Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities) Share this | Hansard source

Member for Murray, I am approaching this debate with a level of a goodwill that is not always reflected in a MPI. I am in particular very mindful of the mental health challenges in many of these communities. I have always had a passion to make sure that we do not act in a way that adds to those. That is why I say that where there is a genuine policy difference by all means have the debate and have it vigorously. But where the only difference is which side of the parliament we happen to fall on, and we decide that we want to rev an issue up, we need to be careful. These sorts of issues can cause a high level of anxiety. Have the argument when the fear is based in the facts, but please do not present a guide to a draft as something that is more than it is.

I want to go to some points that were made by the member for Murray about the extent to which water buyback will be done in a strategic way. There was always set aside by the coalition an amount of money—it was in the order of $3 billion—dedicated to water buyback. Regarding the principle of how you do it, there are cases where it can be done in a smart way and strategically and cases where you have to go through your value-for-money propositions by using the water market. We have challenges with the water market. Most people recognise that it is a very immature market in many ways and there are issues about probity and the use of brokers. Irrigators have asked me to have a very close look at whether there might be extra levels of protection that we can bring into that market, and I am looking closely at that.

Additional to that, if you are buying from the market, and you decide that you want to buy from all the irrigators and a particular part of an irrigation region so that we have no risk of stranded assets and you do that at an inflated price through the water market, some of those people will take the government money at the inflated price and then—as is perfectly their right—buy the water back at a lower price. The water market allows you to do that. There are cases, though, where a full strategic approach can be used.

I have referred previously to the discussions that I had in a Trangie last Friday. The member representing Parkes would agree that it is a really good example of how a strategic buy can work. It can only be done with the full cooperation of the Irrigation Management Authority, because if the changes are going to be strategic, with some channels closed off, then it needs to be driven locally. That is the only way that that can be done sensibly. It cannot be done in every case. In these situations, you end up with smaller levels of gigalitres being made available than what you might get through a straight buy back. But you do get a high level of strategic value and you get very little change in terms of productivity. That is a project that I have looked closely at.

Subsequent to that meeting on Friday, I had the opportunity—because quite a few of them have been around here—to talk to a number of the other management authorities of irrigation schemes throughout the basin to talk about whether or not those sorts of approaches might work for them. They will not work in every area. But there is an extent to which you can do some strategic alignment in parts of the basin. But there is also an extent to which it is right and proper to take advantage of the water market and to approach it that way.

If anyone wants to say that it should be all infrastructure and no buy-out or all buy-out and no infrastructure, I will have arguments with them. It is always going to be a mix. We need to make sure that anything we spend is a sensible spend of money. We need to make sure that, simply because a project is put forward by a government or by an authority, we do not just grab it straight away without doing due diligence. So long as we are prudent and are mindful of those three objectives, we can get this right and have a healthy river system, strong food production and strong regional communities.

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