Andrew Broad (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to talk about something that is very important not just to the people in my electorate but to the people of Australia, and that is the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.

Water management is absolutely critical not just for irrigators but also for those who want to have a healthy river system. It is absolutely critical to our broader environment and global reputation and to our productive capacity. The Murray-Darling Basin is the most fertile part of Australia. We talk about the great opportunities that present themselves in Northern Australia, but it needs to be remembered that you have to combine great soils and water, and what we have in the basin needs to be enhanced, managed properly and preserved for future generations.

We do need a diversified river system. I often hear people say that we should not be growing cotton or rice in Australia. Those comments are built on a bit of ignorance of how our environment and river system works. Having looked at this extensively—having been an irrigator myself, having represented irrigators and having an understanding of global agriculture—it is absolutely critical that you have a diversified variety of plantings across a river system. It is not workable to simply have all permanent plantings. Permanent plantings require water every year, whether you have water or not. You need to have rice, you need to have dairying, you need to have irrigated grains, you need to have almonds, you need to have table grapes and you need to have wine grapes. You need to have that variety. When you have lots of water in the system that is the time you can plant annual crops, when you can put rice in and those sorts of things. In the years when it is very dry, when there is not much water around, what is there maintains our permanent plantings.

A diversified river system is very important, but if we are going to have a healthy river system there has to be confidence for people to invest. People who invest in irrigation infrastructure actually invest a great deal of money. It is not cheap to put in the type of technology we want on our farms and to manage our water better and in an environmental way. People are only going to invest in that infrastructure if they have confidence. If you take away their confidence they will simply ask the question: 'What is the point?'

What we have seen over the period of reform, through the Murray-Darling Basin plan, is a shattering of confidence for people who are involved in the irrigation-technology area, a shattering of confidence for farmers and a shattering of confidence for communities. That has resulted in worse environmental outcomes rather than in instilling confidence. Our government is proposing to put some confidence back into those who want to invest in better water management so that those communities believe they have a future, and to put some confidence back into people who want to capitalise on the opportunities of free trade by expanding their agricultural business.

We are proposing to have a cap of 1,500 gigalitres that can only be purchased by the Commonwealth. That is not saying we do not want to recover more water for the environment, it is simply saying how we do it. We have a great example in my electorate at the moment called the Sunraysia Modernisation Project. It is quite fascinating to watch it being built. The federal government is spending $103 million of taxpayers' money to reconfigure the irrigation infrastructure in the Sunraysia area. These are big pipes—you can walk down them. It is not only providing that water in a more timely and cleaner manner to those irrigators but also—in saving water—returning water to the environment. We want to introduce a 1,500 gigalitre cap on buybacks and say that the future of water recovery will come from infrastructure, and we are very proud of that.

The water management we have seems to be focused on delivering water to Ramsar listed wetlands across the system. I want to use this opportunity to talk about a new way forward, a way forward that has been demonstrated, a way forward that every Australian can be proud of—but a way forward that also delivers the environmental outcome, on the Ramsar listed wetland, using pumps, using technology that was not available 100 years ago.

If you come to my electorate, come and have a look at the Hattah Lakes. They have been dry but, recently, with government money we have put in lift pumps that essentially are lifting the water out of that river and watering that environmental asset. It has been a great success story. It has been something that irrigators, locals and environmentalist have all stood shoulder to shoulder and said, 'This needed to happen' and been able to see in practice how this has rolled out and how it has worked.

It is my great vision—and a vision shared by, I know, several in this chamber here today—to see more of those environmental works and measures rolled out across the Murray-Darling Basin; more of those systematic, practical ways of achieving good environmental outcomes being built. We want them to be funded, we want them to be sustainable for the taxpayer but we also want them to be measurable outcomes for environmental management.

We have a great belief that the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder could use some of its resources through temporary sales to help fund this environmental infrastructure and we hope that this is something that the minister will consider. It is certainly responsible management of the river from an engineering point of view but it is also responsible management of our finances from a taxpayer's point of view.

If you combine introducing a 1,500 gig cap on buybacks to keep confidence for irrigators to invest with allowing the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder to use some of their temporary sales to agriculture and that money being put aside to deliver environmental works and measures on the Murray-Darling Basin as we slowly reconfigure and use that infrastructure from that fund over five, 10 and 20 years, we will have something that will be looked at in history as great water reform.

At the moment, there is still a lot of uncertainty. At the moment, there are some things we need to do to bring that reform to fruition but, provided both sides of the parliament work constructively—which is a great ambition—then I think, in years to come, we will say that we have succeeded in looking after wetlands and the Lower Lakes and we have achieved river health, at the same time as putting infrastructure into our agriculture, confidence into our farmers and providing food and high-value products not only to feed us in the future but also to export across the world. Thank you.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I commend the member for Mallee for his comments and his advocacy for a better basin outcome than what we have seen over recent years. I am also joined in the chamber by the member for Murray whose strident and passionate lobbying to get certainty for her irrigators—not just those in the Murray electorate but those right throughout the Murray-Darling Basin—is commendable. I know she and I have worked very hard together to try to reach a shared outcome which everyone can be happy with or everybody can be satisfied with, but of course we all know that not everybody is going to be completely satisfied when it comes to water.

