Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Health) Share this | Hansard source

What I find unbelievably disappointing about the Labor government and particularly Minister Tanya Plibersek on this issue of water is the fact that they are tone deaf and do not understand irrigation communities such as mine. Sunraysia is absolutely reliant on water. We have, in my patch, particularly in the Gannawarra shire, a situation where we now have a patchwork quilt. This is the history of buybacks, that awful time when buybacks occurred and when farmers who were doing it tough, as they do from time to time, decided: 'No, I just can't keep going. I have to sell my water so that I can live in retirement.' That has created a patchwork quilt of dead land right next to farms that are still irrigating.

The risk with the Water Amendment (Restoring Our Rivers) Bill 2023 is that we will see our food and fibre production in Australia depleted and our overall value in horticulture and agriculture depleted. It is our regional communities that will be suffering. This is an awful bill. The key point about this bill is the fact that we do not have a socioeconomic neutrality test still in place. That was the saviour of the legislation before this new legislation that is being brought to the House. To remove that neutrality test of socioeconomic positivity for communities is a huge mistake. This bill tears up the bipartisanship that has been a feature of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, bipartisanship that has been a feature since John Howard announced the $10 billion water efficiency plan and the passing of the Water Act in 2007 that Labor seeks to amend today.

It's not just the lack of bipartisanship for a partisan Labor bill that the Greens are not supporting; worse still, even Victorian Labor are not supporting it. It is astonishing. It really is a miracle. Not only is the government trashing regional communities, but it is also trashing bipartisanship as well. The bipartisanship that has been a feature of the Basin Plan thus far carried through to when the coalition was in government, with the Nationals striking an agreement with all basin states to guarantee that neutrality test, the primary target of the buyback agenda Minister Plibersek seeks to push through by the end of this parliamentary year. That neutrality test was the safeguard implemented by former Labor water minister Tony Burke. At the time he actually understood what was going on and the risks that were being posed to regional communities. Now the new minister is dumping this central component of the Basin Plan.

Labor's intent to buy back annual water licences must be considered alongside how much irrigated agriculture or horticulture has already been sold in the basin. In a column in the Daily Telegraph on 25 August, the acting CEO of the New South Wales Irrigators Council, Christine Freak, stated that the Basin Plan had already removed 2,100 gigalitres from farming, on top of 875 gigalitres she says came out prior to the plan. People have always struggled to get their heads around the gigalitres and megalitres or the 'number of Sydney Harbours' of water I'm talking about here, but Labor has never got its head around the socio and economic costs of water surrendered by farmers.

In 2015, the then CEO of the National Irrigators Council, Tom Chesson, said in a Senate inquiry submission that the 'gross value of irrigated agricultural production across the basin was $1,135 per megalitre'. Eight years on, you can take that as a conservative figure and note that nearly 3,000 gigalitres of that has left production according to the New South Wales Irrigators Council. This equates to annual production losses of $3 billion—again, rounding down to be conservative. In today's money you could save $3.5 billion per annum in direct income. That's how far back the basin communities already are in direct income from irrigated agriculture and horticulture, without even calculating the indirect value-add component of local jobs and spending in local economies.

In my electorate of Mallee, the Mildura-Swan Hill region is expected to have a gross value of production in horticulture of $2.2 billion by 2029-30. We are on a great and positive trajectory after the damage of the millennium drought, but now this water minister wants to seriously compromise the projected growth in my electorate through buybacks.

The National Farmers Federation water chair Malcolm Holm claims the minister is in effect saying the new round of buybacks will exceed one-third of the remaining recovery target, which is close to 1,000 gigalitres. If the NFF are right and, say, 300 gigalitres were to be recovered via buybacks, there goes around $300 million to $350 million more in direct income from irrigated agriculture and horticulture, not to mention the indirect flow-on economic and social impacts to our local communities.

This is a point the National Irrigators Council made in 2018, and we in the National Party listened. Their submission to the Productivity Commission stated:

Assessment of water recovery as being 'cost effective' must take into account a full range of flow-on impacts and strategic value of targeted purchases. It should not be a simplistic assessment that only compares the dollar value per mega litre to the taxpayer.

