Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Environment and Water) Share this | Hansard source

I want to talk today about specifically what the government is doing to close some of the gaps in the area of water policy between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. It's simply not okay that in 2024 Australia still has communities where you can't access safe drinking water. Our government believes that, as a basic human right, every Australian should be able to access secure and clean water—of course for drinking and sanitation but also so that communities can be built on and expanded. We know that water needs to come first in our remote communities so that housing can be built, so that health infrastructure can be built and so that education and other social goods can follow.

That's why last year, as part of the government's Closing the Gap implementation plan, we announced $150 million to deliver clean and reliable water to remote First Nations communities. This has allowed us to undertake projects like installing pipes that are more resilient in our harsh climate, more able to withstand damage and easier to fix if leaks occur; treating water using water treatment technology that doesn't require expensive chemicals that are difficult to source and complex to handle; increasing the use of water sources that are sensitive to country, practical to supply and resilient to the effects of climate change; and, crucially, training local people with the knowledge and skills needed to maintain the new systems we're building so communities aren't relying on fly-in fly-out workers to fix broken water systems, waiting weeks at a time for that to happen.

Delivering this water infrastructure can transform communities, and we're already seeing that happen. In Yuendumu, which is just one example, there is $11.1 million for three critical construction projects to upgrade and replace infrastructure and prevent leakage. In Milingimbi, we're investing $6.44 million in three projects to improve access and reliability of water supply in the area. I'll give one example of the flow-on benefits of these types of investments. In Milingimbi, this extra investment in water has made it possible to build 32 additional homes and extend 32 existing homes. You can't expand communities if there's not enough drinking water or if there's not enough water for the homes that are being built. They are just two examples of the $50 million that we've already committed of the $150 million announcement last year, and of course we're working very closely with states and territories to add to this list. This is the type of practical difference that additional funding for water can make. A community that doesn't have adequate water will also suffer from overcrowding. It will go without basic services. Now these communities have running water, more housing and more services.

It's important to note that, under the previous government, there were water infrastructure investment programs. They could not deliver water in circumstances like this to remote Indigenous communities. These communities were left dry because of the way those previous programs were run, in terms of the restrictions around what they could fund. In November we also announced an important increase in funding for First Nations water entitlements in the Murray-Darling Basin. We increased that funding to $100 million. We know how very important the health of our rivers is to our First Nations communities. Across the Murray-Darling Basin we've got about 40 First Nations groups that are absolutely determined and absolutely committed to seeing the river systems restored to health. The Aboriginal Water Entitlements Program was a promise made in 2018 by the previous government and broken by the previous government. Forty million dollars was promised and was never delivered. We'll finally deliver this funding and much more, with the first water purchases towards this program to begin later this year, making sure that communities get the water entitlements that they were promised and that they need.

We know that there is still an enormous amount of work to be done to close the gap on water security, and we can't do it alone. We're working with state and territory governments, with local government and with First Nations organisations like the committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander water interests to make sure that we get full consultation. We're working with water users, scientists and environmentalists to make sure that we plan across this nation to identify where we need to deliver more safe and secure drinking water, to plan for that delivery and to make sure that we get those water security projects built. We're helping in this program also to build the foundations of many remote and regional communities so that they can prosper and thrive. Fresh water will always be a key to that.

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