Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Justice and Customs) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak on the Water Amendment Bill 2008 and in doing so represent the views, interests and very strong passions of the water users in my electorate of Farrer. I shall describe their different interests. I think it is fair to say that the further downstream you get in any river system the more concerned you become about the activities upstream. My electorate takes in areas of the upper Murray in New South Wales and all the way down past the mid-Murray to the South Australian border. My electorate also includes the very important Menindee Lakes and part of the lower Darling system. These are regions of Australia critical to the debate that we are undertaking today.

For 21 months, Labor, in opposition and now in government, has opposed or delayed real reform. This has been enormously frustrating to me because we almost had game, set and match on the national water plan. It was brave, visionary, necessary and extremely difficult, and then something got in the way. It has been suggested that Victoria refused to sign up for political reasons. I do not know what the reasons were, but the fact was that no signing up took place, so we have essentially been in a holding pattern for far too long. Finally, after having stood in the way of this reform, we have seen what I would call a partial acceptance of the coalition’s water reforms in this bill to the extent that it embraces the principles of a single water authority, greater transparency—which is most important in the decision making and in how those decisions are rolled out on the ground—and an agreed national framework for water allocation. To that extent, we do support these reforms, but this bill is way too slow in a number of important areas.

There is no truly national referral of powers, which I think is what the previous government almost had the states signed up to. I am not sure whether you could call it a national water plan if there is not a truly national referral of powers. There is no early basin plan. I think that introduces more years of uncertainty for our farmers and irrigators. What concerns me most is the abolition of structural adjustment funding. How can a government consider major structural adjustment without looking at the costs to communities and what might be done to repair some damage in those communities when you remove enormous sources of income, wealth, production et cetera? And there is the reprehensible failure to begin the real on-farm water efficiency projects that have been identified so that most people know where they stand and it is just a matter of providing the resources to make the projects happen.

I think we have a good record in water reform in the Liberal and National parties. We had put in place a three-part rural recovery plan. Those are important words to use: rural recovery. There were infrastructure investments and efficiency, selected voluntary trading and purchasing—not the outrageous buyback that we are seeing taking place across the basin now—and, most importantly, community support. As anyone will tell you, if the community does not come with you, that is not a good position to be in. It means the government has lost its moral perspective and is acting, I think, in an immoral way by disregarding the communities to the point where they are not informed beforehand, they are not incorporated in the decision making and, after the decision has been made, they will be completely ignored.

The bill that we are debating today has four main aims. Firstly, it aims to transfer the powers of the Murray-Darling Basin Commission to the new Murray-Darling Basin Authority, providing only one independent body to manage the affairs of the Murray-Darling Basin. I have dealt with the Murray-Darling Basin Commission for a long time. I have great respect for its executive officers and its CEO, Wendy Craik. I think she has actually done a remarkable job. I do not know what their view on this is, but the average person would say, ‘You’ve got one authority now and you will have another one with a different name. What’s really changed?’ Secondly, it aims to enable the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, through the basin plan, to specify three tiers of emergency management guidelines so as to balance critical human water needs and irrigators’ needs. That function is taking place now with the various authorities, but, yes, it is incorporated as a main aim of this bill. Thirdly, it aims to strengthen the role of the ACCC by giving it jurisdiction to monitor water transactions carried out under the act. All I will say about the ACCC is that it has wide responsibilities in many areas of corporate Australia. Agriculture may or may not be its speciality. I would like it to consider learning more about how agriculture works in view of its powers under this bill. And, fourthly, it aims to give the Commonwealth a greater share of the risks relating to future reductions in water allocations, which were previously the responsibility of the states and individual contractors. So we simply have another level of government managing the scheme. As I said, unless there really is national power and there is an ability to make national decisions in the national interest, we have to be careful that we are not simply creating additional layers of bureaucracy and decision making that will slow down the effective allocation of the limited resources that we have.

Senator Wong could have had a functioning basin authority working on the basin plan from March this year, because the Water Act 2007 was in place, but the Prime Minister promised that there would not be a functioning basin authority until 2009, and no plan until 2011 at the earliest. I know that it is argued that time needs to be taken to get it right, and I accept that, but for those who will have major changes made to their irrigation allocations at the end of this, we are drawing out a very long and painful process and introducing great uncertainty. And that is very difficult when you have to run a business. There is enough uncertainty in farming, particularly in these times, without governments introducing more.

