David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have received a letter from the honourable member for Grayndler proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:

The urgent need for the Federal Government to take action to protect and restore our precious natural environment and water supplies.

I call upon those members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The report released today, Australia state of the environment 2006, is an important addition to the information which tells us that climate change is real and it is happening right now. The report indicates that greenhouse gas emissions are set to rise by 22 per cent of 1990 levels by the year 2020. It puts a hole in the government’s argument that it is taking action on climate change. It destroys its argument that it is meeting the Kyoto target of 108 per cent by the year 2012. The only reason it is within a bull’s roar of reaching that target is the one-off decisions of the New South Wales and Queensland governments to stem land clearing.

The report outlines how, over the last five years, there has been lower than average rainfall all over eastern Australia. It documents what is happening in our cities, including that Perth’s water supply catchments are yielding 50 per cent less water than in the years before the mid-1970s. It outlines how ocean temperatures have increased by 0.28 per cent since 1950. The trend spells a disaster for the Great Barrier Reef, but of course we know that that is one area where the government do have a plan. We had the tourism minister last month proposing a shade cloth for the Great Barrier Reef to solve the problem of climate change. So it is not true that they do not have any plans. It is true, however, that the plans that they do have are not practical and are just rhetorical.

We know that the government consistently speak about how much money they have allocated. But what have they done? Let us look at the issue of water. Australia is the third largest per capita user of water in the world. The report confirms that there are significant pressures on Australia’s inland river systems. According to the Murray-Darling Basin Commission, we are facing the worst drought in 1,000 years. And today that commission showed that inflows into the basin from June to November 2006 have been only seven per cent of the long-term average for that period.

The report confirms that Australia is facing an extinction crisis, we have lost 56 per cent of our vegetation in river systems and wetlands, 20 new pests and diseases are introduced each year into Australia and two million hectares of Australian land shows signs of salinity. All of that adds up to the fact that, on each and every indicator, the Australian environment is going backwards compared with where it was in 1996. To give one example, water consumption increased by more than 10 per cent from 1996 to 2001.

This outlines what is happening with our biodiversity. We all know the effort the government went to so as to not act in accordance with its own environmental legislation to save that one theoretical orange-bellied parrot every 1,000 years. One theoretical orange-bellied parrot every 1,000 years has all of the arms of government trying to save it. At the same time, the report says 29 bird species significantly decreased in number over the years up to this report. We know that 39 per cent of Australia’s 85 bioregions, and more than 30 per cent of the ecosystems, have been described as threatened. We know there has been a massive decline in waterbird numbers across eastern Australia. When it comes to wetlands, we know that altered flow regimes have resulted in the loss of 90 per cent of flood plain wetlands in the Murray-Darling Basin, 50 per cent of coastal wetlands in New South Wales and 75 per cent of wetlands on the Swan coastal plain in south-west Western Australia.

When it comes to water, we know it is over-allocated, undervalued and misdirected. And there is a lot of agreement between things that I have said and things that the parliamentary secretary for water, the member for Wentworth—who is at the table—has said about appropriate pricing of natural resources. The principles behind the National Water Initiative are essentially sound. We support market based mechanisms to drive water use to areas of higher value. But compare the rhetoric on water, even in the same speech sometimes. In the Prime Minister’s speech to the CEDA conference, he outlined the importance of market based mechanisms for water and then went on to say why emissions trading was bad. In the same speech!

The truth is that what we need, if we are going to address the environmental decline which Australia is seeing after 10 long years of the Howard government, is a consistent approach based upon the principles of proper pricing and valuing of our natural resources, the acknowledgment that they are finite resources and the establishment mechanisms which drive the change through. But that is not what we are seeing at the moment. What we see from the government is just more and more bureaucracy.

There is another report being launched today, which is the ALP discussion paper Protecting and restoring our precious natural environment and water supplies. I commend it to the parliamentary secretaries for water and the environment and heritage opposite, Bib and Bub, because what it presents is not just an analysis of what is wrong with the environment but a path forward—a detailed, comprehensive policy framework for moving forward to address these issues. It is a policy framework with climate change at its centre, because you cannot address issues such as water, whether it be in our agricultural areas or in our cities, without a plan to address climate change.

We see announcements from the government. Recently they announced the Office of Water Resources. The National Water Commission did not know about that announcement. They heard it on radio. I would be interested to know if the parliamentary secretary could outline exactly what the distinction is between the two offices. We know that this is a government that announces lots of programs with lots of overlap. What I want to see is the money and financing going into a streamlining of these programs. What the Labor discussion paper raises—and we have had discussion with the National Farmers Federation, with conservation organisations and with business organisations right across the board—is the need to actually move beyond rhetoric and into delivery. We need to consolidate land, water and biodiversity programs to ensure that the money is actually spent on the environment and not just on creating a bureaucracy so that the parliamentary secretary can say he is in charge of something.

