Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Heritage, the Arts and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last Friday afternoon, on 12 September, the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts, Peter Robert Garrett, in a quiet but shocking announcement, gave approval for the construction and operation of a pipeline to transfer up to 75 billion litres of water per year from the Goulburn River, a key tributary of the Murray, to Melbourne. This approval is to have effect until 2033. For those recently celebrating Minister Penny Wong’s ever more desperate efforts to buy back water for the Murray, this was both stunning and confusing. If Minister Wong has nearly $3 billion on the table to try and save the Murray by buying back water, how could her counterpart in this House be quietly announcing the extraction of 75 gigalitres a year from the Murray-Darling system to go across the divide for the toilets and car washes of Melbourne? Is this the ugly face of the ascendancy of the Murray-Darling states over the federal government as they refuse point blank to implement federal demands that they harmonise water policy by November, or is this a sign that, whatever the Victorian government wants to shore up its re-election in 2010, it will get?

The sad truth is that, once Melbourne and Geelong are hooked into the Murray River’s catchment, they no longer have to be troubled about the prospects of harvesting their stormwater, recycling or desalinisation—all the 21st century options other developed nations’ cities are embracing around the world. This, one of the fastest growing cities in Australia, will be able to relax back into its water-guzzling ways, content in the knowledge that Mr Brumby’s pipeline from the north will keep the concrete wet and the cars clean. Unfortunately it is not going to be quite so simple. You cannot understand the desperation of the response of the people in northern Victoria, in particular in the electorates of Murray, Mallee and McEwen, who will be permanently droughted by this policy. These people care profoundly not just for their economies but in particular for their environment and the health of their rivers. They know that the health of their environment underpins the sustainable agriculture. They know the need for the Murray-Darling Basin’s environmental flows. They want them protected.

Mr Garrett, the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts, however, has put conditions on the water piping from the Goulburn Valley and over the divide to Melbourne. We are very pleased about those conditions but he simply should have said no. Mr Garrett acknowledges that, under the EPBC Act, there are listed vulnerable and endangered species that will be impacted by the project. This list is long and includes the little pink spider orchid, the river swamp wallaby grass, the growling grass frog, the spotted-tail quoll, the striped legless lizard, the Murray cod, the trout cod, the Macquarie perch, the golden sun moth—and so the list goes on. The minister acknowledges that these known listed species are vulnerable. Their populations may shrink or collapse. But he says, ‘Do not worry.’ The conditions include offset habitat to be purchased or translocation—or, in the case of the wonderful golden sun moth, that their habitat should be avoided between February and September. It is not the listed species that have most concerned the minister, who has set conditions under which I am convinced anyone with any knowledge of these ecosystems would wonder if they are indeed going to be protected.

What seems to have preoccupied the minister most, given the conditions he attached to his announcement, is the accounting for the source and volume of water to be taken from northern Victoria. He has said that in fact no environmental flows can come from the Eildon Dam. That is interesting, because Mr Brumby has already said that they will take this water. The environmental reserve will be sent first down the pipeline to Melbourne, because there will be no other water available. It is interesting that Minister Garrett has said that this now cannot happen, because he is still allowing the Bendigo pipeline to take 10 gigalitres out of the environmental flow from that dam, the Eildon Dam, which is of course a tributary of the great Murray River.

Mr Garrett says Melbourne cannot take the water that has already been saved through investments for the Living Murray and Waters for Rivers programs in the Goulburn irrigation system. We could not agree more with this sentiment. This water is already tagged for the Murray and the Snowy rivers. So, therefore, there is not going to be enough water for this pipeline. No other water can be saved sufficiently for it to be filled. So why didn’t Mr Garrett simply say no? The Murray River is in a desperate situation. It is dying. Why did he agree that this pipeline to Melbourne could be built? He should have put politics aside this time and said that the Murray River needs to be saved and Melbourne must recycle, it must desalinate and it must look at stormwater harvesting—and so should Geelong.