Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Standing Committee on Regional Australia, I present the committee's advisory report, incorporating a dissenting report, on the Water Amendment (Water for the Environment Special Account) Bill 2012, together with the minutes of proceedings and evidence received by the committee. I ask leave of the House to make a short statement in connection with this report.

Leave granted.

I thank the House. The Standing Committee on Regional Australia has undertaken three previous inquiries into matters relating to the health and productivity of the Murray-Darling Basin. I present this fourth report, supported by the committee, with the exception of Mr McCormack, the member for Riverina, and Dr Sharman Stone, who have dissented from the report. I think it should be noted that the shadow minister, the member for Flinders, and the member for Wannon, both members of the coalition, have supported the substance of the report. As part of its previous inquiries, the committee has recommended that the government conduct infrastructure works to increase water efficiency within the basin. This bill fulfils that recommendation.

The current bill identifies the Water for the Environment Special Account. The bill provides an incremental funding stream of $1.77 billion over 10 years starting from 2014-15. The special account will fund projects and programs that improve on-farm and off-farm infrastructure and remove constraints as identified by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority. Negative social and economic impacts to basin communities resulting from these funded projects will also be offset by the special account. It is anticipated that these projects will inject a further 450 gigalitres of environmental water into the basin over the next 10 years.

Controversially, the special account will also finance the purchase of water access rights. It is implied, though not clear in the bill itself, that these purchases will come from efficiencies gained through improved infrastructure. This was of concern to many stakeholders who made submissions to the inquiry. The bill's interpretive documents imply that the Commonwealth will be limited to purchasing the efficiencies gained from improvements in infrastructure. However, the bill is ambiguously worded and is not clear on this point. As currently drafted, the clause lacks clarity—and I am hopeful that the minister will address those issues within the hour. The ambiguity has caused significant concern within the basin communities and the committee is therefore recommending that this clause be amended to more appropriately convey its intent.

During the committee's inquiry, the Senate Environment and Communications Committee also reviewed the bill's provisions, recommending that the bill be amended to require 450 gigalitres of environmental water be recovered throughout the lifetime of the special account. The committee does not agree with that recommendation. The program and projects funded by the special account are voluntary. Requiring 450 gigalitres of water recovery could amount to a quasi-compulsory acquisition system, something which is prohibited under the Water Act. The committee strongly believes that the government should continue to work with irrigators to achieve environmental outcomes for a healthy basin, and supports the bill's objective of acquiring 'up to' 450 gigalitres of environmental water as currently drafted. Despite the committee's recommendations for the bill to be amended, I commend the government for its responsiveness to the committee's findings in relation to Murray-Darling Basin arrangements.

As I said, the committee has conducted a number of inquiries and I congratulate committee members who have participated in the various inquiries, as well as the secretariat, on their very hard work. This has been a difficult issue for many people. I will be speaking to the specifics of the bill within the next hour or so and I will reserve some of my comments until then.

As I have commented recently, this is the first time the parliament has had a committee that is specifically charged with matters concerning regional Australia—and I am pleased to see the Minister for Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government in the House at the moment. This bill is again proof of the effectiveness and critical importance of this committee's existence. I commend the report to the House.

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

by leave—I was a supplementary member of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Regional Australia. I joined that committee when it was addressing Murray-Darling Basin matters. I, along with the member for Riverina, strongly disagree with the committee's recommendation to support this bill.

The bill was a consequence of modelling requested by the South Australian Premier. On 29 June 2012 the Murray-Darling Basin Ministerial Council asked the Murray-Darling Basin Authority to respond to the calls from the South Australian Premier to:

… complete a 'relaxed-constraints' model scenario with a Basin-wide reduction in diversions of 3200—

gigalitres per year—

The purpose of this scenario is to explore the flow regime changes and potential environmental benefits that would result if some major existing river operating constraints in the southern connected system were relaxed.

This came out of the blue, this call for the removal of the constraints. Subsequently, some modelling work was undertaken and then, very quickly, we saw this very poorly drafted bill come into the House. The chairman of our committee has already commented on the fact that much of the bill is so poorly drafted that we had to call for the department to clarify some of the matters. One of the recommendations of the committee was to clarify the point about whether or not the bill actually allows for the general or non-strategic purchase of further water buybacks. This is a critical issue in the basin, but the government's purpose is totally unclear in this bill. Much in the explanatory memorandum is also inconsistent with what is implied in the bill itself. This is sloppy work. It is of great concern because the matters in this bill are of critical concern to the future economic, environmental and community sustainability of the basin.

