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

I appreciate the opportunity to speak on the appropriation bills before the House today, the Appropriation Bill (No. 5) 2008-2009 and the Appropriation Bill (No. 6) 2008-2009. Like other members who have spoken in the course of this debate, I would like to mention the effect of the government’s current policies, particularly its water policy, on my electorate in the southern Murray-Darling Basin. First up, I congratulate the Sydney Morning Herald for its good coverage of the situation in the Riverina and the Murray. On Monday, 9 March, Debra Jopson, its regional reporter, devoted two or three pages to how tough we are doing it in our part of the world, with her main article headlined ‘The land runs low on livelihoods and hope’. I could not put it more accurately myself.

Recently, as I think both the member for Calare and the member for Parkes noted, the Minister for Climate Change and Water, Senator Wong, visited the northern part of the Murray-Darling Basin but not the southern part. I appreciate that the time constraints ministers face are enormous and sometimes communities do not fully appreciate that, but I believe that our communities have reached a point of desperation with this minister. That has been demonstrated by the Deniliquin Pastoral Times devoting almost an entire newspaper to the frustration of the community with Senator Wong’s lack of listening.

I think it is a desperate situation when communities just want ministers to listen. They know that answers are not necessarily going to be forthcoming immediately and they certainly understand that the single biggest problem we face is lack of rain. The front page of the Deniliquin Pastoral Times is headlined ‘Listen to our concerns, Penny’ and there is an open letter from the community of Deniliquin to the minister, and I would like to read that letter:

Dear Senator Penny Wong

This week the ABC’s 7.30 Report is in Deniliquin reporting on a struggling rural community.

In recent times we have been crying out for government support, but our cries fall on deaf ears.

Perhaps the national publicity the 7.30 Report will generate will be the catalyst to get your government to listen to our concerns.

We are not whingers and we don’t want hand-outs. But we do want you to show some understanding of the impact your policies are having on our community, and we would also like to work in partnership with your government to achieve its policy objectives.

We understand the need to equitably share the limited water resources available and to ensure the long term sustainability of the Murray Darling Basin. We live here, so it is in our best interests to work with you to give our children a future.

However, there are some issues we believe need to be addressed.

First is the water buyback process. Our community likens this to the ad hoc purchase of homes in a metropolitan or regional community.

What would happen if the government said it was going to buy 25 per cent of homes in a suburb over a 10 year period? Not sure where, when or how much it is willing to pay for them, but they will be acquired because the government believes it is in the best interests of the city as a whole.

Of course, this would not happen. It wouldn’t be fair, and it would have a devastating affect on confidence in that community.

Who would develop and invest there with such uncertainty? Of course, no-one.

Yet that is precisely what the government is doing to our most precious resource.

The lack of expediency in the water buyback process and the manner in which expressions of interest are being called is not in the best interest of the government nor our community.

But thus far all attempts to discuss or review the process are ignored.

Then we have the $5 billion in infrastructure funding that is to be made available for water savings and efficiency. We’re still waiting to see it.

From 1995 to 2008, landholders in the Murray Valley invested $441 million to improve farm efficiencies, primarily through Land and Water Management Plans, and the government provided a further $52 million.

The benefits have been proved, yet at a time when it is even more vital that the work is continued, the funding has dried up. And despite invitations, Environment Minister Peter Garrett cannot find the time to come here and see first hand the reasons why he should free up the infrastructure funding.

Senator Wong, you appear to also be avoiding us. Is it too much that we ask you to show us a little respect; a little common courtesy? We are Australians fighting for our survival.

Why won’t you come to our region with an open mind, listen to our concerns and solutions, so we can work in partnership with your government to achieve its objectives?

When Prime Minister Kevin Rudd won office, he pledged to govern for all Australians.

We believe your government is not providing our town, nor our region, with the support that would normally be expected in the changing environment which we are experiencing.

A chance to discuss the way forward would be gratefully appreciated.

I read that letter onto the parliamentary record today because I know that Minister Penny Wong will not read it. I would like her to but she has not, so far, even responded to mail, from the constituents that I represent, on the single-biggest issue to them—which is water and their livelihoods. This letter is quite polite, I have to say. Country people are polite; they are not discourteous. They have noted a couple of times that they want to work with the minister to achieve her objectives and the government’s objectives. They are not jumping up and down saying, ‘We do not like what you are doing to our community,’ even though that is the case. They are just trying to be included in the process, and that is not too much to ask.

I have been less polite with the minister in my media release, which I issued just before she did her whistlestop tour of the northern Murray-Darling Basin, and I have said to the minister that she has a lot of explaining to do. She needs to explain to the New South Wales Murray, Lower Darling and Murrumbidgee communities why her government has sold them down the river by agreeing to Senator Xenophon’s crazy water buyback, which, as it stands, will have to be fully met by New South Wales irrigators. The buck stops with the government and they have allowed a situation where Senator Xenophon has held and is holding the communities that I represent entirely to ransom, and the government has stepped back and allowed him to do this.

