Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Hansard source

COULTON (—) (): I, too, rise to speak on the Water Amendment (Restoring Our Rivers) Bill 2023. With reference to my friend the member for Adelaide on the other side, who talks about rising above politics, I'm afraid that, for the people that I represent, in the third of the Murray-Darling Basin that's the Parkes electorate, this is about sustainability. It's about survival. It's about jobs. It's about culture, and it's about a fair share. We need to have a little bit of a history lesson here. One of the advantages of being in this place for as long as I have is having a memory of what happened. I supported the Murray-Darling Basin Plan when it came through this House. Not everyone did, but the clear majority did, and I supported the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. The 450 gigalitres of extra water was not in the plan. It wasn't supported in this House by me, and it came with very, very clear conditions: it had to have no social, no environmental and no economic effects to deliver that water. It was a deal that was done at the time under former Prime Minister Gillard with the former water minister, Tony Burke, to gain Senate votes in Adelaide. That's the history of it. What this bill is doing is bringing that into the basin plan for the first time and removing the conditions that were around that water.

I remind the members in here on the other side with their speaking notes that South Australia is going to suffer under this bill. The Riverland is going to experience severe impacts, particularly to their permanent plantings, which will affect not only the economy of the Riverland in South Australia but also the ability of this country to feed itself. We do rely on the horticulture in that part of the world.

The other thing that's being portrayed here is that nothing's being done and quoting the fish deaths at Menindee, which is in my electorate, as a failure of the plan. There are various reasons why those fish died, but I want to point out that at that time it was the deepest waterhole in the Parkes electorate, which is a third of the basin. There are other issues at the Menindee that we need to look at, such as a fish ladder on the main weir so there's an escape route for those fish. But basically a large number of fish—and it's a large number because of a successful breeding program delivered by environmental water to make that breeding program happen very successfully—in the drought that followed got captured between two weirs and ran out of oxygen. That's what happened to the fish at Menindee. Everyone piled in—all the Greens and everyone piled in when they drove up—and said this is a scandal caused by government. But this was a natural event.

During the drought that people speak of, you could play cricket in the bottom of all the rivers in the Parkes electorate. The dams were empty, the rivers were empty, and the communities were suffering. There was no irrigation, but we tend to forget about what happened in the drought when the dryland farmers had to try to keep their stock alive and the fact that there were no crops for years. No-one talks about that. The idea that the Murray-Darling Basin Plan is going to turn an ephemeral system like the northern basin into Europe is a nonsense. We saw that in the drought. When it stops raining for three years, there's no water. That was followed by a flood. How much did the Basin Plan help with the flood? We still had communities being inundated. It's the natural cycle of life. The Basin Plan is clearly designed to moderate and take the edges off these events and to keep the rivers flowing for longer. I might say the rivers are flowing for longer because of dams that were built for irrigation. A lot of the water that's now in those dams in the northern basin were built by previous governments back in the fifties and sixties for irrigation. Those dams are now storing water and keeping the river flowing for longer. That's the nature of it.

The other thing that people need to understand is that allocations of water are done on a percentage of the water that's available. I think irrigation takes about 17 per cent of the water in the system, or something around about that figure, and so the idea that irrigators are taking all the water is also a nonsense. The water is shared via allocation, an allocation that irrigators pay a lot of money for. And what's that water used for? It's used to produce food. It's used to produce oranges, almonds, grapes, apples and stone fruits of all sorts. It's used to produce rice. It's used to produce cotton to clothe us. I'm incredibly frustrated by just the base ignorance of the people coming in with their talking points who are prepared, through their ignorance, to support a policy that's going to decimate the income of fellow Australians, without even having the courtesy to think through for themselves what this means. It's incredibly frustrating.

I do agree with the part of this legislation that extends the time for the delivery of the plan because it is complex. But we mustn't fall into the trap of saying nothing has happened. The Macquarie River in my electorate is actually overrecovered, so more water has gone back into the environment than was predicted as necessary by the plan. We've seen some amazing work done in the Macquarie with the modernisation of the irrigation schemes there. The lining of the channels is taking a lot the farms out of the irrigation industry with poly pipe for stock water, so that what's there now is much more reliable and much more efficient. The wastage from those channels has now been reduced so that 97 per cent or 98 per cent of the water is delivered because it's not soaking away into the earthen banks. In some places, centre pivots have replaced flood irrigation where necessary.