Let us think about the programs that are there when it comes to natural resource management. We have the National Water Commission and the Office of Water Resources. We have the National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality, the Natural Heritage Trust, the National Water Initiative, the National Landcare Program, the National Reserve System framework and the Living Murray initiative. We have all those programs—

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Are you doing our speech?

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Flinders may not get a chance to speak!

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

but not a single drop into the Murray, in spite of the rhetoric of those opposite.

Stephen Smith (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry, Infrastructure and Industrial Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Two drips, not one drop!

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Perth!

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I cannot not have that on the Hansard record: ‘Two drips, not one drop,’ the member for Perth says quite accurately. In spite of the rhetoric of the government that $700 million has now been allocated to the Living Murray initiative, we have not seen the purchase from willing sellers of one drop of water to put back into environmental flows—not a drop. When you look at the Living Murray website, it is terrific. It says things are projected and it has a state by state breakdown and at the bottom of it there is: ‘Amount of water delivered into the system’ and you get all the eggs in a row: 0, 0, 0, 0, 0. That is what you get, because they have failed to actually deliver a drop.

Labor, on the other hand, believes that you have got to establish targets. That is why we have a 30 per cent target for water recycling by 2015. That is why we support mandated targets as the basis of the Kyoto protocol and the global system. That is why we support a national emissions trading scheme, so that you drive that change through in the least costly way. That is why we support putting 1,500 gigalitres back into the Murray River within 10 years—the amount that the scientists tell us is necessary to save the Murray River, or face the consequences.

What is happening is that one by one community groups and businesses are coming on and adopting the agenda and strategy that Labor has set. Today we have seen the peak policy-making body of the National Farmers Federation make a unanimous decision to join with the Australian Business Roundtable on Climate Change in calling for early action on climate change. Why are they doing that? The NFF president says because climate change:

... threatens Australia’s agricultural productive base—an important contributor to the national economy, the ability for Australian farmers to put food on the table of Australian families, and the long-term sustainability of at least 60% of Australia’s landmass.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics records that Australian farmers spent $3.3 billion on natural resource management over 2004-05, that 92% of farmers have environmental programs in place to manage and preserve their land, and that farmers plant over 20 million trees a year for conservation.

Farmers know that climate change is real and it is impacting on them first. That is why today they have taken such a strong position.

We have seen the Leader of the Opposition this week put forward an agenda for reform of federal-state relations. That is very necessary is in the areas of environment and water. We need to stop the blame game. We need to actually have the Howard government and the future Rudd government take charge and take responsibility for delivering on the ground. A Labor government will do just that, because in spite of the rhetoric—in spite of the fact that you have ‘Australia’ and ‘National’ in all these programs—we are not seeing the results delivered on the ground.

A Labor government will deliver clarity of purpose, commitment to implementation, appropriate accountability and monitoring of progress, because there is no greater issue facing the nation than climate change and addressing the symptoms of it, including the reduction in our water supplies. We know from report after report that early action is cheaper—that early action is not just good for the environment; it is good for the economy and good for jobs. What we have from those opposite is an acknowledgement that Kyoto is ongoing and will be the basis of the international effort, but we should not ratify yet. There is an acknowledgement that emissions trading is the main driver, but we should not have it yet. There is an acknowledgement that we need to put in place water trading and take action to buy back water that is overallocated, but there is no action yet. I say the time is now. (Time expired)

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was looking forward to the detailed policy framework from the opposition today, but we heard none of it from the member for Grayndler. Apparently, it is in a document which he has there, but he has not told us what is in it. But before I came to speak on this MPI, I thought I would do some research of my own as to what the Labor Party’s policies on water were. It is, after all, our biggest environmental challenge. So I went to the Labor Party’s website, as one does, and clicked on the heading ‘Policy’. There are a number of policy documents there. The first one which referred to water was a speech by Mr Beazley on 24 November 2005. Mr Beazley said:

I also at this point indicate my intention to have more to say about water policy. ... I will be addressing the challenges we face in water management in 2006.

That was all he had to say. Well, 2006 came along, and the next great address that we had from the then Leader of the Opposition was in March. I am afraid to say that there was not much about water there either. In a very long and tightly spaced document, it is not until we get to page 13 that he mentions water, and it is in the context of praising Sydney Water for offering $150 cash back on front-loading washing machines. That is a great answer to the drought.

