Brendan Nelson (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Will the Prime Minister support the coalition’s $50 million emergency assistance package for the communities, the environment, the farmers and the businesses of the Coorong and the lower lakes?

Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I draw the Leader of the Opposition’s attention to the package which the government already announced some time ago for the lower lakes. That was an extensive package which went to local irrigation works. Having visited that area with the Minister for Climate Change and Water, the particular request put to us by that local community then was to assist them with the piping necessary to get water from higher up in the Murray to their particular agricultural needs adjacent to the lakes. And that is precisely what we responded to with a very expensive program, way in excess of the $50 million which the Leader of the Opposition has just referred to.

The second point, though, on the question of the Coorong Lakes is: how do we deal effectively with that as a long-term challenge given the extreme overallocation of water entitlements to the Murray-Darling? The government, again, has a strategy in place on that score, which includes, for the first time in the Commonwealth’s history, the buying back of water entitlements. We have commenced that with the Minister for Climate Change and Water, having expended $50 million already for the purchase back of some 37 gigalitres of entitlements. Most recently, at the Adelaide cabinet meeting, we agreed as well to allocate a figure something in the order of half a billion dollars to accelerate the purchase of water entitlements across multiple jurisdictions. This is necessary in order to—

Brendan Nelson (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I direct the Prime Minister to the question—and does this mean the answer is no?

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Prime Minister will respond to the question.

Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question goes to the level of support for those associated with the lower lakes, and that is what I am responding to in terms of the package which I put forward, and put forward considerably in advance of that which has been referred to by the Leader of the Opposition. I would draw his attention to the whole challenge of taking back water entitlements for the system by a system of purchasing on the open market, which is what we have been doing. What I cannot understand—and presumably that is why those opposite interject—is why, in 12 years in office, they did not purchase back a single gigalitre of water entitlements from the entire Murray-Darling system. For 12 years, they had all that time to act; they had the money to act and they failed to act. In nine months of office we have already begun the buyback program.

I conclude my answer to the question of the Leader of the Opposition by again going to the third element of the challenge for the Coorong Lakes—that is, the impact of climate change. The matter has already been raised by the minister for agriculture and the minister for the environment in response to questions in the House today. The other part of dealing with this challenge in the Coorong Lakes is the impact of climate change on water inflow into the entire Murray-Darling Basin. If you are going to continue to position yourself on the side of the climate change deniers, which those opposite do consistently, and say that climate change has nothing to do with what is happening either in the lower lakes or in the Murray, you cannot even get to first base in dealing with this problem for the long term.

Last night the Leader of the Opposition stood up on national television and answered the question, ‘Do you accept what is happening to the lower lakes and right up the Murray is also related to climate change?’ He said, ‘Well, I don’t.’ I find that remarkable. Last night a series of questions was put to the Leader of the Opposition by the interviewer where he presented the Leader of the Opposition with a series of scientific reports. The question on Lateline was, ‘How do you know it’s not climate change?’ The Leader of the Opposition answered, ‘It’s not a consequence of climate change.’ He was then asked, ‘How do you know that?’ And there was no answer to that. In other words, he says that it is not a consequence of climate change because he says it is not a consequence of climate change. That is what it is all about. Can I say to the Leader of the Opposition: you need to get with the science on this. Look at the technical report put together by the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology which says—and I ask the Leader of the Opposition if he agrees with this statement:

Recent Australian drought has been accompanied by higher surface temperatures due to anthropogenic warming.

That report was in 2007, when you lot were in office. Then there is the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report 2007: Impacts, adaptation and vulnerability.

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Mackellar, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The point of order is on relevance. There is no way in the world that the answer that is being given is relevant to the question in any shape or form. I know the difficulties about interpreting relevance, but this one is a blatant way of denying what is truly his responsibility in this place. Is he going to support the $50 million or not?

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! It is true that it is very difficult to establish that something is outside the relevance of the question, but I just make the observation that at some stage the House may wish to consider whether the same standing orders that apply to questions apply to answers, and therefore there would be less debate in questions. But that is in the hands of the House because this answer being given by the Prime Minister is by the practice of the House as established.

Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Further on the impact of climate change on the lower lakes, which I would have thought the Leader of the Opposition would be interested in, I draw his attention also to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report 2007—again released when he was in office and many of those opposite were cabinet ministers. In the chapter on Australia and New Zealand, it says:

Australia and New Zealand are already experiencing impacts from recent climate change. These are now evident in increasing stresses on water supply and agriculture ...

Most recently, in January 2008, Mr David Jones, Head of Climate Analysis in the Bureau of Meteorology, said:

“Last year climate change became very evident in south-eastern Australia, with South Australia, New South Wales, Victoria, ACT and the Murray-Darling Basin all setting temperature records by a very large margin …

Those are three sets of scientific reports. But in response to the question, ‘How do you know it is not climate change?’ the Leader of the Opposition says, ‘It is not climate change because it is not climate change.’ That is what he said. I suggest to the Leader of the Opposition that if he wishes to seriously engage in a debate about what you do in handling the challenges of water in the lower lakes then, firstly, you have a reasonable and rational program of assistance, which this government has put forward, and to which the government will add in the future; secondly, you deal also with a proper program to buy back water entitlements from this grossly over water-entitled river system—hence, the government’s buyback program; and, thirdly, you must act in the long term on climate change. I would say that the Leader of the Opposition has had a very bad 24 hours—first with the Nelson doctrine on interest rates and now with the Nelson doctrine of climate change denial.