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 Government’s failure to develop a comprehensive plan to secure Australia’s future, including a failure to properly plan to secure Australia’s precious water resources.

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, Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is a government that is out of ideas, out of touch and out of time. This is a government with no plan for the future. Labor are advancing a positive agenda. Our positive agenda is to secure Australia’s long-term future. Our positive agenda is for long-term prosperity without throwing out the fair go. Our positive agenda is to restore the balance in workplace relations. Our positive agenda is to secure Australia’s future by having an education revolution—investing in the skills of our people. Our positive agenda is to tackle climate change and the water crisis and to fix the infrastructure deficit that is holding back productivity. Labor’s positive agenda has an exit strategy for Iraq—our agenda for bringing our troops home.

What we have seen today is a national disgrace, an agenda from the government that has been prepared to divide the nation and is now prepared to divide the parliament. It is a completely negative strategy of personal attacks because the government does not have a vision, because it is out of time. The first fortnight of Parliament has seen two issues dominate: the linked issue of climate change and water and, of course, the war in Iraq. On both, the government has found itself exposed. It is exposed because it has no plan for the future. There have been two stuff-ups by the Prime Minister. On one, climate change, the Prime Minister responded that he did not hear. On the other, accusing the US Democratic Party of being al-Qaeda’s party of choice, the Prime Minister said he did not say it.

The response to every issue from this government is all about political management. They move into political spin mode. They do not look forward. They do not address the issues. This government will do anything to protect their short-term political interests because they are not concerned with the long-term national interests. This government simply is not up to the challenges of the new century. We know that the Prime Minister is a clever politician. We also know that he has changed. He is prepared to manipulate in order to achieve his ends. He is prepared to say anything and do anything.

It has been quite interesting today. The day the Prime Minister is not in the parliament—to distance himself from the muckraking that we saw—there has been question after question from those on the opposite side of the House, putting aside the standards in terms of the rulings of the House. It was a grubby strategy of personal attacks. We can expect more in the year to come. But it is clear that the Australian people are better than that. The Australian people are looking at and are interested in the issues. They know they have a Prime Minister who this morning committed the government to a war without end. There is no exit strategy, just digging further into the quagmire. Another 100 Iraqi civilians will die today to add to the 61,000—on very conservative estimates—who have died so far in Iraq. And, yet, we have a Prime Minister in denial, a Prime Minister who time after time refuses to state what his exit strategy is, a Prime Minister who refuses to take up the challenge of the Leader of the Opposition to have a televised debate on these issues and a Prime Minister who has simply lost his judgement. The attack on Senator Barack Obama was one thing; to extend it that little step further, just as the Leader of the House did today—always one step too far—to embrace the whole of the US Democratic Party, was an extraordinary intervention from a Prime Minister who is out of time.

For all the twists, they try not to answer the question of the day. The fact is the Australian Labor Party opposed the Iraq war from day one. We argued that it was wrong. Yet here we have the Prime Minister, in the face of public opinion and the opinions of global leaders, the Baker-Hamilton report, Democrats and Republicans, as the only public figure in the world who is talking up Iraq. The President of the United States is not doing that at the moment. In the debate that is going on in the US House of Representatives and Senate as we speak, that is not occurring. But this is a Prime Minister in denial, and not just about Iraq. He is in denial about Australia’s performance on greenhouse gases.

On day one of the parliament last week, the Prime Minister let his guard down and conceded, once again, that he was a climate change sceptic, that he was sceptical about the link between climate change and greenhouse gas emissions. Under the government’s existing and planned programs, the government’s own figures show that Australia’s emissions are expected to increase by 27 per cent by 2020. But, then again, if you do not regard emissions leading to climate change as a problem, you do not have to do anything about it. What you do have to do, though, is spin. You have to engage in short-term political strategy—because they are sceptics.

The Treasurer has not mentioned climate change in his 11 budget speeches. He confirmed today no Treasury modelling whatsoever. The Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources, we know, said the remarkable Al Gore documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, was ‘just entertainment, that’s all it is’. We know that the tourism minister’s solution to climate change is to put shadecloth over the Great Barrier Reef rather than do something to reduce emissions. It would be funny if it were not so serious. The government is trying to say, when it is convenient, that it is acknowledging climate change. We know that that is not the case.

