Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I present the explanatory memorandum to the Australian Capital Territory Water Management Legislation Amendment Bill 2013 and move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

The Australian Capital Territory Water Management Legislation Amendment Bill 2013 (the bill) demonstrates the government's commitment to delivering the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in full and on time. I also want to congratulate both my predecessor and his predecessor for actions taken, particularly Senator Simon Birmingham, who, as parliamentary secretary, has taken the lead on bringing other states across the line, and all of those officials involved in the process.

The bill is a further step to improving the management of Murray-Darling Basin resources by making the appropriate level of government responsible for managing water in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) on a day-to-day basis.

The ACT is part of the Murray-Darling Basin. Under current arrangements, the management of water on national land in the ACT is a Commonwealth function. The ACT government manages water on territory land.

The bill will remove this dual management and streamline arrangements by providing the ACT government with genuine authority to manage all water abstraction in the ACT. This legislative change will also enable the ACT and Commonwealth water abstractors within the ACT to fulfil their obligations under the Basin Plan.

The bill further facilitates the implementation of the Basin Plan by enabling the ACT to fully manage surface waters of the Googong Dam.

Under the Basin Plan, the ACT is required to prepare a water resource plan that covers all the territory's water resources, as well as the Googong Dam. Googong Dam water resources, while managed by the territory for the purposes of supplying water to the territory, are a Commonwealth water resource located on New South Wales land.

Furthermore, through amendments to the Australian Capital Territory (Planning and Land Management) Act 1988 (PALM Act), the Water Act 2007 and the Canberra Water Supply (Googong Dam) Act 1974, this bill provides the appropriate legislative backing for the ACT to prepare a basin plan with a compliant water resource plan.

The Basin Plan was adopted, as the House will know, in November 2012, recognising the importance of restoring health to the Murray-Darling Basin and providing certainty to communities. It takes its origins from the work of predecessors in this House, both Prime Minister Howard and the then Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson, then subsequent minister for the environment, Malcolm Turnbull, and successive ministers on the now opposition benches, whom I recognise and acknowledge for their work.

The Basin Plan provides a national strategy to ensure integrated and comprehensive water resource management throughout the Murray-Darling Basin. The ACT surface and groundwater resources discharge into the Murrumbidgee River.

Water resource management in the ACT has ecological and hydrological impacts and changes the volume of water that is available to other water users not only in the ACT but also in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia.

Therefore, it is important that the ACT is able to prepare the water resource plan required of it under the Basin Plan. The bill provides the necessary legislative backing for this process.

Once the legislative changes commence, the abstraction of water in the territory will be managed by the territory government under the ACT's Water Resources Act 2007.

This will be achieved by amendments to the Australian Capital Territory (Planning and Land Management) Act 1988 and associated Commonwealth legislative instruments.

This change will allow the territory to cover all of its water resources in its water resource plan, in accordance with its obligations under the Basin Plan.

Furthermore, the bill will also provide appropriate legislative backing for the Googong Dam area to be included in the territory's water resource plan area.

Under the Basin Plan, the territory is required to prepare a water resource plan that covers the Googong Dam as well as all of the territory's water resources. This outcome will be achieved through the amendments to the Water Act 2007.

Finally, the legislation will ensure that the ACT executive has the necessary powers to fully manage the surface waters of the Googong Dam under the territory's Water Resources Act 2007.

This outcome is achieved through the amendments to the Canberra Water Supply (Googong Dam) Act 1974. The aim of this amendment is to ensure that all water resources under territory control are managed under a consistent framework.

The combined effect of these changes is that the territory and Commonwealth water abstractors within the ACT will be able to comply with their obligations under the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.

This change will not affect any agreements reached by the Commonwealth, New South Wales and Australian Capital Territory governments on the supply of water to Queanbeyan.

I particularly want to say that cooperative, consistent and efficient management arrangements of water abstraction within the ACT will have long-term benefits on the sustainability of water resources within the ACT.

