Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Innovation, Industry and Science) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the issue of the guide to the draft Murray-Darling Basin Plan, a plan that potentially represents the single greatest threat of devastation to regional communities across Australia. It was supposed to be a positive plan. It was supposed to be a plan that would return the basin to health. But what we have seen is a hastily put together, ill-conceived plan that has not had the basic homework completed.

Labor have had more than enough time to produce a plan that sets out a path to reform but, as we witnessed, they sat on their hands for over a year, taking 18 months to even establish the authority. It comes as no surprise that the authority produced a fatally flawed report, because after 18 months of delay they had little time to conduct the necessary work required. The delay in establishing a proper process has only led to a very flawed and inadequate guide, which has led to great uncertainty and great, understandable, anxiety.

The guide itself was supposed to be released before the election. But, true to form, a government drowning in its own secrecy suppressed the information in an attempt to fool the electorate. This mob are so transparent. They will say anything; they will do anything. Every single word will have a double meaning. They will treat the electorate with utter contempt. The reason Labor hid the guide during the election campaign is now so crystal clear: it was a dog of a plan. Even with their limited care and limited knowledge and understanding of rural and regional issues they could see that it was a dog of a plan, and it would be a dog of a government that would try to implement any sort of plan that reflected the guide.

But herein lies the problem. During the election campaign when questioned on how the government might respond to the plan the Prime Minister quite often stated, ‘We will allocate money as necessary to implement the plan.’ So there you have it: sight unseen, the government commits to it. In typical phoney concern the government is now using smooth words and soothing tones from afar to con farmers but it is too gutless to actually appear in person at meetings and listen to rural communities face to face.

Consider for a moment some real facts from real communities. The Ovens catchment in my electorate of Indi is one of the most efficient and productive food-producing systems in the country. It is a major contributor to the Murray-Darling Basin system—the north-east provides 38 per cent of the water into the basin—and it returns between 95 and 99 per cent of its own inflows back into the system. Irrigators in the Ovens only take 14 gigalitres a year, a minuscule less than one per cent of total flows. But under the guide to the draft plan the authority has proposed to cut this irrigation entitlement by up to 71 per cent, so it is 71 per cent of less than one per cent that will gut agricultural businesses that rely on irrigation in the catchment.

It is unrealistic, and we saw from today’s estimates that, when questioned, Mr Freeman from the Murray-Darling Basin Authority noted that the Ovens catchment scenario as I have described it was the type of ‘perverse outcome’ that the authority would have to consider. And why didn’t they prepare the research and do their homework so that we did not have these perverse outcomes? He also went on to say that in relation to town consumption ‘recycling and reuse need to be looked at’ and ‘we are flagging the idea that some of these community water systems need to be reviewed because of the potential for alternative sources in those townships through reuse’. Which communities will have to reduce their consumption? Which communities will have to engage in reuse? Are you going to discriminate, and why are you doing this in communities that are such efficient users of water? The fact is that it is being done because the authority had little time and the government has not really given much care to a proper and deep analysis upon which to base such an important plan.

The argument that the fault all lies with the Water Act is erroneous and misleading. In fact, section 43 requires the authority to produce ‘socioeconomic analysis on which the proposed plan is based’. So this is just an attempt by a government that cannot even accept responsibility for electrified roofs to shift blame to the coalition.

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