Finally, on 15 November 2006, Mr Beazley gave a speech to the National Press Club, headed portentously ‘My blueprint for prosperity’. I have been through that document several times and with great care. Water is not mentioned once. The only statement I could find from Mr Beazley in the course of the last year or so about water was a statement on 9 November 2006 in which he called on the government to immediately commit $500 million to the Queensland government’s Western Corridor Recycled Water Scheme. As it happened, I was in Brisbane that day meeting with the Queensland government, as I have met with every state government, to discuss their water plans, and this recycling scheme was on the agenda. The Queensland government had been in close discussions with the Australian government and the National Water Commission, and they had asked for financial support. They had asked for $184 million. So Mr Beazley was proposing that we should give them nearly three times what they had asked for. That is how Labor proposes to end the blame game. That is how Labor proposes to reform federal relations: give state governments that have neglected their water policy and infrastructure for decades three times what they ask for. That is the sort of recklessness with taxpayers’ funds that we can expect from the Labor Party.

One would hope that now that Mr Rudd has replaced Mr Beazley as the Leader of the Opposition a different approach might be had to water. We heard none of it today from the member for Grayndler. Perhaps that is because he is on the way out, about to be replaced by the member for Kingsford Smith. But the member for Griffith, the Leader of the Opposition, has quite a distinguished track record in the annals of water management failures in Australia. Mr Rudd was the chief of staff in opposition and the head of the cabinet office in government to Wayne Goss from 1988 to 1995. The Goss government was elected in 1989 in part based on a platform which included as a central plank a decision not to proceed with the Wolffdene Dam.

The Wolffdene Dam was the next big water storage facility proposed for south-east Queensland, the fastest growing urban area in Australia. It was a proposal of The Nationals government, and it was canned. It was terminated by the Goss government—no doubt under the advice of Mr Rudd. They failed to build the dam and then did nothing else—and that is really the key point here, because south-east Queensland is our fastest growing urban centre, and it faces a shocking drought. It goes into a long, hot summer, with El Nino conditions predicted, with its most important storage facility—Wivenhoe Dam—below 25 per cent full. There is no big city area in Australia more stressed for water than Brisbane and south-east Queensland. In large measure, the responsibility for that lies on the shoulders of the Goss government and its chief of staff, now the Leader of the Opposition, because in 1989 they decided not to build another dam.

Of course, they not only failed to build that dam but also failed to do anything else. There was a parliamentary inquiry into the dam, and the Labor members were opposed to it. But they recommended that Queensland should progress recycling and reuse and do something else. If you are not going to build a dam, do something else. Dams are not compulsory. There are all sorts of options for urban water. But they chose to do nothing, and that is why south-east Queensland faces the challenge it does today. That indeed is why Sydney, my own city, faces the challenge it does today. In 1995, Mr Carr was elected, decided not to build a dam and then did nothing else. In both of those two cities, our biggest and our fastest growing, there has been no substantial augmentation of water supplies for 30 years—incredible complacency and neglect. That is Labor’s track record.

What has the Australian government done under John Howard? As Paul Kelly wrote recently in the Australian, John Howard has been prescient on water. He led all the governments of Australia into the National Water Initiative, the blueprint for Australia’s water reform. The member for Grayndler has said it is sound policy. I thank him for that compliment. It is the policy of every single government in Australia. But it would not be the policy of every single government had it not been for the leadership of John Howard.

The Prime Minister has committed $2 billion to the Australian government water fund, the largest commitment of money to Australia’s water resources by a federal government in our history. Right around Australia, over half a billion dollars has been committed to projects which are improving our knowledge of our water systems, promoting recycling, and replacing, as they are in the Wimmera-Mallee, 16,000 kilometres of leaky, wasteful open channels with 8,000 kilometres of pipes. The Prime Minister has called for a revolution in the way we think about water, and he is delivering that with sound policies and with the largest contribution of cash to water that we have ever seen from a federal government.

In addition to that, the Prime Minister committed $500 million in the last budget to the Murray-Darling Basin Commission. This was probably the most disappointing part of the member for Grayndler’s address to us. He complained, as he often does, that not one drop of water has found its way back into the Murray. He refers to the Living Murray initiative, which is a program to acquire 500 gigalitres of permanent water—long-term cap-equivalent water—for the river by 2009. He points to a page on the website of the Murray-Darling Basin Commission—a page which, I might say, was placed there by resolution of the ministerial council on a motion I moved largely because I wanted everybody to understand exactly where we are up to with the Living Murray initiative.

The most important thing to bear in mind about the Living Murray initiative is that the Commonwealth is not obliged to deliver one litre of water. The reason for that, Mr Deputy Speaker Causley—and you, with your background, know this better than anybody in this House—is that the Commonwealth does not manage water resources. The water resources of Australia are managed by the states and the territories. As one water expert often says to me, the Commonwealth has not delivered a bucket of water to anyone. That is a feature of our constitutional structure.

