Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

As I was saying right before we went to members' statements, the very north of my electorate of Bendigo is just over 30 minutes away from the Murray, so we are very much in the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. Lake Eppalock, which is a storage for the Murray, is in my electorate. I'll say this to those opposite: improving infrastructure is a matter of urgency, not just because we need to be smarter with the water that we have—and I'll get to what's happening in our area in a moment and the worry about the next few months and years—but also because of those times when we have too much water, which is what we have experienced more recently and in the last 12 months. We need to be smarter with this precious resource that we have. A very learned friend of mine in my electorate said, 'Lisa, the drought started seven weeks ago; it's already started to dry.' I take this person and their word incredibly seriously because they are the chair of Coliban Water. They understand water and how the systems work in our area. That news makes me nervous because we still haven't upgraded the infrastructure in my part of the world, in the rural areas of Greater Bendigo and Mount Alexander. As I was saying, we still have a lot of channelling in our part of the world, where they literally run the water down open channels and it is evaporated away. That is just inefficient. It's not environmentally sound and it doesn't deliver a good outcome for all involved.

Because it is so close to where I am, I have also visited a number of the different stakeholder groups—the businesses, organisations and farmers—to the north of me to speak about this very impact and this issue of water. What I will say is: when it comes to buybacks, they're voluntary. I can remember meeting farmers who were saying, 'I do plan to sell that entitlement; that's my super,' and that's what the system allows. But what I'll also say to those opposite is: we can't keep doing what we've been doing. There is a problem with the water market. If you want to go back to those really high prices, when we had an inefficient Murray-Darling Basin scheme, we will simply go back there. When it starts to dry and there's less water around, like there is today, we will see those prices go up. It is in their interests that we invest in and improve the water infrastructure, for economic reasons. Now let's talk about the environmental reasons.

I can also remember being up around the Murray and speaking to a couple of old farmers. To their credit, they were genuinely concerned because they just didn't understand. The politics around the Murray has become quite ugly, and there is a lot of misinformation. I can remember this lovely old guy saying to me, 'In my lifetime that area, those wetlands, have never flooded.' In your lifetime it hasn't, sure. But have you asked your First Nations community what used to happen in that area before the farms were built, before the dams were built, before the water was channelled off? Have you actually spoken to First Nations people about what happened to the water in their area?

That's what is also critical about this plan: we have to learn from First Nations people a better way to manage our water. We need to act, and we need to act now. That is why this reform that is before us is so sensible. It is about having more time to deliver the remaining water based upon expert advice. It's based upon the science. We have to listen to the science when it comes to the Murray-Darling. We are drying sooner and drying quicker. Right now it doesn't feel that way because right now in Central Victoria it's still quite wet. But it's going to get dry sooner and quicker and those prices will go through the roof, and we won't have enough water to get us through the next drought if we don't act now.

This plan includes more time to deliver the 450 gigalitres of water to the environment. This is what we need. To give a demonstration of the kinds of projects that are being looked at, one of the projects in my area has Coliban Water doing a business case for it. It will return about six gigalitres of water. Just one project in my electorate is returning three times as much water as what the previous government did in their entire nine years. It's a project that will be welcomed by so many because it isn't just about returning water to the environment and First Nations people, it is also about improving efficiency and giving people on that pipeline water security. If you're somebody waiting for the water to be flushed down the channel to get to you and it evaporates along the way, you would far better back a pipeline that has been constructed effectively for a water-intense system that works for you than this old, archaic way that has existed for 100 years. That is what we're still facing in parts of rural and regional Australia. We still have water infrastructure that goes back a century. We can do better. We can put the infrastructure in that will really help these areas be more efficient, more sustainable and, most importantly, return water to our environment.

This legislation will also give us more options to return the remaining water. I've mentioned voluntary water buybacks. Talk to the farmers in those areas. Some of them want to tap into that. Some of them resent the fact they missed out on that opportunity. It will also help support more communities and better infrastructure projects. And these next rounds of infrastructure projects are expensive. We've got the low-hanging fruit. We now need to go for the more expensive projects, but they are worth it because of what they will deliver. We need more funding, and this is where I call upon the Victorian government again to come to the table. Let's work together on this because there is money and there's an opportunity to help regions like my region get more.

The other part to this bill which is so fundamental is more accountability. We need the Murray-Darling Basin governments and the federal government to work together to achieve the targets. This plan is a start, but, as I said, because of the impact of climate change, because we are going to dry sooner, it is in the best interests of all of the Murray-Darling Basin communities and their representatives to back in this plan.

We can't go back to the conditions of the millennial drought. We just cannot do that. But if we don't do anything now that's exactly where we're going, and that will be a disaster for our agriculture and farming communities, it will be a disaster for the environment, it will be a disaster for First Nations people that are just starting to get management of their land back and it will be a disaster for our communities. We'll have those opposite saying, 'Why didn't you do anything about it?' Well this is how we do something about it that helps everybody.

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