Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As we know, the Murray-Darling Basin is very much in the news at the moment, with people considering the needs of environment, agriculture and communities. The point about that is that each is dependent on the other. If you have the environment in a bad condition, quite obviously farmers, who depend on natural resources for their agribusiness production, would also be in great strife.

I want to talk about the fact that we need to manage the environmental flows in the Murray-Darling Basin just as carefully as farmers manage their irrigation water. It is not just a case of saying, ‘Here is 7,000 gigalitres or 3,000 gigalitres and that is going to solve the problems of the Murray-Darling Basin river system.’ I know in metropolitan Australia some people just focus on the number and say to themselves, ‘The job must be right because we have committed a certain volume of water,’—end of story. Unfortunately it is the beginning of the story in how the basin ends up, hopefully with a sustainable ecosystem and agribusiness production into the long-term because, quite frankly, no country in the world now can afford to destroy its agriculture base. No country like Australia, which depends on food production not only for domestic consumption but also for export can afford to deliberately and callously do away with the major means of production in the biggest agricultural sector in Australia, the Murray-Darling Basin. Some two out of every five meals in Australia—if you want to think about in that context—are grown in the Murray-Darling Basin.

The environmental flows have long been of consideration in the whole scene in terms of when they were first allocated. In fact, the first environmental flow to the Murray and northern Victorian wetlands was in 1979, quite some time ago. We had in 1993 the Murray-Darling Basin Ministerial Council allocating an annual 100 gigalitres to the Barmah-Millewa Forest for environmental flow. Environmental water allocations have been used since then in 1998, 2000, 2002, 2005-06 and, with a very serious drought intervening, now with the rains we have a major opportunity to back up floods with environmental flow in the year 2010.

The tragedy is that the Barmah-Millewa Forest, which is of course the biggest red gum forest in the world, including 26,958 hectares of freshwater wetlands, is at the moment experiencing the worst blackwater event that anyone has experienced in the last 200 years. We have seen that blackwater event for the last 2½ months. What that means is that you have deoxygenated water, you have got tannin levels so high that the Murray crays, an endangered species, are now exiting the river because they can. They are actually crawling up the sides of the banks and into the forest. They are transparent, meaning that they have been starving for some time, and people presume the dead fish are on the bottom of the water.

We had a very serious blackwater event on the Wakool River one month or so ago. In that very tragic outcome, in the south-west of New South Wales, tens of thousands of native fish were killed, including 30-year-old breeding Murray cod, another endangered species. The president of Wakool River Association says he has seen dead Murray cod floating in the river and fears hundreds of kilometres could be affected by that blackwater event. The point about that event is that it could have been avoided or made less serious by an environmental flow being put down at the right time to dilute the blackwater that was killing the wildlife. The water became anoxic, low on oxygen, and the fish suffocated. We have a serious problem and yet the locals were not able to activate a dilution flow in time to save those breeding cod.

In the Barmah Forest as we speak you might wonder why is there the worst blackwater event in anyone’s memory. That is because, sadly, a forest like the Barmah-Millewa is not just a great series of gum trees, red gums in this case, growing over 68,000 hectares. It also consists of a lot of streams, lagoons, wetlands and the great grasslands. Unfortunately over time there have been different regimes where we now see with partial environmental flooding over the years a greater growth of red gums choking a lot of the natural channels of waterways. We have also seen therefore with more canopy a huge build-up in leaf litter. In the past, in times when Indigenous Australians, including the Yorta Yorta and the Bangerang, were in control, managing and owning this area, they undertook regular cold burns. They did mosaic burning all through the forest and they kept down this huge leaf litter on the forest floor. Unfortunately they are no longer managing what they once did. When the cattlemen took over some grazing in the forest, they too did some mosaic burning, copying the Indigenous practices. Now there is no cold burning of any real description occurring in the Barmah-Millewa Forest and so one estimation is that there have been about 20 tonnes of leaf litter per hectare accumulating. When you put a huge flow of water over that, you have disaster. You have the biggest blackwater event that has ever been recorded, as I have said. That has led to the huge loss of wildlife, particularly the Murray crays, an endangered species which at the moment should not be harvested at all. They are moving into their breeding cycle. They are up on the edges of the banks and moving to the forest and dying. We have the grasslands themselves that have been inundated by this blackwater dying because the vegetation that is inundated by this toxic water cannot survive either. We have a whole range of endangered species in the forest, including the straw necked ibis and the Australian white ibis, the yellow billed spoonbills, great cormorants and so on, which means that this is a Ramsar listed wetland.

