Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Sustainable Development and Cities) Share this | Hansard source

I commend many of the contributions so far in the debate on this important bill, the Water Amendment Bill 2008. The previous speaker, the member for Boothby, has outlined what is probably my greatest regret about the discussion today, and that is that we have missed almost two years of opportunity to get on with the job while there have been discussions and posturing around the innovative and quite visionary strategy that the previous Howard government had outlined. The Leader of the Opposition, Malcolm Turnbull, was front and centre in that work, and I think very courageously and boldly moved forward with a legislative agenda, a support package and reform initiatives. Maybe if we had had the support of the then opposition, the Labor Party, and, more importantly, of the Labor leaders in the states and territories involved we would be talking about the gains that had been secured to date and what more could be done, not talking about getting started. I think that is the greatest tragedy about this discussion.

Notwithstanding that fact, the opposition has indicated its support for the bill and the reforms. My friend and colleague the member for Flinders, the shadow minister for the environment and water, has outlined some important amendments that emphasise the consequences of action and inaction and particularly highlight the plight of the Lower Lakes and the Coorong area and what is needed to address the dire situation faced by those communities—and, I guess, by our entire nation—with a Ramsar listed wetland on life support and a need for an infusion of scarce water. Many argue that that water is available within the system, but we have not had the wherewithal and the cooperation to bring it in a timely way to that very important part of the Murray-Darling Basin system. We also need to recognise that the flora and fauna that gave rise to that Ramsar listing is under threat in the region, as well as the many businesses that rely upon a healthy ecology in the Lower Lakes and Coorong area in order to pursue their ambitions for a quality of life. So they are very timely amendments and I would urge the government to take account of them.

More importantly, my contribution today is to try to encourage some transformational thinking. Just doing more of the same is not going to cut it; it is not going to bring about the results that we are looking for. Many of the elements of the coalition’s strategy that was stymied by Labor politics nearly two years ago touched some of these things: the need for structural reform and institutional arrangements that actually support our goal; the need for some funding to bring about change and the required transformation in the way we do things; the enormous opportunities for improvements in efficiency; and the nobbling of the market for water that sees it go to its highest and best use and gives people some confidence that they can plan with certainty. It also addressed the bizarre position in Victoria of building a north-south pipeline to take water from one microclimate that is most likely to have the same drought environment and conditions as greater Melbourne and then shift it down to Melbourne which raises questions about the implications for the longer term. The strategy also recognised the fact that water reform itself needs to be completely systemic. It needs to look not only at the investments we make in infrastructure but at the efficiency and performance of that infrastructure to make sure that those investments are actually building a better way forward, not simply extending what is happening at the moment. Support for voluntary trading and purchasing of water is important, but there needs to be an informed marketplace so people can invest, as they would in other key inputs for their production, with confidence in what they are purchasing and that its reliability and bankability is transparent and understood by all.

That constructive plan was outlined by the coalition when it was in government. Sadly, I have to say—as a Victorian who was an adviser to the former Kennett government’s natural resources minister, the wonderful human Geoff Coleman, who understood the importance of water and water reform for long-run prosperity in those markets and in the rural sector reliant upon water—that Victoria was a leader in much of that work. It recognised the trade-offs between resource security and price; that overallocation undermined everybody’s future prospects; that work was required by governments to make sure that that overallocation, born out of perception of perpetual abundance, was actually weakening the security of the allocations that were out there; and that water trading was an important reform to embrace the fact that the environment is a key entitlement holder to water. I remember vividly the government purchasing water in the marketplace to make sure the Barmah Forest got a drink because its needs had to be addressed, and the government led in that work. It also led in recognising the partnerships that are essential, such as for innovations like the Wimmera-Mallee pipeline—

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