As we're going into another dry period, where do people think that the hay is coming from that is keeping their livestock alive? It's coming from lucerne farmers, who are irrigating at a dry time, like now, to provide fodder to keep our livestock alive and healthy. To get involved in this as some sort of a philosophical debate—and everyone gets their fair share. In deference to the South Australian members here, I'm not someone that wants to attack South Australia. I understand that there is a large population base in South Australia that absolutely relies on the river. We've got to understand that. But the idea that by just shutting down irrigation industries we're going to turn the Murray-Darling Basin into Europe is a nonsense. We are always going to have to battle with the variations of climate.

Since time began, the rivers have run and the rivers have run dry. That is why, in the northern basin, cotton is grown. Cotton is grown when there is available water. When there's not water, they just fallow their land. There have been attempts over the years. Some years before I was in this place, before the millennium drought, Bourke, in my electorate, had a thriving grape and citrus industry. The millennium drought killed those trees, so it became very clear in the northern basin that you cannot have permanent plantings, because when it goes dry the trees die, and that massive investment is lost and you can't replace it in any short time. But cotton and, further south, rice are grown when there is available water.

The idea that somehow cotton is an evil industry is a nonsense. I heard one of the ministers yesterday make some of the most patronising comments about farmers: 'They need to learn about some of the technology that can help measure the water,' and things like that. There are more kilograms of cotton per megalitre of water and per litre of diesel grown in Australia than anywhere else in the world. These are very, very precisely managed farms. There is not an ounce of water wasted. If we don't grow cotton, we're going to be importing something else from overseas.

I was at a cotton farm two weeks ago, interestingly, with the Speaker of the House, where we saw they're now running their cotton gin with solar. They've got a program now with more solar to produce hydrogen, so they can run their pumps and their tractors on hydrogen, and they're developing that further into anhydrous ammonia so that they're actually, through solar, producing their own nitrogenous fertiliser to grow the crops. This is the level of technology that we have now in the basin. Yet we have this base argument of, 'Well, we'll just take more water away from the north because they're wasteful and evil, and we'll let it run down.' How is the 450 going to be delivered without flooding the rivers in the member for Nicholls's electorate? How is it going to get through the choke points in the river? How is it going to get down the river without eroding the banks?

In my time, back when Senator Wong was the water minister, we saw the devastating impacts when water purchases are made willy-nilly. The purchase of the water from the Twynam Pastoral Company in the Macquarie and Gwydir valleys caused enormous economic hardship—not to the Twynam Pastoral Company; they took their $330 million or whatever it was and went off and invested it somewhere else. But the community of Collarenebri was decimated. From the biggest employer, 100 jobs went, out of a town of 500 people. I'd encourage those on the other side to come with me to Collarenebri and talk to the local people about what that means.

It's the same in Warren. Warren is a resilient town, and they're battling on. But the purchase of that water had an effect on them.

When Senator Wong purchased Toorale Station, west of Bourke, and the water that came with it, 100 jobs went out of Bourke. Because it became a national park, 10 per cent of the rate base of the Bourke Shire was lost. And that impact is being felt today.

We do need common sense in this. We also need to look at the modernisation that is continuing to go on. Farmers are deepening their storages. There's over-bank irrigation. There's the trickle or dripper system that the pecan orchardists at Biniguy, near Moree, have completely converted their plantations to—and I believe, in a previous life, the member for Nicholls was involved in that project. They're the sorts of things that we need to be doing to conserve water. It's such a valuable, valuable asset.

But we're hearing nonsense here—that the drought somehow is caused by the greed and avarice of irrigators. That's nonsense.

We've been hearing a lot in this place in the last few weeks about our Aboriginal brothers and sisters. I'd just point out that one of the biggest employers of Aboriginal people in my electorate is water. Okay? If we want to have a tokenistic Voice, do we want to take away the jobs that employ these people in a gainful way? I'll just leave you with that thought. They are the communities that rely on the river, not only for employment but for the social aspect of it. I represent Brewarrina, with the 60,000-year-old fish traps. They are very, very important to those people.

We want to make sure that everyone gets a fair share of the river, in a way that's practical. This is a political move. The minister has no skin in the game. And we need to vote against this terrible legislation.

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