So the scheme for the Living Murray initiative was that, over that period—the five years through to 2009—500 gigalitres would be acquired in one form or another, and that would come entirely from the states. New South Wales’s target was 249 gigalitres; Victoria’s, 214; South Australia’s, 35; and the ACT’s, two. The reason Queensland is not mentioned there is that the focus of the Living Murray initiative is a number of important ecological sites along the Murray River, in the southern Murray-Darling Basin. All of that water is the subject of a considerable number of projects. They are not designed to deliver water tomorrow; they are designed to deliver water within their time frames. The majority of these projects are designed to acquire water for the environment but at the same time not diminish the amount of water that is actually or practically available for irrigation. We know that there is an enormous amount of water lost through wastage, through seepage, through evaporation and through inefficient practices in the irrigation areas. Every irrigator, including those in the public gallery here today, knows that a great deal of progress is being made and will be made in using water more efficiently. So our aim has been to achieve win-wins—a win for the environment and a win for agriculture.

The water that is in the process of being recovered is well over half that 500-gigalitre target. But the Prime Minister earlier this year, notwithstanding the progress that was being made, was dissatisfied with that. He was not happy to sit by and say, ‘I will stick to my commitment of putting $200 million into this $500 million fund’—$500 million to buy 500 gigalitres. He demanded that we do more. We have committed, out of the additional $500 million that has gone to the Murray-Darling Basin Commission, an additional $200 million to the Living Murray initiative.

The Australian government has gone further. We have, out in the market today, a tender to buy water for the Living Murray initiative. Contrary to what the member for Grayndler has said to the effect that we are not buying any water, we have a tender out there in the market. I saw a press release by the member for Grayndler recently which said that a tender was not buying water. Most of us would recognise that that shows a touching commercial naivety. A tender is an offer to purchase water—but it is an offer to buy water on the basis that the water has become available by reason of water efficiencies. There are enormous quantities of water that can be made available through efficiencies. Simply piping open channels can, in some circumstances, save up to 90 per cent of the water, particularly where water is being directed over long distances through channels for stock and domestic purposes. Often the wastage—and this is certainly the case in the Wimmera-Mallee—can be as high as 95 per cent. So there is a lot that can be saved through investment which can then be made available.

But, if there has been a slowness in seeking to acquire water for the Living Murray initiative, that is clearly at the feet of the states. I know the new Labor approach, which Mr Beazley foreshadowed in the remarks I referred to earlier, is never to say a bad word about state governments and preferably to give them three times what they ask for. But the simple fact of the matter—and it is clear on the web page that the member for Grayndler refers to—is that the obligation under the Living Murray initiative to deliver water is from the states. The obligation from the Commonwealth is to pay 40 per cent of the cost of that. We have increased that to the point where we are now committing more than half the funds to the Living Murray initiative and we are seeking to buy water directly ourselves. No Australian government has been more committed to the water security of Australia than this one. (Time expired)

Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Regardless of what members opposite are saying, Labor has made statements on water, and many of them. Most recently there was a policy statement on water from Mr Beazley regarding a 30 per cent water recycling target, which was made at the South Australian state ALP conference less than a couple of months ago.

Let us remember and focus for a minute on what was promised by this government in relation to this nationally, regionally and locally most significant and critical issue. This government gave its word that in the five-year period from June 2004 to June 2009 necessary steps would be taken to deliver an average of 500 gigalitres per year of additional flows to the River Murray system. This additional 500 gigalitres per year was to assist with the river’s general health and, hopefully, prevent the total destruction and loss of some of the Murray-Darling’s most precious and environmentally significant assets—six assets, in fact, spread through the system—and provide an ongoing opportunity for the renewal and continued health of those assets.

Within South Australia we have the collective asset of the Lower Lakes, the Murray Mouth and the Coorong—South Australia’s highly valued coastal waterway that is supposed to be an essential migratory bird habitat and has been central to the reproductive cycle of fish life for an aeon and a day. This asset was selected because of its unique ecological qualities, recognised both nationally and internationally, and because of its significance. It is a highly significant asset from the perspective of South Australians, culturally and recreationally, and the Prime Minister played on the value South Australians place on the area and its systems when, only days after committing to the 500-gigalitre target and time frame, he attended a Hindmarsh Liberal campaign function during the last election campaign and told the people of Adelaide:

... there is no issue long-term that is more important to many people in South Australia than to get the River Murray flowing again ...

…            …            …

... we are able to see the way ahead ... the day when the water will flow more freely again ...

That is what the Prime Minister said to the people of South Australia. But was he serious or was this just political spin in a desperate bid to save a very marginal coalition seat? I would say it was the latter.