They are trying to run two arguments at the same time. Under the radar, some of them are also saying, ‘We acknowledge climate change is real but if we do anything, we’ll trash the economy.’ The Minister for the Environment and Water Resources referred to the 60 per cent reduction figure by 2050 and asked, ‘Who else believes in that?’ I will tell you who else believes in that: the scientists who wrote the IPCC report believe it. The Australian Business Roundtable on Climate Change believes it. It is in the Stern report. There is an international consensus that that is what is required. And Labor is up to the challenge.

The Stern report warns that, unless the world begins to act now, global economic output could be cut by up to 20 per cent. The business roundtable said that deep cuts, a 60 per cent reduction by 2050, can be delivered while GDP grows strongly. In fact they suggested that GDP would grow by 0.2 per cent less every year if we did not take action to do that. They also found that 250,000 more jobs would be created if we acted sooner rather than later. This is not from the Labor Party. For those opposite who might dismiss it, this is from Westpac, Origin, Insurance Australia Group, BP, Visy and Swiss Re. This government is so out of touch.

Paul Anthony, the chief executive of AGL, nailed why the delays over 11 long years are so bad for the economy. He pointed out on Lateline Business the other night that the real problem was that you needed to be in the first-move advantage position—that, as the world moves to a carbon constrained economy, as there is a developing emissions trading system in Europe, the United States and other countries, you will give the advantage to everyone else if they go first and you hold back while they are taking action. In the solar energy industry, for example, 10 per cent of the world’s solar power was created in Australia in 1996, and now it is two per cent. It is an outrage.

But we know that their political strategy to provide cover for their lack of action on climate change is water. The Prime Minister gave it up in the Sun-Herald on Sunday when he said you can take action—compartmentalise water—without doing anything on climate change. If you do not have a solution on climate change you do not have a solution on water. You need practical action on water while dealing with the long-term action that is needed on climate change. That is why Labor has consistently called for a single water minister—that has finally happened—and a single water agency at the Commonwealth level. We have called for water efficiency measures and for overallocation to be dealt with. We have called for the use of market based instruments and to have a target of returning 1,500 gigalitres to the Murray and a target of recycling 30 per cent of waste water by 2015.

But we have seen inaction from the government. We heard the Prime Minister’s speech on 25 January. It is a pity that as much effort did not go into planning the finance, funding, time lines and governance arrangements as went into the writing of that political speech. We know now that the proposal did not go to cabinet. It is extraordinary that a $10 billion plan did not go to cabinet. Senator Minchin dismissed it with, ‘That’s $1 billion a year, which is less than half a per cent of Commonwealth government expenditure, so let’s keep it in perspective.’ That was the finance minister’s response. At the same time, a gift to the Queen of a $300,000 royal carriage did require cabinet approval. That says a lot about how serious the government is. More planning went into the gift of a jewel-encrusted gold carriage for the Queen than went into addressing the fundamental water problems in the Murray-Darling Basin.

We know that the Prime Minister’s water plan was only created on 8 January. We know that Treasury was not involved until mid January, only a week or so before the announcement. Last night at Senate estimates David Tune, the executive director of the Fiscal Group at Treasury, stated: ‘On Monday the 15th, I had a conversation with the people over in PM&C. We were invited to join them in a meeting the following day to cast our eye over the work.’ The Secretary of the Department of Finance and Administration said a couple of days ago at Senate estimates that he got to look at it three days before the speech and was asked to ‘run an eye lightly over the one-page of costings’. Treasury and Finance have both conceded there was no modelling.

Let us think about the scene. It is the night before the big announcement on 25 January. There are no costings and the cabinet has not been consulted—the acting Prime Minister, Mark Vaile, did not know about it throughout most of January. He is briefed on the morning of 25 January. The states and territories have not been consulted. The National Farmers Federation has not been consulted. The people in rural and regional Australia have not been consulted and the Murray-Darling Basin Commission has been left out of the loop—and it produced a week later a nine-page critique that went through all the outstanding issues of the document.

