Meryl Swanson (Paterson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to acknowledge the member for Parkes, who's just spoken on this topic of restoring our rivers and the Water Amendment (Restoring Our Rivers) Bill 2023. He's a good fellow and he represents a large part of New South Wales. But, on some of these accounts—not on all of them, but on some—I hate to say it, but you're wrong, Member for Parkes.

As to history and getting a fair share: you don't have to have been in this place for over 20 years. I've been here for seven years. I'm not sure what the median term is for people who serve in this place. But I can tell you that the Murray-Darling Basin Plan was brokered by a Labor government and was agreed to by Nick Xenophon, and it was brokered to try and break the stranglehold of disputes, over a century, on water. So, if we really look at this through a historical lens, this plan has been a hundred years in the making. It has taken a while to come to fruition. As with a lot of monumental changes, it does often take a lot of iterations to get correct.

In terms of getting a fair share and being fair dinkum about this plan: yes, there were mistakes made, but this plan was put in place to solve a decades-long problem. And it has taken a lot of work.

The member said that the current minister has no skin in the game and isn't fair dinkum about this. That is really patently untrue, and it's not fair.

We've all got to work together in this place to solve this intractable problem of water. We live on the driest continent on the planet. We have a lot of challenges.

As the chair of the Standing Committee on Agriculture, I do want to pay my dues to Australian farmers. They are some of the most innovative and thoughtful human beings, farming this country in environmental and sustainable ways. They provide food and fibre for all of us here in Australia—not just us here, but to other parts of the world as well. If you got up this morning, had your Weet-Bix and slipped on your shirt to go to work, it's odds-on that it was an Australian farmer that produced that for you, using our very precious water.

There have been incredible innovations. I can remember going down to the Murrumbidgee irrigation scheme, which is part of the Murray-Darling scheme, and looking at some of the government funded programs that had been put in place and helped eliminate water wastage. I've used a siphon, and there's actually a real technique to getting that water flowing with a siphon. We are hearing that, these days, with modern excavation techniques, we're able to use laser levelling to provide the water to travel over the countryside. This stuff is completely different, so we're doing away with a lot of that old irrigation. It will take a while to come in and it does take money to implement on farms, but these things are happening.

There has been a fair bit said about cotton. I want to speak on behalf of cotton. In the past it took a lot of water, and many people believed that it was wasteful. They thought about places like Cubbie Station soaking up millions of litres of water to grow cotton. But, again, science has come to the fore, and I would plead with anyone: science doesn't lie. Here in the House we've got the minister who takes care of science, and I'm pleased to be able to speak about this with him present. Through the science of cotton and the genetically modified cotton, boll 2, we have been able to change the way cotton is grown in Australia. It doesn't require the water. These days we are able to grow a cotton crop in Australia, harvest the cotton, grow a different crop and then put a flock of crossbred ewes over that. There's so much innovation happening that we really have to stop thinking like we did 20 years ago or 50 years ago about this. We have to give credit to our farmers, and I want to do that because they are embracing the technology. But they also know that we need to put a plan in place. Some of the irrigators in this have been absolutely terrific. They know that we need to share the water. The entire basin needs to share the water, and that's why I am particularly passionate about this.

Again, speaking about history, I just want to say that it was such a shame when the then Deputy Prime Minister, Barnaby Joyce, came out and said that, if the people of South Australia had a problem with the way in which the Murray River was operating, they should all move to where the water is. Clearly the Deputy Prime Minister of the time, in 2017, was a proponent of relocation, having done so himself to sit in this very chamber, but I can't attest to all of those people in South Australia having to move to where the water is. He has said in this place that there wasn't 'a hope in Hades' of that 450 gigalitres being delivered. Well, you know what? It is going to be delivered and it needs to be delivered. And it can be done in a fair and equitable way.