They went on to add, quite accurately:

… such simplistic assessments ignore the flow-on impacts in communities, the value of future production and employment opportunities.

The Nationals and Liberals on this side of the chamber understand this all too well. Labor simply doesn't care because it holds zero seats in the basin. Sure, there's Adelaide, but remember the desalination plant federal taxpayers contributed $328 million towards thanks to the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd governments? It's been running at a reduced capacity ever since it was completed. In the most recent reporting year, to August, the desal plant produced 5.3 gigalitres, when it has the capacity of 100 gigalitres. Reportedly, it has run at no better than 10 per cent capacity since it was built, but I digress.

I think every sensible person in the basin accepted the need to extend the time frame of the Basin Plan. Some even said the plan was always adaptive. When the minister was first briefed on the Basin Plan, 18 months ago, she was told that the time frames were unrealistic. The minister has had 18 months in government to work with the states, as the former coalition government did, to deliver water savings without compromising the sustainability of communities along the basin. In fact, this government has gone out of its way to exclude their Victorian Labor colleagues. As I said, when news of the new Basin Plan deal first broke—and I say again here: I commend the Andrews Labor government for supporting our farmers. The Victorian Minister for Water, Harriet Shing, had previously said her government was opposed to buybacks, and they have stood their ground. Go them! And I don't say that very often. It is pleasing to see. The New South Wales Labor government, by contrast, has been far quicker to backtrack on the concerns about buybacks they raised in opposition. I fear that the Albanese Labor government's exclusion of Victoria from this agreement—you could argue this government is using standover tactics to get Victoria to the table—could mean that many millions of dollars in water infrastructure improvements are off the table for Victoria.

Nature has delivered us some reprieve from the dire millennium drought, which framed the policy development when the Water Act and the Basin Plan were created. I remember those years. Recent flooding has given the system a good flush, albeit with terrible consequences for the livelihoods of some, including in my electorate. It has to be noted, though, as my Nationals colleagues have been saying, that the flooding could have been mitigated with more water storage capacity in the system. Who would think? Sadly, though, the policymakers were too busy listening to the false prophecies of the likes of Tim Flannery and were scared off by the idea that we'd have more water than we'd know what to do with. Of course, the climate narrative has shifted—from global warming, when the plan was conceived, through to climate change, where extreme weather events were expected to become more frequent, to now what the UN Secretary-General calls global boiling. It's hard to keep up.

It will also be hard to keep up with how much taxpayer money Labor intends to spend to recover the additional water buybacks. It has been estimated that the amount of water to be recovered is equivalent to that of the entire Sunraysia district, in my electorate. Just imagine if every irrigated horticultural property in Sunraysia closed and sold up, if the water were taken away and the land became useless. The economy would wither as fast as the vines and the fruit trees. That would at least be more visible than the reality Labor proposes in this bill—the invisible devastation of growers exiting the industry again all across the basin. In the past, Labor have used the terminology 'willing sellers', in one of the great furphies of the buyback debate. I was thinking during the night: it's like saying that somebody who is going through incredible mortgage difficulty and has to put their house on the market is a willing seller. Who in their right mind thinks that is a reasonable approach? It's nothing but coercive.

Few growers are more distressed than the wine grape industry, which is prevalent in my electorate. I met with some of them recently. The oversupply in that industry and the impact of China's sanctions against Australian wine are still hurting. If this bill passes, Labor will go into that wine market looking for so-called willing sellers—those mortgage holders who are going through a hard time. Let's be clear on one thing: the government will pursue water sellers across the basin, in Victoria, South Australia, New South Wales and maybe even Queensland. The fact that Victoria isn't part of this 'deal' on the Basin Plan doesn't mean the minister is not going to come hunting for willing sellers in Victoria. The minister could perhaps come back to the House to clarify that. It seems to me that, wherever there's a willing seller, Labor will buy their water. Potentially leaving Victoria out of this deal could mean little or no infrastructure spending but full exposure to the buyback program alone—none of the benefit but plenty of the risk.

The NFF estimated late last month that they think the starting price for the buyback program will be $3 billion.

See this speech in context