Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

I want to talk about a very important environmental issue to begin with, and that is the Murray-Darling river system. It is a classic case of tragedy of the commons. At any given point in time there is only so much water in the system. The water resources are divided up by a series of allocations, and the problem is that more water has been allocated than the river system can actually sustain. This is a fundamental problem that the Murray-Darling Basin Plan sought to solve, and, as climate change is reducing the long-term flows in the river system, the problem is only getting harder to solve.

There are two main ways the plan seeks to achieve a solution. First, the government, via the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder, buys water to ensure the river continues to flow and that the river system gets enough water so that the ecosystem does not collapse. This has proven to be the most cost-effective way to keep water in the system. The other way the government hopes to keep water in the river is by building infrastructure to manage the water more efficiently. This is far, far more expensive to the government, but more palatable to the large corporate water users, who do not want to see any water leave the market.

In 2015 the federal government caved in to pressure from the large corporate irrigators and introduced a 1,500 gigalitre cap on buying back water, deciding to prioritise funding for infrastructure projects instead. However, the government have not even reached that cap; they are deliberately going slow. I am calling for the 1,500 gigalitre cap on buybacks to be recovered as a matter of urgency. The quickest, cheapest and most efficient way of recovering water is by immediately reinstating voluntary water licensing buybacks through an open and transparent tender system. Without this, the Murray-Darling Basin, the river, is doomed to a slow death.

I've got the end of the river in my electorate. We have the most vulnerable part of the river. We don't want to see this plan fail. In recognition of our vulnerability, leading up to the 2018 by-election in Mayo, I called upon the federal government and South Australian government to establish an institute in the region. Such an institute would be dedicated to research on how we make the river more resilient and how we look at and manage salinity, wetlands, ecosystems and nutrient levels to provide real-time summaries on the ecological condition. It's hard to believe that we don't have this at the end of the river. Whether it's emails, letters or feedback to many community forums, the environment would have to be in the top three topics of concern raised with me as the federal member at every single forum. Every day I get emails about the environment. The nation is genuinely concerned about how we are managing such a finite resource.

I voted against the government's plans with respect to the EPBC Act. This absolutely devastated my community. I can't believe the way the government rushed through that bill, not allowing the member for Warringah to even put forward the amendments that she had, very good amendments. She didn't even get the opportunity to speak to those amendments. Change should not be rushed, especially when there's a strong case for further inquiry and establishment of appropriate safeguards. On streamlining approvals for the bill, because what we've already had was just a temporary position, particularly just with an initial review, we don't have a final review and yet the government is determined to change the EPBC Act without any due diligence by this parliament. Professor Graeme Samuel is conducting the final review. He released an interim report, but the government only cherrypicked what it wanted out of that report. It must be heartbreaking, if you are someone such as Graeme Samuel, to do all of this work and then have your work cherrypicked for what is really for the benefit of corporate Australia, certainly not for the benefit of the environment.

Centre Alliance will continue to be very concerned with respect to the EPBC Act. We will continue to be very concerned with respect to the management of the river. South Australia has the most to lose if we don't get the Murray-Darling Basin Plan right. I think South Australia has the most to lose if we don't get the EPBC Act right. This parliament can't do that. We are custodians for the next generation of our environment. We are here to protect the environment for the next generation and we really need to do a much better job in this place of working together for the benefit of the environment and not for the benefit of corporate Australia

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