I want to point to why it's important, with another example. I've been dealing with, again, farmers who are working with science, and what they've come up with is an incredible idea, where they go to feedlots—40,000-head feedlots—take the manure, the putrescible waste, as it's referred to, and take the methane from that. They use that methane to power the feedlot, and in the future it'll power an abattoir. This is happening at Hay; it's being built now. Then what they do is run the remaining animal refuse from there and put it through industrial-scale vermiculture—worm farming. They then turn that into fertiliser, which is going to provide really fantastic bespoke fertiliser to adjacent crops. They're hoping to sell some of their water as part of the Murry plan, and that is going to provide equity so that they continue this project. They are fully aware of where the water's going to come from. I said to them, 'Can you afford to sell the water to make this successful?' And they said, 'Yes, we've done our planning.' So, when people talk about the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and where the water's going to come from, I'd like to say that not all farmers and irrigators are against this. They can see the benefits. They can see how we couple science with modern manufacturing and how we value-add to our primary product.

This is the key in Australia; we have to make it here. That's where this plan and buying back this water is going to create such a difference for so many people. I am pleased that there are members from South Australia in the chamber, because they know how important water is, they know they deserve their fair share and they know that not all irrigators are against this—and irrigators are people who are innovative, and they know that they can make the most of the water that they have.

I want to continue on this issue. The Murray-Darling Basin is home to unique and ecologically significant wetlands. I was at AgQuip a few weeks ago, out at Gunnedah, another great part of New South Wales, as chair of the agriculture committee. I was wandering around between magnificent headers and all manner of agricultural equipment, and seed sellers. It was just magnificent. And who do I run into but the Office of the Inspector-General of Water Compliance. Inspector-general Troy Grant had stepped away to have a bit of lunch; he'd probably gone off to have one of those fantastic steak sandwiches that everyone loves at AgQuip. So Troy wasn't there, but I was speaking to his deputy. The office of water compliance are doing incredible work in really cracking down on how water is measured, how it is used and making sure it is not wasted in the Murray-Darling Basin. This is their role. They took over the role, and it's a statutory body. Troy Grant was in the Berejiklian government, so we've tried to be very fair about this.

This is so important. The Murray-Darling Basin region contains 70 per cent of Australia's irrigated land, and it also grows 60 per cent of our food. I've been working with the ag committee on a food security inquiry, and, I have to tell you, since COVID, food security has been something that is top of mind for many people in Australia. We need to keep our food secure. That's why taking a step back, looking at how we use this water and making sure it is used effectively is so important.

Usually in the ag committee when we do inquiries—and I've sat on the ag committee on and off for most of the seven years I've been here—we get between 50 and 60 submissions. We are sitting on just shy of 200 submissions for this inquiry. People are exercised about it—and not just the general public, although there have been many of them, but also our top peak bodies. The National Farmers Federation, irrigators, peak bodies that represent dietitians, and food manufacturers have all submitted to this inquiry. They know how important food security is. They know how important it is to have a steady supply of food not only for Australians but also for our South-East Asian customers.

So we get it. We know what we need to do. We know that there is so much forethought that needs to go into this. And the way we do it is by equitably sharing the water, by making sure that we don't waste water in the Murray-Darling Basin and by getting behind innovative programs like water banking rather than siphon watering. These irrigators know how to use water so efficiently. I was up at the Ord River only recently, looking at some of the modifications they're making. In a country like Australia, we understand water. Our irrigators and our farmers understand water. They know that it needs to be fair and equitable. They do deserve a proper price for water. And we have to ensure that water is used equitably to create food security, to create the export dollars and to create the jobs. This is why I am in favour of this bill, and I do commend it to the House.

I thank the minister, Tanya Plibersek, because, unlike what some of the opponents who have stood in this House have said—'She just doesn't get it'—in fact, she does. She's been getting it for years. She understands how this needs to be done. She knows it's got to be done fairly. We are taking into consideration the implications in our irrigation areas. We know that people in South Australia deserve to have water as well. So this is why it is so important.

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