When I saw the result after that long night in the Senate, I felt sick because I knew that, in bringing forward a $400 million water buyback by four years, the target would be the New South Wales Murray and the constituents that I represent. All the pressure would be on them. I rang a few the next day, including the New South Wales irrigators councils and people who represent those communities, and they all shared the same stunned, horrified feeling. The result of Senator Xenophon saying that he was standing up for the Murray-Darling Basin—and I do not know whether the senator believes that; he has not responded to our calls—is that the government has promised to accelerate the water buyback. And that is pretty devastating. I say that it will fall on our communities, because water in Queensland is essentially unregulated. It cannot be bought. Victoria has a cap on water leaving districts and the state. That is the Victorian government protecting the interests of its irrigators and its agricultural communities. As I see it now, I have to say: good on them.

We then saw the New South Wales government decide to take the Queensland government to the High Court to force the release of flows within the basin—which makes me very sad. All this is telling us that the national water plan, which was so close to fruition under the previous government, is in complete disarray. It does not mean anything anymore. All of the states are saying: ‘We are going to protect our state interests.’ You cannot blame them for doing that. If this buyback is to continue to the extent that Senator Xenophon has demanded, it will decimate the towns along the Murray. There will be ghost towns along the New South Wales Murray. As the community of Deniliquin expressed in its letter, in an excellent analogy of buying homes in a suburb: people might say that it is all too close to home. But this is very close to home. When you live in a small town, the community does not stop at your front door; it goes down the street, it goes to the clubs, it goes to the service clubs that you are part of—and you feel that an attack on your community is an attack on your home.

I have also asked Penny Wong to explain what happened to the $400 million that she proposed for Menindee Lakes in the election campaign. She did visit Broken Hill on her tour, but the Broken Hill community was quite annoyed that she did not look at Menindee. Anyone who knows anything about the Murray-Darling Basin knows that Menindee is critical and that the re-engineering of Menindee Lakes is highly important. Water is now stored in the upper two lakes, and Lake Menindee itself is completely dry. But the government has made some silly suggestions about letting a small amount of water down from time to time. If you look at those large, dry lake beds, you can see that you simply would not get anything going past them in any quantity to make any difference to South Australia’s lower lakes. The minister should have gone to Menindee and she should have seen the Menindee Lakes for herself. Instead, she indulged in some grandstanding at Toorale Station, releasing water to demonstrate how the buyback of Toorale had released 11 billion megalitres into the river. That was grandstanding, because the water would not normally reach Menindee or South Australia, and the fact that it rained simply gave the minister a get-out-of-jail card. I hope the Bourke community told her what they thought of her. But, as I said, rural communities are very polite; they probably did not tell her what they thought of her.

The other thing I have asked the minister is: why will she not make details of her water buyback available on a water exchange so that there can be transparency and integrity in the water market? At the moment, people are invited to tender to sell their water to the government. It is an enormously convoluted and bureaucratic process. It involves continual exchanges of letters with government departments—and enormous time lags between them. When invited to tender their water, they may get a letter from the government saying: ‘No, we don’t want it; but if you suggest a lower price we might.’ So people who are squeezed between a rock and a hard place and are desperate to sell—or whose banks are telling them, ‘Realise your assets; put some money back into your business, or we will be selling you up,’—are obliged to continue this second guessing with the government and come back with another figure. But the result—as many have explained in the parliament and as is well understood by the coalition—is that you get the swiss cheese effect where somebody has given up their water here and somebody has given up their water there but there is no integrated plan. Governments always insist on plans whenever they do anything, but not when it comes to buying back water. There is no plan! It is just here, there and everywhere.

Murray Irrigation came forward to the minister with a perfectly sensible structural adjustment package. They represent the biggest diverter on the Murray River and 2,400 family farms, so if the minister wanted a lot of water bought back for the environment she could have accepted that package or at least negotiated with Murray Irrigation. They had a plan which kept our rural communities intact, which freed up water strategically and which had a structural adjustment component. The minister must have thrown her hands up in the air and said: ‘Not the structural adjustment component! We don’t mind buying your water for a bargain basement price; we don’t mind disrespecting your communities; but provide structural adjustment? No way!’ There seems to be a complete block on funding for on-farm irrigation efficiencies—which is what the previous government had put aside, recognising that the National Water Plan would not work at all unless you had money to upgrade farms. And that was not necessarily money being given to landholders, because there would have been conditions attached and it probably would have included dollar-for-dollar funding on the part of the farmers.

But this government, as I said, has a complete mental block about it and refuses to do it. It makes no sense, because the on-farm efficiencies now need to be realised in upgrading irrigation efficiencies. We have done the piping and we have done the delivery. Yes, there is money available in the sensible measures happening now around metering and measuring—and that needed to be done years ago—but the real savings are to be found on farm. So the government needs to partner with farmers in this and then it will realise the water that it wants. It is not coalition policy to have this level of water for the environment. As someone who is part of these communities, I have to say that it hurts very badly. But if that is what the government wants to do then at least do it in a way that does not leave the community in tatters.