But our concerns—mine and those of the member for Riverina—extend beyond just the sourcing of the additional 450 gigalitres to be pushed down the river to serve, they hope, some better environmental outcomes for the mouth of the Murray, the Lower Lakes and the Coorong. We are deeply concerned about the flooding impacts on the environment if this additional water was pushed down the system, having removed things like bridges and levies and having perhaps bought up more of the floodplain. We are very concerned that 2.5 years is to be the average recurrence of these man-made floods. They are to be on a regular basis. Just one example on the Goulburn flood plain would involve a 40,000-megalitre per day flood for a median duration of four days between June and November every 2½ years. We know that such flooding would cause extraordinary damage to infrastructure, very valuable agribusiness and farmland. There would be some 100 houses in Shepparton inundated. We cannot understand why this flooding would be deliberately created on the very false premise that the lower parts of the river, in particular the Lower Lakes, the Coorong and the mouth of the Murray in South Australia, would in some way be enhanced as a result of this flooding of upstream.

The point about the mouth of the Murray and the Lower Lakes is that they have been so engineered, so changed with works and measures for the past 70 years, that when in fact the biggest flood on record rushed past those assets—this was when the drought broke in very recent times—there was hardly any movement in the salinity levels in Lake Albert in particular, or in the southern Coorong. The floodwaters simply pushed on past those assets because they were so isolated due to their barrages and other particular engineering works. So there has to be a lot more thinking about how you would look after the lower part of the system. We also know that most of the salinity in the basin, quite sadly, comes into the South Australian section of the river. The parts that are flushed—the dryland parts of South Australia and much of the irrigated parts—contribute the vast majority of the salt to the Murray, so there is really no point flooding the upper parts in the hope that somehow, miraculously, less salt will be generated in South Australia.

We have a very serious problem here where now we have even further insecurity for the communities of the major tributaries and the Murray River itself with this additional 450 gigalitres. We are told: 'Well, they may not actually use the 450 gigalitres. There would be so much liability, there would be so many people suing, that it probably could not happen.' The problem is that this bill allows it to happen. We cannot support this bill. It is another example of a government that simply does not understand the hydrology of the system, it does not understand the economic imperatives and it does not understand the environmental sustainability imperatives. We have to object to this bill; certainly that is what we stated quite clearly in our dissenting report.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I thank the minister at the table for his indulgence. The minister at the table, the Minister for Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government, knows full well how important it is to ensure that we have productive irrigation in regional Australia. That is certainly so in the Riverina area, and I know he is particularly conscious of how many billions of dollars worth of exports come out of that region. I know that the minister at the table is particularly concerned about the Riverina because he has visited there on several occasions during this term of parliament, which I very much appreciate as do the people of the Riverina. That said, the member for Murray and I have produced a dissenting report to the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Regional Australia's recommendations and report for the Water Amendment (Water for the Environment Special Account) Bill 2012. We have done this for a number of reasons.

Whilst I have just spoken to the member for New England about the process by which this happened, and I take on board what he has just told me and how this has eventuated, the member for Murray and I believe that it is disingenuous of the government to have changed the order of speaking business in parliament last night such that this particular bill was debated by most of the speakers who wished to speak on it—certainly, the speakers who were on the list last night. That speaking list was exhausted, and this ensured that the dissenting report to the recommendations of the Regional Australia Committee was not available to those members who spoke, including myself and the member for Murray.

Members should have had that information available to them to make an informed decision as to what they would say in their speeches and which way they would vote. This vote may well be on party lines, as is so often the case with such things that come before this place, but it would have given the crossbenchers an opportunity to decide what they needed to say in their speeches—if they were, in fact, going to give them—and which way they were going to vote. This ensured that members who spoke on this important piece of legislation did not have the benefit of the final recommendations of the House of Representatives standing committee, or this minority report.

I commend the member for New England for the work that he has done heading up the Regional Australia Committee, which was, as we all know, charged with the responsibility of initially inquiring into the Murray-Darling Basin after the Griffith meeting in October 2010. The committee was formed and the member for New England was given that responsibility by the minister at the table in conjunction with the Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities, because they saw how important getting a basin plan correct was to the people of Griffith. Seven thousand people turned up to that meeting at Yoogali to express their fears about the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.