Let us be clear about what the government had been saying publicly before then. On 5 November the premiers were given two days notice to turn up to a summit on Melbourne Cup day. At the time, the Prime Minister said he would work in collaboration—work together—with the states. Soon after that, on 5 December, the minister for the environment—the minister opposite—and the minister for agriculture signed off the government’s official policy response to a Senate report on a rural water usage inquiry that was chaired by Senator Heffernan. The report states that the way forward on rural water was to use the existing state based planning structures and the Murray-Darling Basin Agreement. That was on 5 December. On 7 December, the last sitting day of 2006, the government introduced the Murray Darling-Basin Amendment Bill 2006, which contained important amendments to streamline the existing operations of the existing commission.

It is no wonder that, three weeks after the Prime Minister’s speech, the opposition has still been refused a proper briefing by the Prime Minister’s office. The government is still confused over whether it is a plan for the Murray-Darling Basin or a national water plan. Talking on Stateline in South Australia, the Prime Minister said, ‘There is a $10 billion investment of new money by the Commonwealth to fix the basic problems of the Murray-Darling Basin.’

Then, in parliament, the Prime Minister says: ‘No, that’s not the case. It was always envisaged to be a national plan.’ Then yesterday, in response to a question from the member for New England, he went back to saying it was about the Murray-Darling Basin. We know that there is also confusion over water allocation. On 28 January the minister opposite said, ‘There might be an area where you buy out a farm or close down a channel because it’s inefficient.’ But he is now meekly saying that purchasing water entitlements would only be a last resort. The agriculture minister does not agree with purchasing overallocations at all. We asked him in the parliament last week. It is quite clear that this is a hastily cobbled together plan. (Time expired)

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Water Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

For more than 100 years the management of our greatest surface water and ground water system, the Murray-Darling Basin, has been managed—or should I say mismanaged—by four states. This is a relic of Federation—the federal compact. Back in the 1890s, far-sighted political leaders, particularly those from South Australia—as we know, people from downstream always have a particular perspective on water matters—pleaded for there to be federal management of the river. At the Constitutional Convention in 1898, Sir Josiah Symon, pleading with the New South Welshman and the Victorians, said: ‘Surely, in the name of all that is federal, the Murray should be controlled by the federal jurisdiction.’ Sir George Reid, the portly Premier of New South Wales, rose to his feet, roaring with laughter, and said: ‘Why, throw yourself on our charity as you have always done. We’ll treat you generously.’ And there it was. Nothing was done for more than 100 years.

Wherever you went in the Murray-Darling Basin you saw the signs of overallocation, mismanagement and states managing water on the basis that any drop that crossed the border was a drop wasted. We have lived through that; we have seen that. Wherever you went, people would say, ‘If only they’d got it right at Federation,’ or ‘If we were writing the Constitution afresh, we’d put this all under Commonwealth control.’ Everybody said that, but only the Prime Minister, John Howard, was prepared to take the step to take this dysfunctional anomaly from our constitutional past out of the too-hard basket, put it on the table for action and say, ‘The time has come to get these rivers right, to get these massive groundwater systems right, to get the overallocation corrected and to ensure that our irrigation is the most efficient in the world,’ and put the money on the table to enable us to do that. That is the national water plan.

Of course, the plan does not extend simply to the Murray-Darling Basin. Naturally the bulk of the money will be spent there, because that is where at least 80 per cent of our irrigated agriculture is found and that is where the bulk of our water problems are found, but the $6 billion part of this program for irrigation efficiency will be available right across Australia. So this funding will be available for irrigation areas in Western Australia, in Queensland and in Tasmania. There have been great steps taken, I might say, in irrigation areas outside the basin. I particularly commend the work of the Harvey Irrigation Area, south of Perth.

This is a national plan, a visionary plan. It has been welcomed by every side of politics. The member for Kingsford Smith even went so far in his enthusiasm as to say it was Labor Party policy. I invited him to show me the Labor Party policy document that called for the Commonwealth to take over the Murray-Darling Basin. I have not seen it yet. I do not think it exists.

Kay Hull (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In his dreams.

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Water Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Exactly. He was dreaming about that. But every premier has given support to the plan. We will have some discussions, no doubt, about finetuning aspects here and there, but there is a recognition that this is a great idea whose time has come and which was only waiting for a Prime Minister who had the courage to make it happen. That Prime Minister is the very man that the member for Grayndler derided in his 15-minute speech, the first 11 minutes of which said nothing at all about water, notwithstanding that the MPI is devoted, so it is claimed, to the mismanagement of water resources.