My next point to the minister is: why is she taking the local catchment management authorities out of the decision-making process regarding environmental water and centralising decision making in government departments? This relates to a specific issue in the Murray, where the Wetlands Working Group had allocated a certain amount of water and, in conjunction with the catchment management authorities, was going to direct what happened to that water from a community perspective. But the distribution of that environmental water has gone back a step into the bureaucracy and into government departments. I think that is a shame. It is certainly in keeping with the approach of the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts to these catchment management authorities. Who would have thought that, when the Labor government got in, funding for land care, funding for land and water management plans, and funding for the on-farm activities that farmers and communities have done for years to revegetate and look after biodiversity and production and have that perfect balance between the two, would all go out the door? And it was long before the global financial crisis—it went long ago. But who would have thought that it would be a Labor government that did it?

The next point I want to raise with the minister is: why does she not consider the fish kill in the Wakool and Neimur rivers and the Colligen and Merran creeks to be of environmental significance? These are tributaries of the Murray; they are anabranches, if you like. They are very close to the Murray River and they have been disconnected from it by the New South Wales government. I am not being particularly critical of the New South Wales government, because they probably had no choice. With the way the water is now being managed, they simply do not have the water to put down these tributaries. But if you travel to these areas, you see it is just shocking. We had an environmental fish kill because, in trying to keep a bit of water down these creeks, the New South Wales government released the water in pulses. It was an extremely hot day and the pulses of water almost boiled as they ran through the creek bed. An enormous nutrient load was added to it and the temperature made things worse and the fish died in their thousands. We were successful in getting this highlighted in the Daily Telegraph, so hopefully the people in the city had some idea of what was going on. We had waterholes along the river containing dead Murray cod—some of them 90 to 100 years old. One old lady said she used to talk to the fish. The fish had been there her whole life, so she knew what was happening. These fish were doing what the Murray cod were always doing in a drought, which is to go to their waterhole and wait it out.

There was appalling mismanagement and no proper scientific studies done. I am going to take a swipe at the CSIRO in the process. They get millions of dollars, but where are they? They are all sitting in Canberra. Somebody should have been there. Somebody probably was there, but they were not there in time. Thousands of Murray cod died. It was an environmental disaster. It was no less an environmental disaster than other things that we see along the rivers and the Lower Lakes—and I agree that the acidification there is tragic—but it would not have taken a great change of policy from the government to keep a constant flow down these tributaries and to keep the Murray cod alive. But instead we have the water being managed by various environmental managers.

If you look at the plethora of organisations that deal with this issue, it is frightening. We have got the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, which has replaced the Murray-Darling Basin Commission. I have written to them a couple of times about the fish kill and other matters and they have not replied; I do not know if they have set up their organisation, but perhaps the bureaucratic red tape they have to go through to set themselves up is so amazing that they cannot even respond to mail. We have got the National Water Commission—they are in Canberra. We have got the department of the environment, with an environmental water manager and a whole lot of bureaucrats all knowing so much about the basin! We have got the New South Wales government department with practically an identical set up. And, of course, we have got the other state governments. We have got thousands of bureaucrats who know all about the Murray-Darling Basin, but we do not have anyone who is prepared to make tough decisions—and the tough decision that could have been made in this case is for the environmental water to be attributed to these creeks. It is certainly there. It is being held—I do not know what for, but when there is water and when you have a need for it, I think some sensible decision-making has to take place. But there was no decision-making, so the fish died.

Why is the minister continuing to punish New South Wales irrigators and communities? I do not know, but I imagine she does and that that is why she refuses to visit us. Why will she not support sensible water recovery proposals that are linked to upgrades of farm infrastructure which I have already talked about? It was enormously disappointing that we did not have a visit from the minister and that we did not have our concerns listened to.

I want to conclude by addressing some remarks to the member for Wills. There have been many members of the rural communities in my electorate who have worked towards better water and environmental policies—their contribution has been outstanding—but I want to refer to a recent attack—on October 14, 2008—by a government member who blatantly abused the system while speaking on the Water Amendment Bill 2008. He spent most of his time attacking people who had been part of the debate some five years ago. I refer to the member for Wills and his attack on rural community leader Bill Hetherington.

A disgruntled science group led by Professor Jones apparently has not got over the House of Representatives standing committee on agriculture’s decision not to accept his report and to call for further science on the need for a quantity of environmental flows in the Murray. Professor Jones apparently complained and showed indignation that others dared to challenge his science. Murray Irrigation Ltd commissioned a report which discredited the Jones report, and the member for Wills made allegations, with parliamentary privilege, that Mr Hetherington—as chairman of Murray Irrigation Ltd—paid consultants for a contrived report. This is false, unfair, unfounded and outrageous. The member for Wills attacked a person with the highest credibility, but he himself had to resign as a minister because of his involvement with—(Time expired)

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