What I am saying is that in the Guide to the proposed basin plan there has to be an understanding that we need skill and expertise in managing the environmental flows in the various icon sites across the basin. We do not have that skill anymore. The flood event in the Barmah Forest was avoidable. The blackwater was observed; it could have been diluted so that we did not have the massive kill that is now occurring in that ecosystem. Indeed, we should have been having the cold burns in the way that the Indigenous Australians did their burning, which kept the leaf litter under control and made sure that the Moira grasslands remained open and, therefore, a great habitat for a great range of waterbirds and marsupials. Unfortunately, we have neglected to bring those skills forward into the 21st century.

The Murray-Darling Basin Plan must balance community, environment, irrigator and critical human needs in a plan which delivers us into the 22nd century and beyond. If we do not have skilled environmental flow management, if we do not take a hard look at how we currently manage environmental flows that have already been dedicated to the system—there are hundreds of gigalitres right now in store for the environment—if that work is not done then we are going to see more devastation, not less, as the years go by. Barmah Forest regularly supports 20,000 or more waterbirds. At the moment it is a stinking, toxic mess. You do not want to walk in the water. People have been warned in the media not to let the water touch them downstream in the Murray and Edwards rivers. We are now approaching peak tourist period, when people would be going boating, waterskiing and fishing in those stretches of the Murray. They are now being warned that the water is toxic.

Blackwater events are natural, everyone concedes that, but not on the scale that is now affecting the great Barmah-Millewa Forest. Sadly, it was avoidable with proper management and understanding. We have to make sure, therefore, that we take the opportunity we have right now to take the Guide to the proposed basin plan and make it a reasonable guide through the various reviews of that plan that are going on. I have talked before about the Senate Standing Committee on Rural Affairs and Transport inquiry, the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Regional Australia inquiry and indeed the socio-economic impact inquiry that the Murray-Darling Basin Authority itself is carrying out. That work has to look as hard at the issue of environmental flow management as it does at the issue of how to put on-farm water use efficiency back into the equation.

Australia has the most magnificent ecosystems; its great habitats and biodiversity are the envy of the world. But we also have the responsibility of managing it properly. We have not, to date. It has been the public sector which is supposed to be managing these sites and the environmental flows. They have got to get smarter. They have got to consult the locals, who know better from managing these systems over generations. At the end of the day, we can move on to see the—(Time expired)

Robert Oakeshott (Lyne, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Picking up on the final words from the member for Murray, I too rise to talk about the challenge and opportunity of having a unique ecosystem in Australia and of having the responsibility of managing it properly. My concerns, from a local electorate point of view, are coastal, representing the mid-North Coast of New South Wales. Part of the formal agreement that was reached with government was to get a release of a full response to the report of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Climate Change, Water, Environment and the Arts inquiry into climate change and environmental impacts on coastal communities, chaired by Jennie George. This was a bipartisan report, supported by the deputy chair at the time, Mal Washer, into coastal erosion issues throughout Australia, which is an increasing headache for all levels of government to deal with. Whilst the topic of the previous speaker was the Murray-Darling Basin, many of the issues she mentioned about the management of ecosystems and of natural resources hold true for the coastal areas of my electorate.