As the member for Grayndler knows, the management of water resources in Australia historically has been in the hands of the states. That applies whether it is urban water or rural water. We are not playing the blame game here. It is a simple fact: water has been managed by the states, just like urban bus routes have been managed by the states. It has been on their side of the ledger. In the Murray-Darling Basin, that management was plainly dysfunctional, not because people were maligned or misguided but because they had competing interests. The four states had competing interests. It was a case of four states in the same bed—in the same riverbed perhaps—but with very different dreams.

The South Australians were right in 1898. The far-sighted founders of our Constitution were right: this is a matter for federal control. Thanks to this government, thanks to this Prime Minister—and we are hoping that the states will combine together as they are indicating they will—for the first time we will have the River Murray and the Darling and all of their tributaries as one integrated system. When we do that we will address the overallocation and we will deliver the security our irrigators need.

It is vitally important to remember something that the opposition always forget about water in this country. They think of the River Murray as though it were a bathtub. They say: ‘There’s not enough water in the bathtub, so we should put a bit more in. We need 1,000 gigalitres more here and 1,500 gigalitres there. Put it back in.’ They fail to recognise that the rivers of Australia are very volatile. We have inherited a complex ecology. Our country is very flat. Our rivers are very slow and they are incredibly variable. The Darling River varies 10,000 to one between its highest flow and its lowest flow. Some of our most famous rivers, viewed from other countries, would be regarded as nothing more than ephemeral streams.

We have to understand the hydrology of Australia when we manage it. We have regulated our rivers. We have built great dams. We have created an environment where farmers can irrigate, where permanent crops can be planted. Prior to these great storages and irrigation systems, you could not have permanent horticulture in Australia because you did not know whether you were going to have a flood or no water at all—‘droughts and flooding rains’; that is what our hydrology is about. Understanding that is key, and that is why the plan here will not simply secure more water for the environment but will underpin the security of irrigation.

By reducing overallocation, buying water back, making irrigation more efficient and thereby securing more water for the environment, not only do we make irrigation more resilient and more efficient—because an irrigation system that is piped, particularly if it is pressurised, is vastly more productive than one that is fed simply through gravity-driven open channels—but we will have a massive reserve of water, an environmental reserve of water, which will be used to water the natural wetlands, the red gum forests along the river and the many other iconic environmental sites that have been neglected as the river has been regulated.

The plan will make more water available for the environment in the years when water is around; but also, when there is no water at all, when there is a desperate drought, we will be able to underpin and support the security of irrigators. The volatility of Australian hydrology means that there is a complementarity between the need of the irrigator to have water security in the driest of dry times and the need of the environment to have additional water when there is a lot of water around. Understanding that complementarity, that volatility, in Australian hydrology is key to the plan that is presented, because it will mean that we will have a better watered environment, an environment that has the water that it needs, but we will also have a more secure irrigation sector.

Many people on the Left, the Greens and the left of the Labor Party, hate irrigated agriculture. They hate it almost as much as they hate the coal industry. They do not want to grow anything in Australia; they say we should import our food. Around the world today the menace of water scarcity has never been greater. Large parts of the world—northern China, the North China Plain in particular, and northern India—are going through periods of extraordinary water scarcity. And it is not just a function of drought or even climate change. Modern pumps have enabled millions of farmers to pump groundwater to unsustainable levels so that the groundwater is exhausted. In the North China Plain alone, World Bank hydrologists estimate that within 15 years the groundwater resources, which currently supply 75 per cent of irrigation water in that vast district, will be exhausted. The world will have a lot less food production in the decades ahead. We cannot afford in Australia to walk away from agriculture. We have to have a more efficient agricultural sector; we have to grow more food. We have to recognise that this left-wing idea that we can abandon irrigation, abandon agriculture and import our food from somewhere else is a fantasy and flies in the face of the major changes that are occurring in the world today.

The Australian government has presented this visionary 10-point plan for water reform and water management in Australia. It is the most important statement about the future of water any government has ever made in our country’s history. It has been widely praised; I will not read all the glowing editorials and the praise from the conservationists, the water experts, the irrigators and the state premiers. This has been an outstanding effort. And what did the Leader of the Opposition say? He said:

I’m adopting a positive bipartisan approach to this ...

