Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 5) 2008-2009 and Appropriation Bill (No. 6) 2008-2009, the bills that largely gave birth to the stimulus package that the government announced not too long ago. In this contribution I wish to address the failure of the government’s approach to the economy, but in the main I wish to address the complete and utter failure of the government’s approach to the issue of the Murray-Darling Basin—in particular its effect on the Lower Lakes, which are in my electorate.

Firstly, in relation to the stimulus package, what we have seen from this government is a panic strategy which has failed the Australian people. It has left our kids with enormous debt, which will damage their prospects for many years to come. We have seen two packages. We had one in October last year with cash payments directed in December. It has been proven that these cash payments failed—they had no economic benefit whatsoever. The second package was announced in February this year. Again, largely it will be one-off payments to people and it will fail again.

In the first package the government claimed that they were creating 75,000 jobs. Of course when they realised that was not going to happen, they changed the wording in this, the second package, to ‘supporting’ 50,000 jobs—I think that was the figure. Again, the evidence has suggested and shows that that is just not the case. What we have now is a large amount of future debt put on our credit card. The ability of this government to borrow up to $200 billion in debt in the future, which of course they will do, will hang over our children’s heads as higher taxes and less opportunity. So this strategy is failing—the government’s approach to the economy is failing. It is ad hoc; it is not well thought through; it is panicked. It has managed to turn what was a $20-odd billion surplus a little over 15 months ago into a massive deficit. That is, in itself, quite an achievement.

But now we are also seeing an approach by this government to policies, and one in particular, which is a payback to the union movement for a campaign that they ran. It too will cost jobs and impact on the economic opportunity of young Australians. We hear the rhetoric of the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister about fairness, but of course fairness in the workplace starts with a job. The policies that the government are pursuing are bad for our economy now and they are bad for our economy in the future. These bills give effect to that.

On the other hand, we have a balanced approach and we have the experience to manage the economy in difficult times. It is unfortunate that the Prime Minister is too arrogant to listen to the advice of the Leader of the Opposition, who of course knows this issue much better than he does. I was fortunate to have the Leader of the Opposition in my electorate last Thursday and I must say he was extraordinarily well received. We had a small business forum in Stirling with eight small business representatives around a table in a cafe. They really appreciated the 40 minutes that they had with the Leader of the Opposition to talk about the issues which affected them. They talked about how the downturn in the economy is affecting them. They were able to ask the Leader of the Opposition what his ideas would be to take the economy forward with a better balanced approach. Every one of them expressed concern about a strategy of just handing out borrowed money, which has no real effect. They all commented that they saw no benefit in their sales from the failed stimulus package in December and they were very pessimistic about this approach also.

We are seeing a government without any idea of how to run the economy. We have a nervous Treasurer who is panicking at the wrong time. We saw them play politics early last year in raising and talking up the inflation genie. Now we see the completely opposite approach, and it too is failing. We have a government always doing things for political purposes, not for the good of the country. This will leave our children with massive debts and fewer opportunities in the future.

These bills give effect to these policies from recent announcements. In particular, this afternoon I wish to talk about the issue of water and the Murray-Darling Basin, which of course finishes in my electorate with the Lower Lakes. During the trip last week the Leader of the Opposition, the member for Barker and I went to Mannum, which is in the member for Barker’s seat in the lower reaches of the Murray River. We looked at a marina for houseboats; in fact, we looked at what used to be a marina for houseboats. At the moment you would best describe it as a dry dock with several houseboats stuck in mud or silt because of the low water levels. The water is about 1.5 metres below the average pool level at Mannum, which is below lock 1 in South Australia. It is seeing the real and genuine effects of many years of mismanagement by both sides of politics in particular state governments right across the nation, but I do refer to New South Wales and Victoria.

Unfortunately, what we are now seeing is the complete collapse of this government’s approach to the water issue. Last week we saw on Thursday, the same day that I had the Leader of the Opposition looking at the river and the Lower Lakes, the Premier of South Australia very desperately trying to get back into this game because for eight long years he has done nothing on this issue. He was announcing his government’s consideration of a High Court case against Victoria’s decision as to a four per cent cap. But what the Premier of South Australia has done, in highlighting this issue, is actually draw a line under the complete and utter failure of the Rudd government to address this very important issue. Last year we saw the announcement, with great hype and fanfare, of a historic agreement for the national control of the Murray-Darling Basin system when in fact what had actually been agreed was a half-baked agreement with the Victorian Premier to give the states the ability to still opt out of the Murray-Darling Basin Commission. That means there is no real change at all.

That was a very unfortunate decision for the Prime Minister and the state premiers to make because it leaves us with the same problem that we have had for over 100 years. Of course control of the Murray-Darling Basin was the bone of contention for South Australians back in the late 1890s when Federation was discussed, and very many of the debates that we have today were had back in those days. In fact, my local paper, the Mount Barker Courier, editorialised in the very early 1900s about the fact that we needed a national system to manage the Murray-Darling Basin because it was a national river system. Unfortunately, what we have seen since this government came into office has been a side deal with a recalcitrant Premier of Victoria which has now led to the complete and utter collapse of the Murray-Darling Basin agreement for which the Leader of the Opposition fought so hard when he was the minister for water, because it was the now Leader of the Opposition and the then Prime Minister who announced the groundbreaking Murray-Darling Basin plan in January 2007.

