Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the Appropriation (Water Entitlements and Home Insulation) Bill 2009-2010 and related bill here today. As most others seem to have done, I will mention a number of points that I believe are significant in the overall water debate, not just in relation to the buyback issue. I was pleased to hear the member for Calare announce that he has some concerns for the Namoi system. I do share some of his concerns and will relate those concerns, which he may well be interested in, in terms of policy in the future, because I think some work needs to be done, particularly in the Senate, to tidy up some issues that directly impact on the Namoi system.

I recently attended a carbon farming conference in Orange, and I think you may well have been interested in some of the issues there yourself, Madam Deputy Speaker Saffin, given some of the meetings that we have attended. A whole range of issues were debated at that conference, but probably the most striking and common thread in the deliberations that took place was in relation to our landscape management and how we are going to repair some of the damage that has been done in the past. Also discussed was how we are going to wrestle with potentially less rainfall in some areas and more intense rainfall in others, general landscape management and some of the positives that are out there at the moment. I found it an invaluable conference to attend.

One of the things that I was particularly very impressed with was the role that the former Governor-General Michael Jeffrey is taking in relation to redressing some of the landscape issues. He happened to be the guest speaker at the evening function. The former Governor-General is now heading up a task force for what is being referred to as Australia’s water emergency. I probably would not go so far as to call it an absolute emergency. There is an emergency in some areas, which the member for Calare pointed out—in the Lachlan, for instance—but I think the former Governor-General is looking at ways in which we can adopt some of the technologies that are out there now so that in the future we have a better landscape that is more able to handle some of the adverse impacts that it has been wrestling with in recent years.

One of the issues that came up at the conference was how, with the legislation before the House, the newly formed Murray-Darling Basin Authority will have to come to grips with, essentially, a water audit, a water budget and the end of alley caps in extraction and come up with a system that it believes will work long term. One of the terms in the legislation that crops up from time to time, which I do not believe has been defined adequately yet, is ‘interception’—or ‘diversion’. In its simplest form, we would imagine that means that if someone is extracting water from a system outside the legislation it would be deemed to be an interception of water that would in fact have gone to someone else had it not been intercepted. We have the simplistic view that some of that water will eventually flow out of the Murray mouth and cure the long-term ills of the Murray-Darling system. One of the questions that was raised on a number of occasions is: what if interception or diversion impedes some of the newer technologies which actually slow down water flows and put water into the soil? There are various no-till technologies, for instance, and many grazing technologies for greater grass cover et cetera.

Part of the secret in the accumulation of humus and organic matter in the soil is that it allows more moisture in and embraces a better soil-water-carbon relationship, in a sense. Some of the landscape techniques are showing astonishing results. There is one that I intend to visit in the near future, Mulloon Creek, which is under the guidance of a person who many people would know of: Peter Andrews. Are some of the techniques which are being tried to restore the hydrology of particular landscapes going to be considered interceptions in the way in which the Murray-Darling Basin Authority deals with them? I do not know the answer to that. But, in the simplistic way in which the debate has gone, at the end of each valley we are going to have a number, and there will be arrangements within those valleys to account for the amount of water so that, theoretically at least, there will be some water at the end of the system. The buyback arrangements that we are voting the appropriation of today are part of that process. We are buying back water because the government believes that there was too much allocated and that the system is stressed. What system is stressed? That is the question. Is the system that we determined back in the mid-nineties as being the line in the sand in terms of the overallocation issues et cetera the system that is stressed? Or is the system that was there 100 years ago the system that is stressed? Or, if we return some of those landscapes essentially to where they were, and the hydrology and other things are better managed, will that system actually stress the accounting system that we are going to put in place through the Murray-Darling Basin Authority?

Again, I do not know the answers to those questions, but I think we need to at least have the debate because some  farming systems have enormous capacity to slow down volumes of water. We seem to think of interception as building another dam. There are many things that the farm sector—and I am a farmer myself—can do to slow down water. In the carbon debate, the food debate, the soil erosion debate, the salinity debate and the whole range of other environmental debates, they are good things to try in order to slow down the pace of water, reduce soil loss, and other things. So again there is a collision course between a fairly simplistic policy, some sort of water accounting process and a landscape management process, and we really have not decided which way we are going to go on that.

I congratulate those who organised the conference in Orange recently, particularly the former Governor-General and others for displaying leadership in this debate, and I urge all members of parliament and the bureaucracy to look at some of the things that these people are saying. Whether it be in the carbon debate or in the water debate, there is a degree of guilt being expressed by the bureaucracy for their lack of work in the last two or three decades. It was just assumed that soil and water are there, you grow things occasionally, people eat them, there is not much point in getting too excited about it and we will put our research dollars into a whole range of other things—and we have neglected the basics of life.

If one positive has come out of the debate on emissions trading and climate change, in terms of those who want to eat, breathe and drink, it is that the basics of life are fairly significant. I think that not only the scientific community, in particular, but also the political community in terms of their potential to address many of the issues out there have very much ignored the non-city areas. Some of the policies that have come through in the last decade have been fairly simplistic in nature.