I question whether the original target was in any way near satisfactory, whether 500 gigalitres on average for the entire system would actually provide what is necessary, even with scientifically rigorous economies of water use for environmental outcomes in place. It has been suggested that just the lower Murray itself needs as much as 700 gigalitres per year, let alone the rest of the system. It has been put quite strongly that the system as a whole needs three times what the federal government has settled on as its target—its minimal, almost tokenistic target. Nevertheless, the Howard government’s minimal and, one would think, easily reached target—compared with that of Labor—of 500 gigalitres per year is the target on which it has focused.

The government is now three years through its five-year time frame. It has consumed 60 per cent of the time it has made available to itself, so let us see where the government is up to. It fills me with great sorrow, as it does many other South Australians and in fact all Australians, that at this point the Howard government’s Living Murray, First Step initiative has delivered not one eye-dropper full of water to the River Murray—not one single drop; zilch, zero, nothing. The recent progress report sourced from the Murray-Darling Basin Commission on the Living Murray initiative has so many zeros on it that it looks more like an old binary computer card than a report on water delivery—a progress report on water delivery, no less.

I acknowledge that the states are in the process of doing what limited infrastructure projects they can and that have been assessed as viable and productive. In fact, they are currently in the process of implementing about half of what the Howard government promised and expects to be congratulated for—half a promise, which might have the political conviction of, and may amount to, just some idea about something that someone had.

Reaching the government’s 500-gigalitre target appears totally dependent on projects that are under investigation, the majority of which the Murray-Darling Basin Commission itself admits in its report will not be financially or logistically viable. So the fulfilment of the Prime Minister’s promise of 500 gigalitres is totally dependent on a pie-in-the-sky idea that will, in the Murray-Darling Basin Commission’s opinion, drop like the value of T2’s share issue.

Returning for a minute to what the Prime Minister told South Australians in my electorate in July 2004, he said, in addition to what I have already relayed this afternoon, ‘You deserve it and you’ve been delivered it.’ Yes, we in South Australia do deserve it, as all Australians deserve it, but we have been delivered it? Delivered what? We have not been delivered anything, not one single drop. As I said, we deserve it, yes—full marks for that; that is very nice of you to say—but we have been delivered absolutely nothing. We have been delivered a strong and improving scientific basis on which to make management decisions and install management infrastructure and systems, but we have been delivered that by the state government, not by the federal government.

From the federal government, it is a very different story. In February of this year the Prime Minister was no doubt all excited at playing the insurgent in vowing, as quoted in the Advertiser in February, ‘to put a bomb under the process’—a highly destructive image which one would think is not conducive to making positive gains. But I wonder how long the Prime Minister’s fuse is. It has thus far been burning for nearly 300 days since that statement was made in the Advertiser, and we have not yet seen or heard anything noteworthy—no riverbanks or weirs blown, no rain-producing pyrotechnics in the sky, no dirt propelling, no Ord River ditch digging, no shock waves rippling across the country—but we are still waiting for the big bang. The farmers are still waiting; the townspeople are still waiting; the entire state of South Australia is still waiting, poised, ears cocked, with attention focused on the almighty bang that may still come from any little ditch digger’s explosion.

While the Prime Minister himself can have a dangerously short fuse on demand, as seen in this place time and time again in response to the most serious and substantial of questions and representations, his explosion-generating device on this occasion, as stated in the Advertiser, is the one thing in the country that probably could be described as wet. It is regrettable that we have been delivered words only and not water.

And the Prime Minister has taken a leaf out of a former premier’s book, according to his response to a recent question put to him by the mover of this MPI, the member for Grayndler. Not content with directing words to my electorate, nor to the hundreds of thousands of people dependent on and with a substantial and ongoing interest in the River Murray, the Prime Minister has taken to including the Lord Almighty in his list of audiences. On 29 November in this place the member for Grayndler questioned the government’s clearly demonstrated lack of progress in meeting its own minimal target, and the Prime Minister answered: ‘I pray for rain every day.’ Good on him. We all pray for rain. I think that is highly commendable. Those of us who pray for rain pray every day and wish that we could see some rain. There is good reason for people throughout the nation to pray for rain, not just over their own catchment areas but throughout all regions that are trying to make a living under the most horrendous, hellish conditions that this country has perhaps ever seen.

We have seen water restrictions, entitlements suspended, animals being sold off, paddocks of crops left to die off and productive trees being left to fend for themselves—if they can, that is. Total water consumption dropped across the nation by some 14 per cent from 2000-01 to 2004-05, and this was before the worst excesses of the current worst drought of a thousand years. Water used for agricultural purposes in this period decreased by 23 per cent and water used for households by eight per cent, but water consumption in some sectors, such as mining and metal manufacturing, has increased in line with mining activities. This is according to the latest water account produced by the ABS. What kind of water deprivation, what kinds of stresses, what kinds of decreases in water consumption now apply? One can only imagine.