I thank all of those involved as officials, administrators, scientists and water advisers. I acknowledge the work, going backwards, of the Wentworth Group and others who argued so passionately for the Basin Plan.

I commend this bill to the House.

Mark Butler (Port Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Climate Change and Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The opposition supports the Australian Capital Territory Water Management Legislation Amendment Bill 2013. Indeed, this was a bill prepared before the election as part of the implementation arrangements for the Murray-Darling Basin Plan but was not able to be processed through the parliament before the election. I am grateful to the minister for bringing this bill before the parliament, and I think all Australians are grateful for the bipartisan support the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, in its broader sense, has from this parliament.

The opposition do have differences with the government about certain aspects of their implementation arrangements for the plan, particularly their decision to defer $650 million in buyback funding by two years. But the minister is correct that, in its essential elements, this Murray-Darling Basin Plan now has bipartisan support from this parliament. That must be a great relief to communities along the Murray-Darling Basin but also to those in cities such as the one I live in, Adelaide, which had very great concerns, particularly during the millennium drought, about even something as basic as reliable access to drinking water.

This bill deals with a microcosm of the inefficiencies that have bedevilled the Murray-Darling Basin area and the communities that live within it for decade upon decade upon decade. Australia has been trying to deal with those inefficiencies since the Federation debates, since the first meeting of Murray-Darling Basin communities or, should I say, Murray-Darling Basin governments in 1915 and, as we all know, in the very difficult debates that have happened over the last several years, to arrive at the place where we are now.

The minister has outlined the impact of this bill. I do not intend to belabour the point, but what it essentially does is allow the ACT to discharge its water abstractor obligations under the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and deal with some of those inefficiencies that have been in place for the best part of 100 years, since the community of Canberra was founded. It finally deals with those inefficiencies in a way that will ensure that New South Wales, the Commonwealth and the ACT are able to discharge their obligations under this watershed plan.

Gai Brodtmann (Canberra, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Water management in the ACT is an issue that I am particularly passionate about. That is why I spoke on this legislation, the Australian Capital Territory Water Management Legislation Amendment Bill 2013, in June of this year and that is why I am taking the opportunity to speak on it again today.

The ACT has some spectacular waterways. However, as is often the case in cities, sometimes these waterways have suffered with the urbanisation of their surrounds. Since my election in 2010, I have campaigned for the better protection and restoration of Canberra's waterways. In particular, I have advocated for the development of a wetland area in the Lake Tuggeranong catchment area. The beautiful Lake Tuggeranong is the heart of the Tuggeranong community. From my electorate office, I see people using this lake every day, walking or running around it, using the parks on the shores of the lake. However, I join many residents of Tuggeranong in my concern for the lake's wellbeing.

That is why I have supported a community initiative for the restoration of the ecosystems of the Tuggeranong catchment. That is why I am a regular at the 'clean up Lake Tuggeranong' sessions—one was held just recently, and we pulled an enormous amount of debris out of the lake—and that is why I take great joy in the Great Carp Catch of the Tuggeranong Festival, hauling out dozens and dozens of hideous carp to protect the Lake Tuggeranong ecosystem. The Tuggeranong catchment project will encourage and empower the community to become directly involved with the restoration of the lake through activities such as clean-ups and tree plantings. The project also has the long-term aim of developing a wetland area by the lake, which I know would be a huge benefit to the community and to the environment of Tuggeranong.

The bill we are debating today is an important step in the water management of the ACT. It will enable the ACT to complete its responsibilities under the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. For over a century, the Murray-Darling Basin has not been managed with a basin-wide approach; rather, it has been managed state by state, catchment by catchment. This has resulted in environmental degradation, a lack of resilience and an ongoing uncertainty for basin communities.

October 2010 saw the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, set up by the former, Labor government, release the draft Basin Plan, which was heavily criticised by those opposite at the time. The report made it clear that we needed a new way to manage the Murray-Darling Basin and highlighted the poor approach taken by the Howard government. Labor undertook a comprehensive consultation process, working with the basin states and the communities that rely on these rivers, like those in Albury-Wodonga, Echuca, Swan Hill, Mildura, Renmark, Murray Bridge, Goolwa and other towns and population centres right along the basin, because Labor know that our farming communities have a proud history of sustainable farming, with an outlook to protecting our natural environment.

