Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

I am not sure about broken promises, but we just heard a broken record. The member for Wakefield is somebody from South Australia who is passionate—I will give him that—but he was talking about the overarching responsibility for water. It does not belong to the National Water Commission. It is the Murray-Darling Basin Authority. We heard the member for Makin earlier talking about meagre savings. That is precisely what is wrong with Labor. Labor cannot manage money. This is going to save $21 million. This is going to take $21 million off the bottom line. Those are not meagre savings; that is a substantial amount of money. That is what is wrong with Labor. If they do not think that $21 million is worth saving then there is something seriously wrong.

We saw in the six years under Labor that Labor could not manage water. The National Water Commission is going to be wound up, consistent with the Commission of Audit recommendations and measures outlined in the 2014-15 budget. It is outlined in that budget. This bill abolishes the NWC by repealing the National Water Commission Act of 2004. It makes consequential amendments to the Water Act of 2007 to enable that to happen. It will transfer certain NWC functions to the Productivity Commission, where they should be, and it will provide transitional arrangements to facilitate the closure of the NWC.

I do not often listen to the member for Wakefield and give him too much credibility, but someone I do give a lot of credibility to is Debbie Buller from my electorate. Debbie Buller and her husband, Stuart, own and lease 900 hectares of broadacre irrigation farm at Murrami. They grow rice, corn, wheat, oats, canola and barley. She is the president of an organisation founded in 2010 which I am also a founding member of, and that is the Murrumbidgee Valley Food and Fibre Association. She is also an executive member of the Ricegrowers' Association, NSW Farmers and the New South Wales Irrigators' Council. So when Debbie Buller sends me an email or says something on the phone, I listen. She talked to me this afternoon about increased bureaucracy. She is absolutely furiously in agreement with the coalition's bill that we are debating here now. We are about to hear from the parliamentary secretary, who will sum up on this bill, and then we will vote on it.

When Debbie Buller recently wrote to me about increased bureaucracy she said: 'While there is some rationale behind claiming that some of the states had overallocated water, the Water Act 2007 and the subsequent Murray-Darling Basin Plan have not recognised the historical reasons for that overallocation and therefore not repaired the problem. They have instead exacerbated the problem.' She continued: 'Instead of simplifying and streamlining water regulation and management, this process has added at least four extra levels of independent bureaucracy.' She mentioned that CEWH, BOM, MDBA and the ACCC seem to be in a power struggle with the corresponding state entities. She listed the number of bureaucracies, state and federal, just in the southern connected system that are directly involved in informing water management operations, regulations and pricing. For the sake of the Hansard, I am going to read them out. They are: the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the Bureau of Meteorology, the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Primary Industries, the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal, Local Land Services, the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, ministerial councils, the New South Wales Office of Water, the Office of Environment and Heritage, Snowy Hydro Ltd, the State Water Corporation, the Victorian government, the South Australian government, Coleambally Irrigation Ltd, Murrumbidgee Irrigation and Murray Irrigation Ltd. I am almost out of breath! That is how many organisations and layers and levels of bureaucracy that good farmers, such as Debbie and Stu Buller at Murrami, and the good people of the Murrumbidgee, Murray and Coleambally irrigation areas have to contend with.

That is fine. But we are getting rid of the National Water Commission because we believe that the job can be done by other entities. We can lessen the bureaucracy. The Productivity Commission will be responsible for the triennial assessment of progress towards achieving NWI objectives as well as the biennial national water planning report card which is produced under the triennial assessment.

Mr Champion interjecting—

You should listen, Member for Wakefield: you might learn something. Obviously in the 15 minutes of my life that you wasted talking about your ex-girlfriends, cars, submarines and all the rest of it—

Mr Perrett interjecting—

At least the member for Braddon was talking about water, Member for Moreton. The Productivity Commission will also have responsibility for the independent audit of the implementation of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and associated water resource plans. The Department of the Environment will be responsible for assessing milestone payments to Murray-Darling Basin states against the performance milestones specified in the national partnership agreement on implementing MDB reform. The department will also provide advice on the status of the implementation of the National Water Initiative to the Clean Energy Regulator, as required under the Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative) Rule regulations of 2011. The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences, ABARES, will take responsibility for monitoring water markets and producing an annual water markets report. The Bureau of Meteorology is working with state and territory governments and the water industry to continue the national performance reports for the urban water sector, which will provide a crucial annual snapshot of this section of the industry. The 2013-14 NPR was released on 7 May. Interestingly, just a week after that NPR was released, we heard from the Leader of the Opposition, who, in his budget in-reply speech, said:

Confidence for new rail and roads and new ports and bridges, better social housing, smart energy grids, efficient irrigation projects and of course, the best digital infrastructure.

So there we have the Leader of the Opposition talking about efficient irrigation projects. Labor members would not know an irrigation channel if they fell over one!

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