Whether we are thinking of the farmers on whom we rely for our personal sustenance and national exports, the communities that support the regions, the lives of people and animals or even the soil’s productivity, we can all take the most serious of droughts to the Almighty in prayer. But, as we know, while every prayer may be answered, the answer is not always in the affirmative. This in itself could be considered to be a substantial but overall narrow approach to our water problems.

The Prime Minister could do well not to just throw his hands up in the air as he did in response to the member for Grayndler’s question, suggesting that this problem is beyond him, that he has run out of ideas and that he has lost the initiative necessary to become the instrument used in answer to his own prayer—a very sad thing. The Murray is my state’s and many, many tens of thousands of other people’s lifeline. We cannot afford, we cannot sustain and we cannot countenance the government’s ongoing failures. (Time expired)

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Let the words ‘the Wolffdene Dam’ hang like a talisman of shame around the neck of the Leader of the Opposition, because that is the dam that, the last time the Leader of the Opposition had his hands anywhere near power in Australia, he destroyed. He destroyed the potential for a new dam in south-east Queensland with a failure to plan for infrastructure, a failure to prepare for the environment. Let those words ‘the Wolffdene Dam’ start to make their way around Australia. If you want to know how the Leader of the Opposition, Kevin Rudd, will govern, look at what he did last time. The last time he had his hands anywhere near the resources and control of government in any Australian jurisdiction was as the chief of staff to Wayne Goss, the then Premier of Queensland. What he did was to put a knife through proposals for the Wolffdene Dam.

Who is paying for that action? It is the people of south-east Queensland right now, at this moment. They may talk on the opposition benches about preparing for the future, but we have the example of the Wolffdene Dam, as raised by my learned leader in this debate, my colleague, my friend and parliamentary secretary with responsibility for water, the member for Wentworth. The last time we saw the Leader of the Opposition with his hands on the tools and the levers of government in Australia he destroyed Queensland’s capacity to prepare for its own water future.

It is a serious business to protect the nation’s environment, it is a serious business to prepare for the future and it is a serious business to care about what happens to future generations of families. It is families, farmers and businesses in south-east Queensland that are suffering today from the failure of Kevin Rudd in the past to stand up for long-term planning. He took the soft option. He played to the crowd. The damage is real and palpable, and people today in south-east Queensland are suffering precisely because of that action. When we want to see what is going to occur with regard to infrastructure and preparation for the water needs of this country in future years if the putative Prime Minister, the would-be leader of this country, ever gets his hands on the authority, the roles and the levers of government in this country, we have to look at what he did in the past. He destroyed a dam. He destroyed the best chance that south-east Queensland has had in the last two decades to prepare for its own water future. That is real and that is a problem.

Let us compare the two approaches here on water and climate. What we hear from the opposition is total failure and silence on three fronts: firstly, on infrastructure; secondly, on pollution in relation to water; and, thirdly, on what their proposals will do to petrol and energy prices for ordinary Australian families. They talk about the poor, yet they want to impose a regressive approach which is going to strike at the heart of the ability of lower income families, farmers and pensioners to deal with their petrol and energy bills.

I turn first to the issue of urban waters, complementing the material brought forward by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister with responsibility for rural water. We hear total silence, we hear nothing, from the opposition about the fact that 1,800 gigalitres, or 1,800 billion litres, of waste water is cast aside every year around the Australian states by state Labor governments. They talk about the waste of water, yet who is wasting that water? We see 1,800 billion litres of waste water every year. Four hundred billion litres of primary sewage is dumped just off, between 2,000 and 3,700 metres off, the coast of Sydney—less than 15 kilometres from the member for Grayndler’s own electorate. Four hundred billion litres a year of primary sewage is dumped off the coast. It is a risk to health, it does damage to the environment and it is a monumental waste of resources. But is there any pressure on the states about that? They mention blithely the 30 per cent target, but there are no proposals to achieve that and there is total silence about the fact that the states themselves have responsibility and are failing to deal with it.

There are 350 billion litres dumped every year. Off Gunnamatta, 150 billion litres are dumped every year. Off my own electorate of Flinders, 200 billion litres are dumped into Port Phillip Bay in Victoria, yet the Victorian government has allowed this to occur and to continue. There are 200 billion litres of waste water dumped in Brisbane at Luggage Point, on the Sunshine Coast, and off the Gold Coast and in the Brisbane River—200 billion litres of secondary treated sewage, dumped at sea, not reused or recycled. That is a problem. This is a debate about water resources: let us focus on the real waste. It is a monumental waste, an extraordinary waste. Yet there is total silence on what their state colleagues are doing. They think that federalism now is to blame the Commonwealth for everything, to be silent on what the states are doing and to be silent about the failures of infrastructure.