Another issue that I want to raise is in relation to the Namoi Valley, and the member for Calare mentioned his concerns about the Namoi Valley. As you would be aware, Madam Deputy Speaker Saffin, the broader Namoi Valley, particularly the Liverpool Plains portion of it, has one of the greatest groundwater systems in Australia. It is part of the Murray-Darling system. We believe, but we do not have the scientific evidence in place, that the groundwater systems actually do relate to the surface water flows within the Namoi system, which eventually flow into the Darling system and part of the Murray system. We do not as yet really understand the science of that water. There was a very good program on Four Corners a few months back that looked at the issue of mining on these alluvial flood plains that are underpinned by these groundwater systems and at the lack of scientific knowledge of the way in which the planning process, which is a state based planning process, actually addresses that issue. There are two applications for mines on the Liverpool Plains, and they will be the first in those sorts of systems in the Murray-Darling system.

In particular, I implore the Murray-Darling Basin Authority and others, particularly the political dimension that is interested in this issue, to have a look at what is going on here. Essentially, we have a state based planning process, which normally oversees the approval of mining plans. A difference has occurred in the last 12 months, and it concerns the Murray-Darling legislation that we passed—the 2008 or the 2007 Water Act that came through here—which gives the Commonwealth a much greater role in the determination of an activity such as mining in an area where it could have an adverse impact either environmentally or in other ways downstream. I would ask the parliament to note very carefully what is happening on that issue. If we leave that matter solely to a state based planning process under part 3A of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act, then that particular planning instrument, in this case, will only look at the localised impacts of the mine. Just picture it for a moment: the top of the Murray-Darling system is the so-called Liverpool Range. About 120 kilometres of catchment along that range funnels to a point in a triangle, some 80 to 100 kilometres away, where it all has to go past all the surface water—and we believe that is mirrored by the groundwater—past a neck about six kilometres wide. Then it spreads out again across these vast flood plains for another 70 or 80 kilometres until it gets to Gunnedah, through to Boggabri, Narrabri, Walgett and eventually into the greater system.

We have absolutely no idea what a longwall mine site will do to the hydrology of that system. We have no real understanding of the connectivity between those groundwater systems and the surface water. And here we are in this place making decisions about the end of valley caps that will accrue to these various valleys when we do not understand the science of what is going on underneath them. On top of that, we have a state based mining minister in New South Wales, who has recently been sacked—and for Premier Rees to have done that, I think, is a positive—who had carriage of agriculture and mining which, to start with, is a bit of a conflict, with income coming from exploration licences from mining. These licences on the Liverpool Plains should never have been granted without the full knowledge of what is going on with those groundwater systems.

In the parliament earlier this year I moved an amendment to the Commonwealth Water Act which provided that, before exploration licences are granted, an independent scientific study is done to find out what is happening with the water and how it relates to the flood plain within the overall ambit of the act. It relates to what the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, Senator Wong and others are attempting to do. That legislation was passed by the coalition and the National Party in this chamber. It went to the Senate, and an amendment was moved by Senator Bob Brown which was supported by the National Party and the Liberal Party. That gave them the numbers in the Senate for that amendment to come back to this place. The very next morning, after the Minerals Council of Australia got to the National Party senators, in particular, they changed their mind, reworked the wording so it duplicated the state based planning process and it has achieved absolutely nothing.

So maybe Senator Brown and others could revisit that amendment again because there is now quite a degree of evidence showing that mining companies consider it an absolute joke. I would just like to spend a little bit of time on that. The then NSW mining minister, Ian Macdonald, who has just been sacked, only a few weeks ago refused to put money into an independent scientific study—which will go ahead, I am certain of that, irrespective of his money. Senator Wong, to her credit, was one of the first at the table in relation to putting money into this study, to actually study the science—$1½ million is on the table. The New South Wales government has said, ‘We’re not interested. We’re not putting any money in there.’ I would suggest that maybe Nathan Rees should have a good look at this matter again because the state does need to be part of this. If we really care about our water assistance, we have to find out what is happening in these various relationships within those systems.

On top of that, I happened to attend one of the Senate committees that met in Gunnedah. The New South Wales Minerals Council’s Director of Environment and Community, Rachelle McDonald, answered a question from Senator Williams when he asked the Minerals Council delegate:

You are familiar that the federal parliament has passed a regulation that before mining can be carried out in that country—

referring to Liverpool Plains—

a fully independent water test must be carried out on those underground aquifers?

On behalf of the Minerals Council—and I think this is the appropriate part because Senator Williams was trying to play himself up as having been part of some amendment in the Senate that actually meant something—Ms Macdonald said:

I do believe that the majority of the NSW regulations actually meet the requirements of what was requested.

She actually stated to a Senate inquiry that the very amendment that the Senate had put in place was just a joke; it had restated part 3A of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act, which is a NSW act, and it is a tragedy that that has occurred.

In terms of the third piece of proof that alludes to how weak that particular amendment has now become—and anybody who has taken the time to get legal opinion on it would know anyway—the Chinese company Shenhua, which has been granted one of these licenses on the Liverpool Plains—the other one being BHP—have said, in answer to questioning, that they will not comply with the federal legislation anyway; it means nothing to them and they are just going to proceed with part 3A of the state act. So we have an absurd situation developing where the New South Wales act used to be in place, but now we have the Murray-Darling Basin Act, and the two are not talking to each other. There needs to be an accounting process that takes into account the lack of science before we allow activities to occur in some of these very sensitive areas, otherwise the damage we do is done to not only the piece of land that they are talking about. I am not against coal mining; I live 800 metres from a coal mine. I am not opposed to coal mines, but I am opposed to potential damage being done before we understand the science of the water within this very delicate system. I think that is further complicated by the potential of climate change to impact on the inflows into that system. (Time expired)

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