The national water crisis in this country should be placed above politics ...

Well, he obviously was not talking to the member for Grayndler, or the member for Grayndler was not listening to him. But let us consider the position of the Leader of the Opposition. He has demanded—with a furrowed brow and earnest look through those academic spectacles—that he be told whether the plan will be available outside of the Murray-Darling Basin. ‘We need to know this,’ the Leader of the Opposition said. If the Leader of the Opposition was as attentive to his homework as he seeks to make us believe he is he would have known—because the Prime Minister made it quite plain in his speech and in all the materials produced at the time—that this money is available across Australia, and he cited a number of irrigation districts outside of the Murray-Darling Basin which would be eligible.

The Leader of the Opposition went on to say, ‘We need to know what the governance arrangements are,’ and he said this after he had met with the premiers. This was a very curious question to ask because the premiers had just met with the Prime Minister. I was at that meeting and we had given the premiers a very detailed two-page statement setting out our proposals for all of the roles and responsibilities between the Commonwealth, the Murray-Darling Basin authority and the state governments. It is all set out, and this is a public document. The premiers had that; they knew exactly what we were proposing. So one has to ask: did they give it to the Leader of the Opposition? Of course it was available on the internet; he could have downloaded it himself. But did the premiers give it to him or not? Or, if they did, did he not read it? So we have this professed concern about the water plan from an opposition that is not even prepared to read it.

I have to say that while the challenges of our rivers and groundwater systems and rural Australia are obviously the most challenging because that is where most of our water is used, the water in our cities has been at crisis point for many years. Urban water is probably the most frustrating part of the whole water challenge in Australia because it is completely fixable. At the end of the day, the irrigator at Mildura depends on what the heavens deliver for his irrigation water, but our cities can recycle, they can desalinate, they can manage their water in so many ways. Each and every one of our big cities can have all the water that they need. It is simply a matter of investing—making the decisions and investing.

And we have in the Leader of the Opposition a man who should stand in the hall of fame—or, should I say, the hall of infamy—of water neglect in Australia because when he was the right-hand man of Premier Wayne Goss in Queensland they chose not to build the Wolffdene dam in 1989. When they chose not to build the Wolffdene dam they ensured that Brisbane would be short of water. They looked down on the Nationals, they looked down on Joh and they said, ‘We’re smarter; we’re smart young men—we’ve been to university.’ But Joh knew that Brisbane needed more water; he knew it needed a dam. They stopped the dam and then did nothing else. When people in Brisbane complain about the water restrictions and wonder why they are building so much infrastructure in such a great panic, it is because of the neglect of the Leader of the Opposition. (Time expired)

Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is great to follow so much rhetoric about this water plan! Let us have a look at what this water plan is. I do not think it is much more than a water grants scheme to win an election. It has come along a bit less than a year out from the election because they realised nothing had been done, no vision had been put down after 10 years of failure. So they decided they had better have a fair bit of money over 10 years—a big figure; a billion a year—in a grants scheme to buy back some water, to knock off some irrigators and to try to make irrigation a bit more effective and efficient. I see that half the water will stay with the irrigators who can save a certain amount and the other half will no doubt go to environmental flows. But there is no detail on how they are going to achieve this. We all know that if the first six properties in an irrigation scheme sold their water back to the system and there was no more water going up there, the question then is: who is going to look after the ones on the other end? Who is going to maintain the long pipes, the improved water system? There is a lot of complexity in these issues and there has been a lot of time for this government to rectify the problems.

I am very pleased to have the opportunity to speak on the matter. Australia’s water resources are indeed very precious and vital to the agricultural industry and, more importantly, to local communities. We need clean water to survive. It is clear that the government has failed on water as an issue. There have been promises, a lot of rhetoric like we had today from the barrister, and grand announcements—yet we still see no firm outcomes on the issue of securing Australia’s precious water resources. After 10 years we should be able to see some outcomes. The Howard government has been dragging its heels on this matter for 10 years. For example, the recent activity of the government has centred on the plan to take over the Murray-Darling Basin. Today we have heard the rhetoric that this $10 billion is to go over all states and all irrigation. It is all about irrigation schemes, I understand. That is what it seems to be now. As it goes on, more and more words come out.