The Basin Plan acknowledged that environmentally sustainable limits on the quantities of water that may be taken from the basin needed to be in place not just in a local or state based setting but nationally. An efficient water trading system right across the basin, from Queensland through New South Wales and the ACT right down to South Australia and Victoria, was needed. We needed to ensure that water quality and salinity objectives were put in place and then met year in, year out. Throughout the development of the plan we acknowledged that we needed strategies in place to keep the social and economic fabric of our rural and regional towns strong while also achieving the plan's environmental outcomes. After an extensive consultation period, the 43rd Parliament, in a moment that brought together environmentalists, rural communities, farmers and small-business operators, made the Basin Plan Australian law, guaranteeing that 2,750 gigalitres of additional water will be returned to the Murray-Darling Basin.

The bill we are debating today is a legacy of Labor's reforms and is vital for ensuring the ACT government can fulfil its obligations under that plan. The Murray-Darling Basin Plan requires that the ACT prepare a water resource plan that covers all of the territory's water resources, as well as Googong Dam. However, currently, the management of water on national land in the ACT is a Commonwealth function and is not managed by the ACT government. This bill amends the act which regulates the management of land in the ACT so that the abstraction of water on national land is no longer managed by the Commonwealth government and can be managed by the ACT, consistent with the Basin Plan. This bill therefore enables the ACT government to take full responsibility for the management of water within the territory and enable an end to the peculiar and inefficient system that currently designates the management of water on territory lands to the ACT government and water on national lands, such as the Googong Dam, to the Commonwealth.

Cooperative, consistent and efficient management arrangements for water extraction within the ACT will have long-term benefits on the sustainability of water resources here in the territory. However, this bill is about more than water. By giving this responsibility to the ACT government, this bill is further recognition that the government of the ACT has well and truly come of age. The ACT achieved self-government in 1988, and I was privileged enough to work for our first Chief Minister, Rosemary Follett, shortly after that. It was a privilege to be a part of the unfolding of self-government in the ACT, and it has been a privilege to watch the ACT Legislative Assembly mature over the last 25 years.

In 2011, I was proud to be a part of this parliament and part of the Labor government when we passed laws to remove one of the final and most significant barriers to ensuring the democratic rights of the citizens of the ACT and Northern Territory. That was the Territories Self-Government Legislation Amendment (Disallowance and Amendment of Laws) Bill 2011, which removed the ability of federal parliamentarians to veto the laws made by the ACT government. This was an important step for ACT self-government, and so is this bill we are debating today—handing the important role of water management in the ACT to the ACT government, where it rightly belongs.

For over 25 years, the Legislative Assembly has been making laws for the peace, order and good governance of the ACT. It has grown to be a mature, stable chamber which is accountable to its constituents. As former Chief Minister of the ACT Jon Stanhope said:

From ambivalent beginnings, self government is now firmly embedded in the consciousness of our community. The ACT, through its stable government and mature parliament, has embraced the social responsibilities with which it is charged. On average, Canberrans are among the healthiest, best educated and most prosperous in Australia. We are just, free and relatively free of prejudice. We have grown in population terms and as an indispensable presence in our region. We have also grown as a community, a vibrant and engaged polity, and increasingly we are recognised as such by a nation whose capital and seat of government we are proud to uphold and sustain.

This is a significant moment for me to be speaking in this place about territory rights. As members will be aware, tomorrow the High Court will hand down its ruling on whether or not the ACT's same-sex marriage laws are inconsistent with the federal Marriage Act.

The Commonwealth has argued that the 2004 Howard government amendments to the federal Marriage Act to define marriage as being between a man and a woman in order to prevent same-sex marriage make it clear—

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

Mr Deputy Speaker, I raise a point of order. I ask that the speaker return to the topic of this debate. It is not about same-sex marriage.

Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is a bill for Australian Capital Territory water management, and I would ask the member to refer to the bill.

Gai Brodtmann (Canberra, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have been referring to the bill, Deputy Speaker. This is about territory rights, and that is what I am discussing now.

They made it clear that marriage is between a man and a woman and there is no room left for the states and territories to pass laws about same-sex marriage. The ACT has argued that the 2004 amendments actually narrowed the Commonwealth law. The Commonwealth law now only deals with heterosexual marriage, so it leaves room for a state or territory to pass a law on different forms of marriage. The ACT law would therefore be able to sit side by side with the federal law.

I am no constitutional expert, so I can in no way guess or pre-empt the High Court's decision tomorrow. However, as a supporter of marriage equality and of self-government, I hope that tomorrow's decision upholds territory rights. ACT Labor has taken a policy of marriage equality to every election since 2001 and has won government each time. Tomorrow we will learn a great deal about the rights of the ACT to make laws for its citizens. Water management is—

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker—

Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! I call the minister.

Gai Brodtmann (Canberra, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am making concluding remarks, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is about territory rights.

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Are you? If you are concluding—

Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Canberra has the call.

Gai Brodtmann (Canberra, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Deputy Speaker. Water management is a very important responsibility, and the ACT government has well and truly demonstrated that it is mature enough to manage this responsibility. Not only is this bill an important milestone for our environment; it is an important milestone for the ACT and territory rights, and I commend it to the House.

Andrew Leigh (Fraser, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is my pleasure to rise to speak on this important piece of legislation, which ensures that the ACT has the necessary powers to control the management of the Googong Dam. The Australian Capital Territory Water Management Legislation Amendment Bill 2013 enables the ACT to prepare Murray-Darling-Basin-Plan-compliant water resource plans when current ACT water resource plans expire at the end of 2014.

Canberrans know the importance of the Googong Dam, a resource that ensures that we have water sustainability but also a great recreational resource for Canberrans. It was my pleasure to attend the official opening of the Googong Dam and to have the opportunity with many Canberra families to walk behind the dam wall. It is an impressive piece of construction. I pay tribute to the many construction workers and engineers who were involved in bringing it about. The Googong Dam also has recreational facilities—sailing, boating and mountain biking—and a range of short and long walks, allowing Canberrans to enjoy this beautiful part of our neighbourhood.

I am also pleased to rise to speak on this bill because of its importance in ensuring that the Murray-Darling Basin Plan can be realised. The Murray-Darling Basin Plan is a great tribute to the former Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities, the member for Watson, and his hard work with local communities. That hard work saw the Basin Plan passed through this House with just a handful of fringe members opposing it. Among those were some members of the Nationals and the Greens.

The Nationals I can forgive, perhaps. Their view was that the Murray-Darling Basin Plan was fundamentally flawed and that we should not be engaging in such a buyback, restoring water to the Murray-Darling Basin. The Greens, however, I find it harder to forgive. Their view was that somehow, if the plan were voted against, a better plan might magically come along. I think that was wishful thinking indeed. The Murray-Darling Basin Plan restored nearly 3,000 gigalitres of water to the Murray-Darling Basin and was a vital achievement.

This bill will ensure that the abstraction of water on national land is not managed by the Commonwealth government but is managed by the ACT government, and that, I think, is as it should be. The pressures that have been placed on the National Capital Authority at times have been significant. This is an appropriate role for the ACT government. It recognises, as my friend and colleague the member for Canberra has noted, that the ACT Legislative Assembly—an assembly which has taken nation-leading steps on same-sex marriage and whose size should, I believe, be increased—has come of age. I commend the bill to the House.

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank all of the speakers for their contribution to the debate on the Australian Capital Territory Water Management Legislation Amendment Bill 2013. I note that some took an excursive route in order to get back to the topic of water resource management within the ACT, but I commend the bill to the House.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.