When the Prime Minister went to Goolwa in South Australia on 26 October to announce this special account for South Australia it changed the game as far as many people were concerned. I think the states were just about to sign up to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. I do not think they would have opposed it—even New South Wales and Victoria were very close to signing up to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. It was a game changer; the Prime Minister went to South Australia on 26 October and announced that she was saving the ailing Murray.

I can tell you that the Murray is not ailing right at this moment. The Murrumbidgee and the other rivers in the system are certainly not ailing. In fact, the floodwaters from March this year have yet to recede in many places, and that is one of the great concerns of the member for Murray in this minority report. She has just spoken about the impacts of flooding on the environment, the regional communities and the communities if the natural barriers and constraints in the system are removed. The member for Murray quite correctly points out that from the data available it would seem that widespread flooding of the lower Goulburn floodplain and the Murray below Yarrawonga would occur on a regular basis—every 2½ years. On the Goulburn floodplain this would be a 40,000 megalitre-a-day flood for a median duration of four days between June and November, for 40 per cent of the 2½ years. This would, as the member for Murray correctly points out, quite simply devastate a highly productive region and inundate infrastructure, including the flooding of some 100 houses in Shepparton.

Think about that: 100 houses in Shepparton. These people are important; they are certainly important to the member for Murray and they should be important to the people of this place. We know that floods cause more devastation than any other natural disaster. How do those people in Shepparton feel about this House putting in place a policy that is going to have their houses flooded on such a regular basis? The flatness of the topography would see water accessing aquifers, retriggering salinity problems. We need to protect the environment and ensure that we have a healthy river system, but this additional water for South Australia does not need to come at the cost of the economic imperatives of those communities which grow the food and the fibre which feeds and clothes not only this nation but also others.

The bill claims that pushing this extra volume of water down the system will improve the condition, in particular, of assets at the mouth of the Murray and the Lower Lakes in South Australia. The Standing Committee on Regional Australia visited those places and heard from those people; indeed, we went right throughout the Murray-Darling Basin system. We produced a very good report in May 2011—Of drought and flooding rainstaking on that famous Dorothea Mackellar line from her view of Australia in her poem My Country. We had a look at those places and saw what needed to be done. We realised that South Australia, like every other part of the system, needs to be looked after, but not at the expense of the rest of the system nor at the expense of the regional economies and communities which produce so many exports and so much food and fibre for this nation.

In fact, due to the barrages and other engineering works in place for more than 70 years in those parts of South Australia, it was observed that despite some of the biggest volumes of water on record recently surging past Lake Albert and the southern Coorong neither of these assets benefited from the record flood flow. Unfortunately, this bill does not address these engineered impediments to achieving a natural flushing of the mouth of the Murray or the salinity levels of the Lower Lakes.

We have heard all about constraints in the system. We heard the Prime Minister and the water minister talking about the constraints, but we in the upstream areas refer to these constraints as roads, railways, important levies and towns such as those at Shepparton and, in my electorate, Darlington Point.

It is quite unrealistic to expect the appropriation of extra funds—$1.77 billion—of which a mere drop, if you will pardon the pun, is going to be funded by this particular government. The rest of it is going to have to be found and appropriated by future governments. Let us all hope that that future government will be a coalition government, because we need a change of government. I am so pleased that the Leader of the Opposition yesterday made his strongest assertion yet that buyback would be capped at 1,500 gigalitres under a future coalition government, which would mean that only 249 gigalitres of water still need to be recovered. That would mean that there would be no additional buyback, which causes the 'Swiss cheese effect'—the member for New England quite often uses that term—and there would certainly be no additional pain for the people of the Riverina, the Murray and those other communities in the basin.

Mr Windsor interjecting—

I hear the member for New England interjecting. I am not quite sure what he is saying, but he knows how important those areas are to regional communities, he knows how important those regions are to the nation and he knows they need to be preserved and protected by good policy. I do not believe this bill represents good policy. I do not believe the basin plan is good policy. We need to get these things right; they are too important not to. Therefore, the member for Murray and I cannot support this bill and cannot support all of the recommendations of the House of Representative Standing Committee on Regional Australia. I thank the House for its indulgence.