Mark Coulton (Parkes, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak about the ministerial statement made by the parliamentary secretary, Mr Bob Baldwin, the member for Paterson. Legislation will be introduced into the House in the next couple of weeks to make sure that the buybacks do not go beyond the 1500 gigalitres that have been agreed upon.

This is not a change to the plan. It is not a grab for any more water by any one part of the basin. It is merely putting into legislation something that has been agreed upon so that in the future it will be difficult for someone to interfere with that agreement for political purposes and to severely impact on communities around the basin. I am hopeful, because of the sensible nature of this legislation and the obvious need for it, that we will get support—not only in the chamber from the opposition but also in the Senate and from the Senate crossbenchers.

The Murray-Darling Basin is a very complex place. I would go as far as to say that I do not believe that any one person in Australia completely understands the complexity of this system. The Parkes electorate, which I represent, covers 25 per cent of the Murray-Darling Basin; it is entirely in what is known as the northern basin. My electorate encompasses the areas bounded by the Lachlan River in the south through to the Macintyre River or the Border Rivers, as they are known, in the north. That part of the basin is an ephemeral area. The water runs on a seasonal basis as and when the rainfall occurs. It is different from the southern basin, which has the reliability of snow melt and much more infrastructure to handle that. Many of my rivers are disconnected from the rest of the basin. The Lachlan River hardly ever—maybe once or twice in a century—flows through to join up to the Darling. Maybe every 30 years or so, the Gwydir River will flow through the wetlands and join up with the Barwon River—indeed, not on all occasions, as the Macquarie River goes through the Macquarie Marshes and up into the Barwon River. So it is a very complex system, and that needs to be taken in mind.

I think it is always very dangerous when human beings try to manage nature. If anyone had been up in an aeroplane with me in 2012, the last time we had a flood through that area, they would have realised that mankind is coming very much second to the forces of nature. If you would like to go out into the Parkes electorate now, you would see that mankind is also coming second to nature, as we are now in the grip of a three-year drought. Many of the rivers in the Parkes electorate have ceased to run, and it was many months ago that irrigators and communities were last able to pump from some of those areas. So we do need to keep in mind that we are dealing with a very complex and ephemeral system.

In managing the Murray-Darling Basin in a sustainable way so that everyone—from the mouth of the Murray to the headwaters in Central Queensland—gets a fair share and so that the system can remain healthy long into the future, we need to make sure that we deal with the science, not the politics. Quite frankly, some of the statements made in this place in the past, through sheer ignorance of the truth, are sickening. We need to maintain a scientific and practical outlook.

Unfortunately for the parliamentary secretary, due to storms in his electorate, he was not able to attend the opening of the Trangie Nevertire Irrigation Scheme upgrade. Fortunately for me, I was able to attend. It was done under round 1 of the Private Irrigation Infrastructure Operators Program, otherwise known as PIIOP. It was a huge undertaking. I would like to place on record my admiration for the irrigators in that scheme. A large number of farms are involved, and serious decisions had to be made. Some of the farmers in that scheme ceased to be irrigators. They filled in their channels. They piped the water through polythene pipe for stock and domestic use, but they basically had to change the roles that their farms performed. That enabled the irrigators and the farmers closer to the river to have a more reliable access. Along with the redesigning and the lining of the channels, and private infrastructure such as lateral-move and centre-pivot irrigators, we now have a much more efficient and reliable irrigation scheme. Indeed, the cotton crops that have been harvested under that scheme have been some of the best crops grown for some time. That was not a gift from those farmers. They actually traded an entitlement back to the Commonwealth, back to the Environmental Water Holder, so that paid for the grant that they received to undertake this work.

There are practical ways of managing our water so that we do have a more sustainable and more reliable scheme without severely impacting on our communities. But we need to keep an eye on this. If you want to stimulate economic growth in a basin town, the best way to do that is put in a megalitre of water. The multiplication effect of a megalitre of water is such that its value is magnified seven times. If you take a megalitre of water from a basin town, that basically equates to a job. Every megalitre of water that is removed in a buyback means a job. These communities have suffered a lot because of this.

The previous speaker, the member for Maranoa, mentioned that there are cross-border issues, with the Murray-Darling Basin covering four states. One of the drivers of this plan in the era of the Howard government was to have a plan that was fair to everyone, but some cross-border issues remain. When discussions take place beyond this legislation—which I hope will be passed—I hope that we take a sensible attitude, because we are not talking about a philosophical debate here.

People like the member for Melbourne talk about restoring the Murray-Darling Basin to the condition that it was in in 1770, but he does not mention the Yarra, which runs through his electorate, and what might be done there. We are told that removing 25 per cent of the population of the Parkes electorate or those towns on the basin is for the common good of this country, but we do not see any movement in the cities of Melbourne and Sydney and other places. When people in my electorate are expected to wear the pain of the ideological drivers of others in this place, it does make me somewhat irate. So I call for this to be dealt with in a sensible and scientific manner, so that we realise that we do have to feed this nation, that the Murray-Darling Basin is the food bowl of Australia and that the communities that live in that basin are important, as are the communities further downstream in Adelaide, Victoria and southern New South Wales. Everyone has a right to this water in a sustainable way. This legislation is important. It is coming in. I am asking the parliament to support it.

Debate adjourned.

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