance water, the application of the water market rules and the water charge rules, and the impact of the transformation arrangements.

One of the greatest problems in the Murray-Darling Basin is the continued exclusion of the locally owned irrigation schemes from the Murray-Darling Basin decision-making process. New South Wales and South Australian locally owned and controlled irrigation schemes account for approximately 50 to 60 per cent of water entitlements in the Murray-Darling Basin. To date, all senior managers have been excluded from the perversely named Water CEOs Group. The refusal to include local irrigation scheme input is even more absurd when you consider that Murray Irrigation Ltd is the second-largest irrigation scheme in Australia. This situation needs to be urgently reviewed so that balanced input can be made to the decision-making process.

I welcome the clear prioritising of water for critical human needs, although I note this needs to be more clearly defined. I have recently returned from a fact-finding tour to the Clyde River in Tasmania. The Tasmanian government has, for the last two seasons, turned off the water to the town of Bothwell and the surrounding areas immediately after Christmas. These actions by the Tasmanian government were undertaken based on a flawed water management plan. The impact of the plan was that it was unlikely that water would be denied for critical human needs on a regular basis. The Tasmanian government, after some weeks, turned to the federal government to approve the release of water for the town under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. In 2007, Minister Turnbull approved the release. In 2008, Minister Garrett refused, leaving the town’s people without water. It is therefore with relief that, in the Murray-Darling Basin, at least priority is given to water for human critical needs.

The government must ensure that the water market rules will only commence when state government authorities and corporations are bound by the water market rules and the water charge rules. The current situation is that the rules are only imposed upon locally owned irrigation schemes. This has created distortions in the market and damaged local irrigation communities. It has encouraged the behaviour of Goulburn-Murray Water and allows that behaviour to go unchecked. The rules should not commence until they apply consistently to everyone. Otherwise, the market will continue to suffer.

Locally owned irrigation schemes in the Murray-Darling Basin have accepted that water entitlements will be transferred to and from their communities, and the members have amended their scheme rules to facilitate trading. However, what was not considered is that there can be no justification for the transformation of water entitlements that continue to be used within the irrigation schemes. Internal transformation, as it is called, involves moving grower owned water entitlements within locally owned irrigation schemes to the state register. The consequences of this policy have not been thought through, and the consequences will be profound.

An irrigator who transformed to the New South Wales state register would be connected to irrigation corporation infrastructure but would not be on the corporation’s billing or metering system and would no longer be subject to the corporation’s land and water management plans. There would also be issues with the management of drainage. Drainage infrastructure is, under normal circumstances, owned by the irrigation corporation. On transformation, the irrigators would no longer have a right to access the drainage infrastructure and, more importantly, if they did they would not be bound by the irrigation corporation’s requirements to comply with environmental obligations.

In general, State Water, unlike the irrigation corporations, does not have remote computerised meter-reading equipment. In simple terms, in New South Wales, State Water and the Department of Water and Energy would potentially need to change the electronic water meters to manual meters and then send their meter-reading people into the irrigation district, which would be 20 to 30 kilometres away. The meter reader would need to read perhaps just a handful of meters, and DWE would be required to give approvals for transfers with no knowledge of the potential infrastructure or environmental impacts of those decisions. There is no obligation under the New South Wales Water Act on State Water or DWE to accept irrigators who have transformed their entitlements, as the cost would in many cases be prohibitive. These irrigators would no longer be on the irrigation corporation register, yet potentially they would be without state register services. New South Wales does not have the resources at this point to service its existing customer base. In some cases growers did not get a bill for three years due to problems with the state meter-reading and billing system.

The irrigation corporation members originally transformed their entitlements from state entitlements to the bulk licence as part of an incorporation of the corporations. Why would they transform them back again? Pioneer Valley Water Board irrigators in Queensland have voluntarily leased their individual entitlements to Pioneer Valley Water Co-operative as the first stage of getting them off the Queensland state register. If an irrigator were dissatisfied with the state government approval process and the state register, possibly because of the long delays in the trading approval process, would they be allowed to transfer onto another register and approval process? They had done this in the first instance when the corporation was established, and this would seem fair, and the policy would then be consistent and unbiased.

The Water Amendment Bill 2008 is a major step forward in the management of the Murray-Darling Basin. However, the government must seek to be inclusive of those 50 to 60 per cent of Murray-Darling Basin irrigators that are not members of government owned schemes. For too long policy makers have sought to exclude them from the decision-making process and taken the opportunity to disadvantage grower owned schemes in the marketplace. The government needs to use this opportunity to ensure that all irrigators are treated fairly and consistently. On that basis, I support the amendments and recommendations proposed by the shadow minister.

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