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

Today, we hope, will be the first day in the rest of a prosperous and environmentally sustainable life for the Murray-Darling Basin. The House of Representatives Standing Committee on Regional Australia has this morning tabled its report on the Murray-Darling Basin Authority's guide to the Basin Plan, which includes future sustainable water diversion limits from their perspective. The Murray-Darling Basin Authority's guide to the plan was met with furore and despair when irrigators heard that water was to be found through non-strategic buybacks via the market and that was the only way that water was to be found. This—non-strategic buybacks—has already caused significant damage through stranded assets and distorted prices. The CSIRO and other scientific and state agencies were equally concerned with the plan, which they said did not use best science or use it in appropriate ways.

The committee has identified a pathway forward which will make use of best science, will cooperate with the states, the catchment management authorities, local agencies and local stakeholders and will no longer discriminate between users of water based on whether they are in mining or in towns and cities or on farms. We have found a way forward which is sustainable and which will deliver a triple bottom line. One of the key elements of our recommendations is no more non-strategic buybacks starting as of next week. We hope that the government, as it is already showing, will seriously consider these recommendations and make sure they are implemented in full as soon as possible.