What have we done by comparison? What has the Prime Minister done on this? He took up this challenge of cooperative federalism but backed it with real dollars: $2 billion for the National Water Initiative, of which $1.6 billion was for infrastructure. That infrastructure is sponsoring real projects all around this country. Whether they are the Wimmera-Mallee pipeline or recycling schemes around the country, these are real things that are happening and would not have happened but for the Commonwealth’s intervention.

But I know from dealing with the member for Wentworth and others that there is resistance to the states making their contribution. We see that only yesterday the South Australian government refused to play its part in the drought-proofing the south proposal for the Onkaparinga shire. It is an absolute failure of responsibility. They ask others to pay for their mistake and will not even make the most minor contribution. So we are out there trying to do everything we can to make the states and to encourage and support the states to reuse their water and clean up their coasts. If you talk about environmental pollution and you talk about water resources, explain where you stand on this waste of 1,800 billion litres a year.

And then let me turn to the issue of climate change. There is a real difference here between the two approaches in the House. What I want to present is that there is a right way and a wrong way to deal with climate change. The wrong way, at the international level, is what has been presented by the new Leader of the Opposition, who wants to sign an agreement as if suddenly the reality of emissions will disappear. Well, this is the reality. The wrong way is an agreement which has allowed emissions to increase from 100 per cent to 140 per cent during the course of its life. It would have had one per cent impact. The reason is that the major emitters are excluded from it. Yet they hold this up as something that is going to be successful: the Kyoto protocol. I accept the intention, but I reject the mechanism. The reason we reject the mechanism is very simple: China, India, the United States—the major players—are out. And what about those countries that have actually ratified, the ones that have made the promises? As the Prime Minister said today, the only country that is on track to meet its targets that is not a nuclear country is Australia. That is very interesting.

Arch Bevis (Brisbane, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Aviation and Transport Security) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What was our target?

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will tell you about that. We hear that Canada has gone from 94 per cent to 116 per cent: 22 per cent over. France is at nine per cent over. Japan is at 12 per cent over its target. Norway is at 22 per cent over. Spain is at 36 per cent over. Each one of those countries will be more than Australia’s target. And they are just examples.

So what the Labor Party says is: ‘We should support those people who promise but breach’—classic! Whereas we do not make the promise, but we deliver. Our approach—the right way—is to support a new agreement with everybody in, to work with the United States and make the most of our alliance with them and, above all else, to work on practical measures through the Asia-Pacific partnership to deliver real changes at a global level, where we are putting $100 million on the table to work with China and India to bring low emissions there. There is $2 billion on the table in Australia. I commend the Prime Minister for his work leading this debate towards real and practical responses that will cut emissions—not pretending that a few solar panels or a signature will solve it, but actually trying to take steps that will do two things: protect Australians against massively jacked-up energy and petrol prices while at the same time providing a guarantee for our future and making real cuts in emissions.

Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What a missed opportunity today has been. What a disappointing contribution from the member for Grayndler and the member for Wentworth. If there ever was an opportunity for the member for Wentworth—

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

But the member for Flinders was okay.

Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, the member for Flinders makes some sense on climate change. He got dragged into the political blame game in the first nine minutes of his speech, which was unfortunate. What an opportunity for the member for Wentworth to enter this debate and make a statement today. All we have heard is what people are sick of hearing about: the blame game between the Commonwealth and the states. The member for Wentworth is right in the middle of one of those situations at the moment. He is fully aware of the groundwater issue—the tax treatment issue. But we will come to that in a minute.

Let us look at what the Commonwealth has done over the last 11 years, since this government was put in power. There was an agreement—and it was put in place by the former Labor government, so they are both complicit in it—on national competition policy to look at reform. Reform of water was one of the main objectives of that policy initiative. Eleven years have gone past. One of the underpinning fundamentals of that reform process was that property rights would be recognised by those who had water entitlements. Nothing happened. The member for Wentworth is well aware that that was a major objective of that policy, and to come in here today and say that the Prime Minister and others have made great steps forward in water policy is quite ridiculous when one of the things that has underpinned the policy has not been touched at all.

The issue of property rights has not been touched. One of the initial agreements of the national competition policy was that moneys would not flow from the Commonwealth to the states unless certain benchmarks were met in terms of the reform policy. However, $4.6 billion has been expended by the Commonwealth to the states when they have had the capacity within that policy document not to give that money. Why wouldn’t the states run off like vandals with the money when the Commonwealth keeps giving it to them? We have had many intergovernmental agreements, blueprints, water quality and salinity arrangements, national water initiatives, Living Murray initiatives and money being thrown as if it is confetti, and very little achieved.