Most people in Australia would think that $10 billion is quite a lot of money. One of the most important issues that we face today did not even go through the cabinet—$10 billion. They did not worry about putting it through the cabinet; the Prime Minister did it up in his office. Prime Minister, you have given the job to manage the issue to a lawyer from Sydney who is a millionaire so I guess to him $10 billion is just pocket money. That suggests that you have not really taken the issue seriously. Or is it that you have suddenly realised that this is a serious issue and because you have done nothing about that you are now running scared? I believe that is what is happening to this government—they are now running a bit scared. Water has become an issue and there is an election coming up so they need a grants program to satisfy the rural seats. That is what this is all about—a grants program to satisfy the rural seats.

Even the head of the government’s task force preparing the water plan agreed that the government had done no modelling of any impact on employment, no assessment of the numbers of people who might have to exit the industry and no costing of the purchase of entitlements. So we do not know what it is going to cost, there is no marketing material and no modelling has been done. Nothing has been done.

Unfortunately, because of the lack of leadership on this issue it is the people on the ground who will suffer. It will be workers in the agricultural industry and people owning farms and properties who will get cut on this. It is the farmers, the agricultural sector and the communities that will suffer because the Prime Minister has given the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources some pocket money to play with. He will play with that and try to win a few Liberal votes out of his party room for when he bids for the leadership of the Liberal Party. It is grant money to the millionaire from Sydney to help him when he stands for the leadership of his party in the future.

Around Australia dams are at their lowest capacity in living memory. Farmers in particular are being hit. It is really tough out there. Farmers are unable to plant new crops and unable to plant new areas. Even if the rain comes there will not be too much water flowing. Others have had to cut back on farming as they have had less water to go into their traditional crops.

What about benchmarks and what definitions do we have? I can remember doing a water report some years ago. We were trying to come to grips with what benchmarks and definitions you need for environmental flows and healthy rivers. What do you need for water policy? I agree with the minister at the table when he said that the rivers of Australia are very different from those in other parts of the world. They do go up and down from great floods to very dry trickles. There are dry holes from time to time. We have to remember that we need to have definitions and we need to have benchmarks and by now we should know where we are going and what we are trying to achieve. I do not think that we do know.

The government has spoken about sustainability for irrigators and non-viable, inefficient irrigators but has not provided any definitions of these. I remember the Farmers Federation was concerned enough to raise this issue. I can remember a report we did here in a House committee some years ago. The Farmers Federation in evidence said:

I do not think we can actually say what a healthy river is. We are all looking for a definition of a healthy working river. We have asked our scientists and our research corporations to give us the parameters of a healthy working river … We are looking for that answer.

I do not think there is an answer yet. I would have thought that this government would have had an answer by now, after 10 years.

Small towns are also suffering across Australia. Local government infrastructure, including water and sewerage infrastructure, is becoming older and in need of repair. Over the last 10 years the proportion of local government’s share in tax revenue has decreased from 1.2 per cent to just 0.7 per cent. In real terms that means they are now $1 billion worse off. Funding to local government is now linked to the CPI, and not governed by a growth arrangement, and that means that any increase in funding does not reflect the increased costs to local government. So the infrastructure in this area is also in urgent need of being renewed to save water. So while farmers wait for certainty in irrigation, local government is faced with a crisis of infrastructure funding and the community will no doubt bear the brunt of government’s inaction in this matter.

There is some positive work going on in the area of water. When I look at my own state, the Tasmanian government recently released a discussion paper on reform of the Tasmanian water and sewerage sector with an aim to make the sector more sustainable through structural, regulatory and other reforms. It really is a good contrast to what the state government has done in Tasmania and what this federal government has put on the table.