The coalition’s three-point rural recovery water plan which I referred to was quite different to the Labor Party’s ad hoc buyout of farmers. It was based on a water efficiency revolution and $6 billion of infrastructure funding, which this government seems to have given up on. That was $6 billion to make a real difference in and on the farms of those who are the most important water users and food producers in the country. That plan appears to have been abandoned by the government.

We advocate a planned and limited buyback in consultation with communities, bringing communities with us rather than having an ad hoc buyout like the one we have seen—it has been mentioned quite often—at Toorale Station at Bourke. That was a completely ad hoc approach. That ad hoc approach has been emphasised by members of government departments. I know that I am speaking anecdotally because I was not present, but I have heard reports—and they all seem to match up—that when government ministers sent their officials and members of their departments to areas in my electorate to discuss water buyback they came with a simple message: the government wants as much water as possible as cheaply as possible. I think they have been a bit surprised at the responses they have got—which have not been entirely positive, as you would appreciate.

The third part of our rural recovery plan—and I think it would have to be the most important part, even though it does not have the most dollars attached—is the community support program. The Rudd government has abandoned the $1.5 billion structural adjustment component of our original water plan. Structural adjustment recognises that communities that might lose a great deal of their water deserve something in return to help them manage the transition and to help them look after their communities.

People have mentioned the community water grants program. It was a small thing. It dealt with recycling in schools and in one area that I know of it kept the caravan park green so that tourists were far more likely to stop at that one rather than the dusty caravan parks further down the river. Rainwater tanks and recyclable toilets were installed. These grants often involved schools, community groups and service clubs. Even just something like that gives towns a lift. It helps people understand that water is scarce. They know that already but it makes them feel that they, in their communities, can do something about it. But that part of our water plan has been abandoned.

Last night, comments were made by you, Deputy Speaker—I am not sure that I can refer to you as the member for Wills as you are now in the Speaker’s chair—and I am going to refer to them, because in those comments you referred to me. You said, ‘The member for Farrer said to the parliament in 2003’—it is an awfully long time ago:

I would like to see our own agriculture department detach itself from the environmental debate somewhat and conduct some critical analysis of exactly what these proposals mean—

these were environmental flow proposals—

to agriculture and what threats they pose to agriculture.

The member for Wills pointed out that I was referring to the conclusions of the Wentworth Group and he went on to say:

Of course under the policies championed by the member for Farrer agriculture in the Murray-Darling has suffered greatly.

I would say that agriculture is suffering considerably now and the only thing that made agriculture suffer under our policies was the drought and the Labor government. But the reason I refer to those comments is that I believe the member for Wills was saying that I had not understood the importance of environmental flows to our river system and the importance, therefore, of a healthy river system to agriculture. That is quite a reasonable proposition except that it is not correct.

I was part of an inquiry, the member for New England was part of the inquiry and many people who have spoken on the water bill were also. I think that inquiry was conducted in 2003—it might have been a bit earlier—and it concluded that environmental flows are one of 23 indicators of catchment health. We had the Wentworth Group endorsed that. We had the CSIRO appear before us with the science. It was not a revolutionary finding; it was simply a reflection of scientific fact.

I have seen in the last five years this complete focus on environmental flows. Get water from anywhere, buy it as cheaply as possible and get it into the river with very little strategy or plan because once it is in the river and flowing down the system the system will be healthier! Well, yes, there are instances where that is the case, but we should be talking about catchment-wide plans. I refer people to that House of Representatives standing committee inquiry. It is very instructive. It is shocking to think that the policy has simply remained absolutely static in the minds of those in the Labor Party and that they think the issue is just about environmental flows and nothing else.

I mentioned at the beginning of my remarks the regions in my electorate and how people in those regions feel about the current state of affairs. I will start with the upper Murray and talk from the perspective of the constituents in these areas, because everyone has different views. I think that demonstrates the extremely high importance of getting the national plan right and the importance of making national decisions in the national interest, because those decisions have to capture all of these views. They probably will not, but they should capture all of these views.

If you live in the upper Murray then you are probably annoyed about the fact that the river is being used as a channel to send water further downstream. There are some natural rivers, like the Mitta Mitta River and the upper sections of the Murray and Tumut rivers, that are quite different from how they once might have been, because they are carrying a great deal of water in a limited channel capacity. When I used to represent the areas further upstream there was often a claim brought to me: ‘We don’t have our fishing and we don’t have the river in its natural state,’ because people could remember how the rivers were.