We have this policy arrangement at the moment where irrigators—the people we are talking about here—have given up water. The groundwater users of New South Wales have shown the lead on this issue. They have given up water to achieve the sustainability of their groundwater resource. The member for Wentworth is well aware that they have nearly given up on the government, both state and federal, in relation to this issue. An arrangement was put in place where both governments would make a contribution to compensate these people for the loss of their income-earning capacity, the loss of a capital asset. That has gone on for nearly two years now. No decision has been made as to whether the Australian Taxation Office will tax that as income, in which case the Commonwealth will get its contribution back because it is contributing one-third to the package, or whether it will be taxed as capital.

Recently the Prime Minister said—and I know the parliamentary secretary agrees—it should be taxed as compensation. The Prime Minister wrote to me the other day and said that I might be interested to know that, at the last meeting with Premier Morris Iemma, the Premier said that it should be treated as compensation. We have everybody agreeing that it should be treated as compensation but they are getting taxed as if it were income.

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is with the ATO; you know that.

Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, that is the proposal that is out there at the moment. I have raised this issue a number of times and I actually wrote to the Premier because every time you raise it in here—and the same thing happened today—the Commonwealth blames the state government. I have an FOI request in to see what has happened to the paper trail on all of this, to see who is to blame. Someone is to blame; or they are both complicit if someone is hiding behind the FOI in relation to this. I made a suggestion to the parliamentary secretary and I got in touch with the Premier and said, ‘Let us get these people in the one room and work it out.’ In New South Wales they say it is the Commonwealth’s problem; in this place the Commonwealth says it is the state’s problem. We heard more of that rubbish today.

I got in touch with the Premier and asked whether he would be prepared to put his minister in a room with the parliamentary secretary, and others if required, to sort this issue out. If it is a matter of the wording of an offer document, let us change the words. We have the Prime Minister and the Premier saying that it should be treated as compensation. The parliamentary secretary tells me there is no need for a meeting. I would advise the parliamentary secretary, the Premier and the Prime Minister to settle this particular issue before Christmas. These people are sick and tired of being treated as pawns in a political game. I intend to pursue the FOI, and if it costs money it will be paid. This is an act of absolute vandalism and for anybody at a state or federal level to say that they are moving towards sustainability and encouraging sustainability of natural resources when this sort of nonsense is going on is reprehensible, to say the least.

Concerns have been raised today about our cities, and the new opposition leader was brought under attack about some dam near Brisbane. People in our metropolitan areas, our major cities, live near the water. The member for Wentworth should look out his front window one day—he will see the water. Climate change is about that water coming up. There is plenty of water for our cities. For the Business Council and others to start suggesting that they should be taking water from inland Australia to feed our cities is quite ridiculous. Just take the salt out of it and drink the stuff. There is plenty there. If we keep doing what we are doing with coal-fired power stations there could be more. You could be adding to the resource over time, so there should not be a problem with water for our cities.

Another issue I would like to raise is renewable fuels. Climate change is upon us. The road to Damascus was crossed about three weeks ago. Al Gore’s cartoon movie, as it was described at the time, has suddenly created a great rush of blood in the government. Climate change is here. So we should, in terms of policy, be encouraging the use of energy sources that are clean. What are we doing in terms of biofuels? In 2011 we are going to tax them—use them as a source of income for the coffers. We are not going to encourage them, but tax them. So that is one policy the government should look at very quickly. If we are going to use carbon credits, charges on water and other market mechanisms to send signals to people or, as the Business Council and the parliamentary secretary have suggested, use pricing policy to drive initiatives then why are we taxing some of these clean fuels? The message that is sending is quite ridiculous.

The third issue is the carbon issue. Climate change is upon us because of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The Prime Minister is putting in place a task force to look at establishing some form of carbon emissions trading—or whatever you would like to call it. Agriculture is not included. Soils of high organic matter and humus could be used as a natural sink for carbon, particularly in the short term—that 30- to 40-year period we are really concerned about. That is aided by improving soils through land use, better management, better agricultural techniques, no-till agriculture, green manure crops et cetera. The farm sector should be on that task force right from the word go; they should not be an additive later on after the business arrangements have been made by big business as to who gets the money in terms of the credits.

The other advantage to putting that system in place is that we are sending a positive message to the farm sector to put in place better farming techniques, no-till agriculture, better soil and more organic matter. You achieve better water infiltration of the soil, less erosion and better yields. You put in place a system that is double-barrelled; it takes care of some of the carbon problems but it also delivers some drought-proofing in terms of better land use management. And you use the pricing mechanism to send the message. So it is important that we start to initiate some policies in this place and that we stop blaming one another as to whose fault it is and living in the past. Obviously, we would not have a climate change problem if we had addressed some of these issues in the past. It is time to get on with it and put in place policies that actually work. (Time expired)

Harry Jenkins (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The discussion has concluded.