The plan in Tasmania is to involve all stakeholders in the process. Submissions to this plan close next week. The Tasmanian Department of Treasury and Finance is involved—in fact representatives of that department are chairing the steering committees in this process. The task force is comprised of the Treasurer, who is the chair, the Minister for Primary Industries and Water and the Minister for Environment and Planning. So the federal government should see that everybody is at the table in this scheme. The Tasmanian cabinet made the decision and are aware of the details of the project, and the Tasmanian people have the opportunity for input. With the involvement of those with a responsibility for finance, I believe that the outcome will be okay. At least the departments responsible and the responsible ministers will be aware of what is happening. (Time expired)

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

I noted the speech by the member for Grayndler. While it purported to mainly refer to the Murray-Darling Basin, the member for Grayndler spent a great deal of time on Iraq and climate change. I might just make a couple of comments in passing on those two issues. On Iraq, of course, aren’t we all wise with 20/20 hindsight. It is quite incredible. I remember clearly the time when Saddam Hussein was accused of having weapons of mass destruction. Not only did the United Nations think so but Mr Butler, who was then the United Nations weapons inspector, thought so, all the intelligence information indicated it, and the Leader of the Opposition thought so. But of course now, when things are a little bit different, we have a different view and we are trying to rewrite history. If we have a close look at it, everyone can have 20/20 vision in hindsight.

On the issue of climate change, there seems to me at present to be a scare campaign being run by the Labor Party trying to link climate change to drought. There is no discernible link between climate change and drought, but the reason they are mounting this campaign is very clear: one of the biggest concerns that we have in Australia at present is based in our cities. Because state governments have not done the planning over the years, all of our major cities have water shortages, with level 4 and level 5 water restrictions. So it is easy to plant the seed into someone’s mind that this is all about climate change where, in fact, there is no link between drought and climate change.

Australia is the driest inhabited continent on earth—and it has been since long before Europeans came here. I think we have to start to understand the natural management of this country. That is the reason that I think there is a lot of wisdom in having one authority run the Murray-Darling system. There is also a lot of work that must be done to make sure that that system is run efficiently and correctly. Probably in the short term we might get some of that wrong, but in the long term we have to make sure that we get it right.

Most members here would know that I was the Minister for Water Resources in New South Wales for five years. I was on the Murray-Darling Basin Ministerial Council for five years. I would have to say that in its first 10 years the Murray-Darling council did a lot of very good work. John Kerin was the chairman of the Murray-Darling council when I was the minister in New South Wales, and I think he did an admirable job.

The emphasis in those days was on salinity and drainage because the quality of the water going to Adelaide was of concern, particularly to Adelaide. I think Adelaide threatened to sue other states—that is what started the Murray-Darling council. There was a concern because natural flows of salt were going into the river. If you go back and read your history, which I do not think many people do in this place, it would show that the early explorers commented on salty water in the Murray River. There were natural flows of salt going into the river, so the Murray-Darling council decided to attack those issues.

Also, I think you will find that the Murray-Darling council did a lot of work on drainage, because we know that putting water on the land, particularly arid land, causes problems with salinity. To their credit, the rice growers in the irrigation areas did a lot of laser levelling to make sure they used less water in the growing of their crops. When I started as the minister in New South Wales, most of the horticultural crops were flood irrigated. I believe you will not find a horticultural crop today that is flood irrigated. They have all gone to microjet and drip irrigation. Some of that is because of policy change, I would say. There is no doubt that in those days in New South Wales all of the irrigation areas were controlled by the Water Conservation and Irrigation Commission. I used to call them the ‘feudal kingdom’ because they owned everything. They told producers what they could do. They told grape growers how many grapes they could grow, how many waterings they could do and how many hectares they could have. That was all deregulated, which allowed more efficiencies and more efficient use of water. So many of these things have been taking place.

The Living Murray scheme, which the then leader of The Nationals introduced, again tried to bring back some of the flows into the river. When I started as minister in New South Wales, the policy, as the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources said, was that no water would reach the sea—the same as the Colorado River in America. I was the first to introduce environmental flows. So we need to manage these things correctly.

Let’s put it in perspective. Not only is the Murray-Darling Basin home to 80 per cent of Australia’s irrigated agriculture; it is the home to 60 per cent of Australia’s agriculture. Some of that is dryland farming, obviously, but it is the home to a lot of the agriculture that we have in this country. So it is very important that we address these issues.

In New South Wales in particular—and I spoke to other states—we knew we were losing a lot of water in the transmission along our channels. I think the estimate at the time was 30 per cent. The Mulwala Canal, which is the main canal running down to the lower Murray—a very big canal which was built with horses and scoops—runs across country where you intercept sand and gravel. Where you find those sand and gravel beds, of course the water soaks through very quickly. There is no doubt that if you can seal those channels you are going to save a lot of water. I did not have the money to do it. This Prime Minister has had the vision to put forward some money that can seal those leaky channels.