Moving down the river to Albury, there is huge storage on the Hume Weir. A lot of the area around the Hume Weir relies on boating, tourism and caravan parks. People come to that inland water body for recreational reasons. Because of the low levels in the Hume and the probability that more and more water will be stored just upstream of it rather than in a large, evaporative basin, which is effectively is what it can be, those opportunities for development around the Hume Weir are being lost. We must not forget industry. Industry is an important user of water. When we had the critical water shortages recently, the Norske Skog paper mill, which is very close to Albury, was seriously worried that it would not be able to continue its production of pulp and paper because it did not have the same security allocation as the town. Further on we have feedlots and manufacturers that use a lot of water, and they are quite concerned about continuing low water allocations. If you talk about a big regional centre, you talk about the need for people to keep their parks, gardens and recreational areas green. That is difficult for everybody but, as I said, with our community water grants I think we were teaching people how to go about doing this.

Further on down the Murray River we come to an area which I call the Murray Irrigation area. Murray Irrigation is the largest diverter of water from the Murray River when there is any water, and it is a general security user of water. Its allocation, as the season opens at the beginning of this financial year, is—for the third year running—zero per cent. When members opposite talk about looking at the statistics sheets for how much rice, cotton et cetera is grown in the southern Murray-Darling Basin, they need to be aware that the largest area that supports that growth, Murray Irrigation, has had a zero allocation for the last three years. You can imagine how terrible that is for somebody who relies on water to produce food to produce their income. Each year they think, ‘We’ll somehow get through this year, and next year will be better,’ and now they are facing a third year where they still have a zero allocation. They are often targeted quite openly, and I say to the Minister for Climate Change and Water that if she wants to take water out of the Murray she really has to come to the Murray Irrigation area.

The western end of that area is considering putting together—I do not know how formal the process has been made at this stage—a package where the whole Wakool Channel would be disconnected and that entire area of irrigation cut off. Water would be saved—because that appears to be what the government wants—but when I went to the town of Barham last week I feared greatly that the effect on that town would be extreme and I am very worried about its future. It was there that the farmers said to me that people from the government had simply said, ‘We’re here to get as much water as possible as cheaply as possible.’ I think that is an awful approach to take. It is not hard to sit and listen. It is not hard to take a visit to farms and understand the dynamics. If one is talking about a livelihood that has been built up over generations, I do not think governments should be acting like mortgage repossessors, as we have seen too much of lately.

General security allocations grow annual crops. There is a reason why general security and high security are what they are. This obsession with going to high-value crops is not necessarily sensible, because it makes sense that there are annual crops grown where there is less security of water allocation and there are high-security crops grown where the water is more secure. As you travel past Deniliquin and Barham you get to Wentworth, the lower Darling and that end of the Murray, where the water security is higher and the people are able to grow horticulture—almonds, grapes and various other fruits. That encompasses the Murray part of my electorate.

I must mention the Menindee Lakes, which are much targeted. There is a fantastic group in Broken Hill, the Darling River Action Group, and they are all volunteers. They very much have the environment at heart. They certainly are not about as much water as possible for farmers. When you go and visit areas on the ground, this is never a debate about farmers versus the environment. That might come as a surprise to people, but it is never about that. Farmers do care. Menindee is a great example. I think they are pretty bemused and bewildered by the numbers of people who have been tracking a path to the Menindee Lakes, spending by the time they fit it into their rushed schedule maybe a couple of hours there. Half of that time they are probably on their mobile phones, running around in circles, taking the usual shots and disappearing again without actually taking the time to understand what is really going on. I do not want to lecture here, but I really do think it is important. Members of the government perhaps do not have the connection with these rural areas that members of the opposition do. It is simply a matter of representation. You have to walk a mile in our shoes and understand what it is like for these communities. They are trying not to throw their hands up in the air. They do want to work with the government. They want a solution. They are coming forward with some quite innovative solutions, but they are not going to be sold down the river for nothing and abandoned. It is not fair to expect that.

There is the money in the national water plan to do this thing properly. There is the money to—I am not going to use the word ‘compensation’—provide a structural adjustment where changes are as dramatic as it appears they are going to be. We as a nation can afford to do that. Eighty per cent of Australians live 50 kilometres or closer to the coast. Every time I visit regional cities, I talk about water because I desperately want to know how people perceive it. There is a view out there that we must save the Murray, but what does that really mean? People do not understand what saving the Murray means. We know that we must manage our water more efficiently, but we must continue to grow food. We must continue to recognise that 39 per cent of our agricultural production comes out of the Murray Valley. Thirty-nine per cent of Australia’s income from agriculture also comes from that area. If we are going to continue the approach of the government, we have to be very aware of the consequences both for Australia’s income as a country and for the large number of communities represented there. (Time expired)

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