Had the Victorian Premier not played politics, along with the South Australian Premier, the National President of the Labor Party, and the then Leader of the Opposition and now Prime Minister, we would have been able to move forward under a national framework, and for the first time we would have had truly national management of the Murray-Darling Basin. Instead, we have seen over these last 16 months politics being played and no real effort made to fix the Murray-Darling Basin system.

The Minister for Climate Change and Water, a South Australian herself, is quite taken with buybacks. She has put her whole focus into buying back water entitlements, which of course are part of the answer and they were part of the $10 billion water plan. However, they are not the whole answer. In fact, a very significant part of the Murray-Darling Basin plan, the rescue plan announced by the Leader of the Opposition in January 2007, was the infrastructure investments. The infrastructure investments can deliver real water savings today that can come back into the system, which will mean that there will be more water in the Lower Lakes.

The Lower Lakes, for members’ information, are at the point of no return. They are in complete crisis. Last Friday I had a phone call from a local in Goolwa, Keith Parkes, a very hardworking small businessman, who told me that the Lower Lakes had dropped to minus 1.48 metres below sea level. The state government says that at minus 1.5 metres the soil in the Lower Lakes will go acidic, which potentially will poison what remains of the Lower Lakes. The salt reading at Clayton, which is around halfway up the Lower Lakes, for those members who are unfamiliar with the Lower Lakes, was up around 28,000, which, as members know, is not that far off sea water level proportions. So it is a complete disaster zone at the moment. It needs water. It needs 30 gigalitres urgently, and we have called for the government to purchase on the water market some temporary water to put into the Lower Lakes to keep them going. The state government is looking at all sorts of short-term and long-term options for the Lower Lakes. I urge them to take action and to quickly address these issues and stop procrastinating. The people of Goolwa and the Lower Lakes need action and they need action now.

Where the federal government has failed is in not having a coherent approach to this issue. It has failed to get the right agreement, which is a national system, a complete takeover of the system, not one with an opt-out clause. There is an opt-out clause there. When you hear the Prime Minister, the minister for water and the state premiers say that for the first time there is a national agreement, there is not really, because there is an opt out. The original 2007 plan from the Leader of the Opposition had a very clear position, which was that it needed to be a truly national system, independent of the states. That is the position we have to get to.

Of course the states are conflicted. Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria want as much water for their states as they can possibly get. Unfortunately, that impacts on South Australia. No-one is saying that this issue is easy. No-one is saying that there are easy solutions to this issue. We are some way into a significant drought. We hope that the drought ends soon, but we need to get the reforms in place so that this crisis never happens again. It would be a tragedy if the Lower Lakes were flooded with saltwater. We are opposed to that on this side of the House. We do not think it is necessary, and it is absolutely irreversible. There need to be reforms in the system. There needs to be an investment in on-farm and off-farm infrastructure which genuinely saves water by piping rather than channelling. The Victorian water system is archaic in many parts. It wastes so much water that we could save and put back into the Murray-Darling Basin system, which could then of course become environmental flows for the Lower Lakes.

Buybacks in themselves will not solve this problem. Unfortunately, the government are obsessed with buybacks. What we have seen since they have been in government is that 98 per cent of the water they have bought is not real water; it is entitlement, which of course is not there at the moment because we are in a drought. So 98 per cent of the money they have spent is actually not putting water back into the system, yet there has been no real money spent on infrastructure. So there is an obsession with buybacks and an ignoring of infrastructure spending.

I welcome the deal with Senator Xenophon, who joined me down on the Lower Lakes and is fighting as a South Australian to improve this dire situation for the people of my electorate. I welcome Senator Xenophon’s support in that respect, but I must say that what Senator Xenophon did was bring forward money that the Leader of the Opposition had outlined in his plan in January 2007. I welcome the fact that Senator Xenophon was able to get some action—indeed, more action than the minister herself could get from her very own cabinet.

The other problem with buybacks of course is that Australia needs to continue to grow its own food. The Murray-Darling Basin is the food bowl of Australia—there is no doubt about that. We need to continue to be able to use water but we need to use it more wisely. We need to get more bang for our buck; we need to get more crop out of less water. We can do that with infrastructure investment and with better and more efficient farm practices. I support those investments and I support investments to help communities adjust to the buyback issue. It is a focus that the government has lost since it came to government and it is a focus that we pursued. You need to take people with you. For too long in this country it has been state against state in respect of the Murray-Darling Basin. That can no longer occur, because what we are doing is killing one of our great assets—the Murray-Darling Basin system and in particular the River Murray.

I plead with the government to take more urgent action to get some water back into the system. I plead with the government to spend the $9 million or $10 million it would take today to buy 30 gigalitres of water to put back into the Lower Lakes to help the Lower Lakes recover. I urge the state government to take some urgent action rather than talking and telling the community one thing. I urge them to take action to help save Goolwa and the southern part of my electorate. I urge the minister and the Prime Minister to address and to turn their eyes to the complete and utter disaster which we see in the lower reaches of the Murray-Darling Basin system.

Unfortunately, we have seen the result of the approach from the government thus far in the complete and utter collapse of the Murray-Darling Basin agreement, which is a bad thing for our country. I urge them to have an urgent meeting to sort out the problems and to avoid the High Court challenge that the Premier of South Australia is considering. That will help nobody. We need the Victorians to remove the four per cent cap. Farmers in New South Wales want that, South Australians want that and it would be good for the Murray-Darling Basin system.

It was a bad agreement last year. It was sold as historic. In fact, it was the wrong decision at the wrong time. We need a better agreement. We need a better focus from this government on the crisis in the Murray-Darling Basin system. More than spin, we need some action. I urge the government to act.

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