We also knew about the Great Artesian Basin, which is an enormous resource to Australia and has filled over millions of years. Because we found some natural upwellings and decided we would drill bores and get that water, it has all been flowing away. We are losing it. It only moves at about four millimetres a year underground, so it is something that you have to protect. We started capping those bores. More money to cap those is a very big step in the right direction.

New South Wales was the worst offender on licences. I was the minister in New South Wales. Licences were handed out like confetti during the 1950s in New South Wales with no regard to what water might be used, because there was not a lot of irrigation in those days. Even when I was minister, we used to call many of the licences ‘sleepers’ and ‘dozers’ because they had not been developed, and there are still many licences that have not been developed today. They are the licences that are likely to be willingly given up to reduce the potential of drawing on the water resources.

I think this is a very big step in the right direction; it is visionary. The amount of money that has been put forward is very substantial and it can do quite a lot to help the water resources in this country, but we have to learn to manage it according to the country. It is a very dry country and we need to read history to ensure that. To help the workings of the House, I will leave my speech at that.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I said the other day that everyone has been emphasising the negative side of this proposal, which is savings on the Murray-Darling. I have no wish to speak about that today. For the nation to continue to see three-quarters of its water resources completely unutilised while in the south-east corner the water resources are overutilised is incredible. It is quite staggering that this could continue. The debate is constantly centred on the negative aspect of the Murray-Darling instead of the positive aspects in Northern Australia.

Let me repeat: simply taking seven per cent of the Gulf run-off—I am not talking about the north-east run-off or the north west of Australia’s run-off; I am just talking about the Gulf run-off—will irrigate five per cent of the Gulf and mid-west, which is some two million hectares. There will be no substantial change to what you see if you fly over the Gulf in an aeroplane. There will be a few threads of green and a few pods of green. I would like to see a lot more of that.

We produce 9,000 litres per hectare of ethanol off sugar cane at 75c a litre, and that is not using the bagasse. There is a further return on the bagasse for electricity of another $2,000 million. But put those together and there is $16,000 million a year of income sitting out there for virtually no commercial outlay by individuals and no outlay much by government either. The Minister for the Environment and Water Resources has very generously and sensibly said that he will most certainly be looking at proposals in North Queensland, and we hope that those proposals will be taken forward.

There is report after report. Newsweek magazine from the United States says the first solution for CO is ethanol. On page 136 of Al Gore’s book, the first solution for CO is ethanol. George Bush’s first solution in his state of the union speech was ethanol. Where can we produce that ethanol with a tremendous benefit? Every hectare of sugar cane takes 72 tonnes of CO out of the atmosphere, but through ethanol it only puts back 13 tonnes of CO. So there are enormous benefits in the reduction of CO through what we are proposing here.

Heaven only knows, but Mr Theodore said: ‘I’ve had it up to here with this. I’m going down to take over Canberra and I’ll get some water development in Northern Australia,’ and he did. Unfortunately he ran into the Depression and the rest is history. Mr Menzies, Mr McEwen and Mr Bjelke-Petersen got as far Burdekin Falls, but that was all. It is only 50 or 60 kilometres from the coast. It is not really the development of any of these huge resources that we have in Australia.

We plead with the minister and with the government. They have raised the hope of Australians. They have created an environment of excitement and opportunity for the future for Australia. It is said again and again in writing the history of Australia that the three great achievements of this nation—funnily enough, unanimously—are the wheat stabilisation scheme, the Holden motorcar and the Snowy Mountains scheme. We have a chance to repeat the Snowy Mountains scheme but with no cost to government. Please, why is this not happening? We plead with the government of Australia. The minister has been good enough to come in for all of these debates, and we thank him once again for that. We will get an intelligent perspective, which we will not get unless he is here.

Let us be very specific: what are we talking about? I would have thought that if we are talking about savings then we are talking about underground poly piping, which makes enormous savings as far as irrigation goes. But I am not interested in the savings; I am interested in using the great resources which God has given this nation and using them effectively, which we are not doing at the present moment.

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

Order! The discussion is now concluded.