This is important work with regard to coastal erosion. It is not only about the loss of land in millionaires row, up and down the exclusive streets on the Australian coastline; it is about the loss of open space and the rapidly increasing speed of the loss of coastal lands. This is increasing problems for local councils and various approval bodies dealing with local lands because the boundaries to determine where to do development and where to protect biodiversity are moving so quickly. On the North Coast of New South Wales and in my electorate there are two areas where there are particular concerns. At Old Bar, in the Greater Taree City Council region, there has been a significant increase in the speed of the loss of coastal lands. There is a boutique hotel there which will start to lose property if the loss of land continues at the rate it has for the last decade. One individual, Ross Keys, has had orders to knock down two of his houses at a time when refinancing from the banks during the global financial crisis hit him from another angle, so the huge problem for that individual is an example that this is a real issue affecting real people. As well, in Lake Cathie, also in the electorate of Lyne, there is the potential loss of beach right up to a local street, Chepana Street. At the current speed, a loss of local infrastructure to the community is not too far away, just like what happened at Kingscliff, further up the coast, where the foreshore road went into the water and there were significant losses of open space during the heavy seas in winter. Likewise, there has been a recent Land and Environment Court case at Byron Bay and the ongoing issues between landowners and the local council there.

Those are four North Coast examples and I am sure there are many more right around the Australian coastline that emphasise the point that this is a real problem affecting communities that desperately needs coordination and leadership from the Commonwealth level. That is exactly why a former member of this place, Jennie George, chaired the inquiry by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Climate Change, Water, Environment and the Arts that did receive bipartisan support. A lot was made of the release of that committee’s report in October 2009, more than 12 months ago. I remember, as you would, Mr Deputy Speaker Slipper, that nearly a whole question time was spent on this, with the Prime Minister talking at length about the importance of the issues raised in the report. There were 47 good recommendations, all along the lines that it is time for the Commonwealth to start to play at least a coordination role but preferably to take a leadership role in dealing with coastal erosion and the many inconsistencies that are faced at a local planning level.

An example, again from my communities, is that all the legal advice that the various councils are receiving is different. While there are some common themes, the recommendations on how to deal with those common themes are inconsistent in parts and are therefore creating greater headaches for the local councils and planning authorities, including about what to do from a legal liability point of view in addressing loss of lands and potential development approvals. I want to highlight in particular the two areas of greatest interest that I urge government to act on. One is on the legal questions, in an effort to support both local councils and also state agencies. There was a recommendation for the Australian Law Reform Commission to do some work in this space. I hope the government takes up that recommendation soon, as well as the recommendation about insurance issues. I think both the legal and the insurance aspects can drive a coordinated approach for more sensible planning throughout the coastal zone.

In addition, there are issues around emergency management. Whether or not you believe the science of climate change, the reality is that we are seeing more events in the coastal zone, and they are becoming more significant and therefore causing more damage to both private and public infrastructure. So engaging the emergency management sector in some preventative work is, I think, a valuable recommendation that is still waiting to be picked up. There was also a very good recommendation by the Natural Resource Management Ministerial Council for further work to be done in that regard. The loss of sand dunes is not just a loss of sand; it is a loss of natural resources and biodiversity in the coastal zone. That also has significance and does deserve further work.

That brings me back to a related issue, Caring for our Country. There have been some changes to the Caring for Country program. It would be nice to think we could get the forward estimates to show an increase in funding for Caring for our Country rather than a decrease, and that is certainly a continuing push at my end because it is related to a response to this report. If the government is going to be serious about responding to these 47 recommendations, catchment management authorities and the various bioregions within them will need to be engaged at a more significant level, and programs like the Caring for our Country program are the vehicle for that engagement. So I would strongly encourage the government to (a) respond to this report and (b) act on the details, such as considering programs like Caring for our Country in the forward estimates.

This is a report that is waiting for coordination and leadership. It does pick up on the previous speaker’s words—that we need to get serious about natural resource management in this country and there are economic benefits if we do. The recommendations talked about Kakadu, the Great Barrier Reef and wetlands, which the member for Murray was also taking about. They are all captured in the coastal zone, and the lack of action in the coastal zone will see the loss of many unique parts of Australian life and Australian ecosystems. I would hope that the government responds, responds soon and responds strongly to this report that is still waiting for direction from government.