Andrew Broad (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to talk about something that is very important not just to the people in my electorate but to the people of Australia, and that is the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.

Water management is absolutely critical not just for irrigators but also for those who want to have a healthy river system. It is absolutely critical to our broader environment and global reputation and to our productive capacity. The Murray-Darling Basin is the most fertile part of Australia. We talk about the great opportunities that present themselves in Northern Australia, but it needs to be remembered that you have to combine great soils and water, and what we have in the basin needs to be enhanced, managed properly and preserved for future generations.

We do need a diversified river system. I often hear people say that we should not be growing cotton or rice in Australia. Those comments are built on a bit of ignorance of how our environment and river system works. Having looked at this extensively—having been an irrigator myself, having represented irrigators and having an understanding of global agriculture—it is absolutely critical that you have a diversified variety of plantings across a river system. It is not workable to simply have all permanent plantings. Permanent plantings require water every year, whether you have water or not. You need to have rice, you need to have dairying, you need to have irrigated grains, you need to have almonds, you need to have table grapes and you need to have wine grapes. You need to have that variety. When you have lots of water in the system that is the time you can plant annual crops, when you can put rice in and those sorts of things. In the years when it is very dry, when there is not much water around, what is there maintains our permanent plantings.

A diversified river system is very important, but if we are going to have a healthy river system there has to be confidence for people to invest. People who invest in irrigation infrastructure actually invest a great deal of money. It is not cheap to put in the type of technology we want on our farms and to manage our water better and in an environmental way. People are only going to invest in that infrastructure if they have confidence. If you take away their confidence they will simply ask the question: 'What is the point?'

What we have seen over the period of reform, through the Murray-Darling Basin plan, is a shattering of confidence for people who are involved in the irrigation-technology area, a shattering of confidence for farmers and a shattering of confidence for communities. That has resulted in worse environmental outcomes rather than in instilling confidence. Our government is proposing to put some confidence back into those who want to invest in better water management so that those communities believe they have a future, and to put some confidence back into people who want to capitalise on the opportunities of free trade by expanding their agricultural business.

We are proposing to have a cap of 1,500 gigalitres that can only be purchased by the Commonwealth. That is not saying we do not want to recover more water for the environment, it is simply saying how we do it. We have a great example in my electorate at the moment called the Sunraysia Modernisation Project. It is quite fascinating to watch it being built. The federal government is spending $103 million of taxpayers' money to reconfigure the irrigation infrastructure in the Sunraysia area. These are big pipes—you can walk down them. It is not only providing that water in a more timely and cleaner manner to those irrigators but also—in saving water—returning water to the environment. We want to introduce a 1,500 gigalitre cap on buybacks and say that the future of water recovery will come from infrastructure, and we are very proud of that.

The water management we have seems to be focused on delivering water to Ramsar listed wetlands across the system. I want to use this opportunity to talk about a new way forward, a way forward that has been demonstrated, a way forward that every Australian can be proud of—but a way forward that also delivers the environmental outcome, on the Ramsar listed wetland, using pumps, using technology that was not available 100 years ago.

If you come to my electorate, come and have a look at the Hattah Lakes. They have been dry but, recently, with government money we have put in lift pumps that essentially are lifting the water out of that river and watering that environmental asset. It has been a great success story. It has been something that irrigators, locals and environmentalist have all stood shoulder to shoulder and said, 'This needed to happen' and been able to see in practice how this has rolled out and how it has worked.

It is my great vision—and a vision shared by, I know, several in this chamber here today—to see more of those environmental works and measures rolled out across the Murray-Darling Basin; more of those systematic, practical ways of achieving good environmental outcomes being built. We want them to be funded, we want them to be sustainable for the taxpayer but we also want them to be measurable outcomes for environmental management.

We have a great belief that the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder could use some of its resources through temporary sales to help fund this environmental infrastructure and we hope that this is something that the minister will consider. It is certainly responsible management of the river from an engineering point of view but it is also responsible management of our finances from a taxpayer's point of view.

If you combine introducing a 1,500 gig cap on buybacks to keep confidence for irrigators to invest with allowing the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder to use some of their temporary sales to agriculture and that money being put aside to deliver environmental works and measures on the Murray-Darling Basin as we slowly reconfigure and use that infrastructure from that fund over five, 10 and 20 years, we will have something that will be looked at in history as great water reform.

At the moment, there is still a lot of uncertainty. At the moment, there are some things we need to do to bring that reform to fruition but, provided both sides of the parliament work constructively—which is a great ambition—then I think, in years to come, we will say that we have succeeded in looking after wetlands and the Lower Lakes and we have achieved river health, at the same time as putting infrastructure into our agriculture, confidence into our farmers and providing food and high-value products not only to feed us in the future but also to export across the world. Thank you.

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