Gai Brodtmann (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Today I rise to speak on the Murray-Darling Basin guide and the background paper. Everyone agrees that we want a healthy, working basin, a healthy river system underpinned by strong and viable communities. And everyone involved in the negotiations on the guide and the paper are also in agreement that the basic principles should include acknowledgement of previous efforts by basin governments and communities to achieve water savings and improve water management, acknowledgement that different approaches may be required in different parts of the basin. There needs to be opportunities to build a more flexible and adaptive approach to the delivery of programs. The ACT supports the thrust of the proposed policy to return water to the environment as a necessary action to ensure the sustainability of the basin. But it has strong concerns about the inequitable approach adopted in respect of the ACT, considering that the approach appears to be not entirely consonant with the general principles that are broadly agreed—in particular, acknowledgment of a jurisdiction's track record and recognition that different approaches may be needed in different jurisdictions. The ACT has a number of specific concerns. They are that the guide proposes substantial reductions of between 26 per cent and 34 per cent of the ACT's current surface water use or 34 to 45 per cent if water is taken only from watercourse diversions, such as from ACTEW dams only. This would take the ACT's diversions from the current net 40 gigalitres, under the Murray-Darling Basin agreement cap, to a net 21 to 26 gigalitres per annum under the new sustainable diversion limits.

The proposed limits result in the ACT having the highest percentage proposed water reductions of all basin jurisdictions, despite its track record of sustainable water resource management. There is no consideration of the ACT as a distinct water resource management area with a history of prudent water resource management. The designation of a net rather than a gross limit for the ACT also undermines water re-use incentives. It is inappropriate that the ACT surface water limit is set on the basis of the ACT cap under the Murray-Darling Basin agreement rather than the ACT Water Sharing Plan, which actually describes the characteristics of the ACT water resource.

There is also no consideration given to the ACT's critical human water needs, nor is there consideration of the importance of future population growth, particularly by setting proposed limits that can only be met with permanent water restrictions. There is no analysis of the socioeconomic impacts of the proposed basin plan on the ACT region, despite this being required under the Water Act 2007.

The treatment of the ACT is generally inequitable compared with other limit areas and basin jurisdictions. The proposed limits, if adopted in the final basin plan, would require the ACT to purchase water entitlements from elsewhere in the basin if the ACT wished to avoid permanent water restrictions. This would be the case even if ACT dams were full and spilling over.

The ACT government has also identified a number of data and analysis inaccuracies in the guide. For example, the guide bases the ACT forestry interception component of the current diversion limit on an outdated plantation area. The guide also adopts a groundwater limit for the ACT that does not reflect current diversion limits under the ACT Water Sharing Plan. To redress the lack of ACT socioeconomic analysis in the guide, the ACT government has commissioned an independent study by the Centre for International Economics. This demonstrates that the costs of imposing water restrictions to manage demand to meet the proposed limits are substantial, starting at about $45 million per year, rising to $220 million per year as the population grows and higher-level restrictions become necessary.

Finally, the guide indicates that the Commonwealth will bridge any remaining gap between current diversion limits and the final plan limits. I understand that the Commonwealth intends to do this by buying environmental water in each catchment or by recovering the water through irrigation infrastructure efficiency upgrades. The problem with this is that the ACT is different from other basin catchments in that it does not have a pool of water entitlements that can be purchased for the environment. There is also no scope for the Commonwealth to recover water by funding irrigation works in the ACT. This is not recognised in the guide.

I conclude by expressing the firm hope that the ACT's legitimate concerns can be met in achieving our shared goals for the future of the Murray-Darling Basin.

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