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

I rise again in this place to talk about the crisis in the Murray-Darling Basin and the catastrophic conditions faced by the communities in and around the Lower Lakes in my electorate and that of the member for Barker. I apologise, Mr Speaker, as you have heard me speak on this issue in this debate on many occasions. However, I think the issue is so significant that we should continue talking about it so that we do not forget how damaging and catastrophic the conditions are in and around the lower reaches of the Murray-Darling Basin. I know this place cares deeply about it.

In the last few years, the issue of the Murray-Darling Basin has been addressed in this parliament, thanks to the work of the former Prime Minister John Howard and the member for Wentworth, who was the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources at the time. He launched groundbreaking reforms in January 2007 to deal with the crisis in the Murray-Darling Basin. This was done in several different ways. The federal government announced for the first time that a national system of water management should exist in this country because the states had failed to properly manage the Murray-Darling Basin for over 100 years.

It also announced plans to buy back water licences to put more water back into the Murray-Darling Basin. The coalition did this because we recognise that, over the years, too many licences have been granted and too much has been extracted. So, the then federal government dealt with this very difficult subject. It also allocated significant amounts of money to on- and off-farm infrastructure to get more from less. As the member for Wentworth so rightly puts it: we need to continue to grow our own food, but we need to do it with less. The $10 billion announcement included a large allocation to fund on- and off-farm infrastructure—to put more water back in the system while still growing our own food. The last element of the package was investment in structural adjustment for those communities which would face challenges because of these difficult, but very necessary, reforms in the Murray-Darling Basin.

It was a good plan and it was largely adopted by the Rudd government when they came to office in 2007. However, there were some elements of it which they changed. Some of those changes were for the worse, unfortunately. The worst mistake they have made was the failure to invest in infrastructure needs. The greatest example of that is at Menindee Lakes, where we are now going to see the loss of a massive amount of water because the Minister for Climate Change, Energy Efficiency and Water, Senator Wong, has failed to ensure that the investment in deepening those lakes and reducing the size of them went ahead before water came down from the massive floods in Queensland around Christmas. These meant that the Menindee Lakes got a huge injection of water. We will lose, it has been reported, up to 200 gigalitres of water in the next six months purely through evaporation. This is an excess we cannot afford and Senator Wong’s failure in that respect is a real shame.

The biggest failure is that of the Rudd government and its state Labor mates failing to come to an agreement on a truly national system. That has been reflected by an ongoing fight over how much water South Australia would get out of these floods in Queensland. We are seeing right now that the chickens have come home to roost. There were big announcements in the state election campaign from Mike Rann and his cohorts in South Australia, but there has been very little action and very little water coming down the system. This highlights again just how hopeless the Rann state Labor government is.

On this side of the House, we remain absolutely committed to ongoing and necessary reform in the Murray-Darling Basin. My leader, the Leader of the Opposition, has made it very clear that we are committed to the principles outlined by the member for Wentworth and by the former Prime Minister, in 2007. We will also have a referendum if the states refuse to hand over their powers, because we know it is necessary to have a national system of management for the system. Such a national system of management is essential to get the real reform needed to ensure that the Murray-Darling Basin is restored to health so that we can continue to grow our own food, so that communities can thrive and so our lower lakes at the bottom end, in my electorate and the member for Barker’s electorate, can be healthy once again. This is an extremely important reform, a reform that I will continue to fight for. I know my colleagues, particularly those in South Australia who see the worst of this, will continue to fight on—(Time expired)

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