Whilst the member for Mallee was speaking, I received a text from Emma Bradbury who is the Chief Executive Officer of the Murray-Darling Association who said that, 'It was great to see the conversation on basin resources gathering unity and momentum, particularly from the agricultural productivity and sustainability perspective'—and of course, she is right. I met with Ms Bradbury this morning, along with the Chairman of the Murray-Darling Association, Greg Toll, a farmer from Gunbower, in the member for Murray's office. I know that they are going to be meeting with the Labor Country Caucus, given the fact that they also do need to reflect the views of the majority of the people who are very interested in production and in food and fibre, will give a good listening ear to those people from the Murray Darling Association. We need to have a good and viable Murray-Darling Basin plan.

I am joined in the chamber by the member for Murray, and she and I moved a disallowance to that plan in December 2012. We did it at the time out of frustration at the fact that we felt as though the government of the day was not listening. We had both sat on an exhaustive inquiry with the then Independent member for New England. We had gone right throughout the Murray-Darling Basin, conducting important talks and consultations with people who grow food and fibre but also with those people who felt as though there should be more water pushed through the system, people who were not that concerned about whether the supermarket shelves stock any Australian grown food but who just wanted an environmental outcome.

Ms Butler interjecting—

There were. You were not on that inquiry. I am just saying there were people from both sides. There were those who felt as though water should be just used for production. There were those who felt that water should be just used for the environment. The member for Murray and I always have known—and you should too, Member for Griffith—that there is a sensible balance. It is in the middle. I know you would appreciate that.

And so we met people from all sides and we ended up with a report that had 21 recommendations. I will give Tony Windsor credit where it is due; he always feared that there were ad hoc buybacks. He talked about the swiss cheese effect, about the damage that governments going in and just buying water willy-nilly just for the sake of the environment was damaging local regional river communities—not just the farmers, not just the irrigators but the machinery shops, the chemists, the schools because, once you take an irrigation farmer out of the system and take that productive water out of use, that family either shuts up shop or leaves the area totally. It leaves the area high and dry, and I mean every aspect of that term. There are not so many children going to that local school. The education department then looks and says: 'Do we really need the 4.6 teachers that were allocated to that school? Maybe we can make it 3.6.' Those sorts of things happen. They have an effect on river communities.

So moving that disallowance in December 2012—in the very last parliamentary sitting week—showed to our side of politics and, I hope, the other side of politics now how important it was to get a cap on buybacks. The cap was 1,500 gigalitres, which at the time meant that only 249 gigalitres still needed to be recovered. Over the course of the water sharing plans up to 2019 and thereafter, it seemed a very good idea at the time. It is now an excellent idea because we do need to say to irrigation farmers, river communities and environmentalists that enough is enough. Fifteen hundred gigalitres is a good number. It provides the environmentalists—and some of them are rabid, absolute greenies who do not care two hoots about the farmers who I represent, do not care two hoots about the fine Australian food that we grow and only want to see the water being pushed down the river system. I say that, whenever there is a prolonged drought, whenever we had a man-made drought forced on us in our electorates, the first living organisms to bounce back were the birds, frogs and lilies. They bounced back far quicker than the farmers did because Mother Nature always knows when it needs to quench its river systems.

We live in a country of droughts and flooding rains. That was the very title that Tony Windsor opted for in his very comprehensive report. I am just sorry that the previous government did not adopt that report, because I think that, if we had, we would have been in a far better position then than we are now.

But this cap on buyback does give certainty to my irrigators, my communities, and I know Dr Sharman Stone's people as well. It gives them the certainty to invest with confidence and hope for the future. It gives them the certainty and hope to try to attract more doctors, more professional people to their communities, because we need these communities to grow. There are the scaremongers out, even in my communities at the moment, saying that just about every shop in certain main streets of certain cities and towns in the Riverina is shut. That is not entirely correct. Banna Avenue in Griffith is going very, very well; it is hard to find a park there on any given day of the week. Leeton is humming and ticking along, as is Narrandera. There is some confidence brought back.

That confidence has been helped in part by the fact that we have a coalition government, and I do say that whilst also imploring the country members of the Labor Party opposite to get on board with the legislation, because it is good legislation. It should be bipartisan legislation, because it does give people—not just in coalition, including National Party, electorates but also those in Labor country electorates—certainty, and there are Labor country members who I know understand this. I can see the member for Griffith nodding, because she knows how important it is. She knows how important is the fact that when regional Australia is strong so too is our nation. When regional Australia is thriving so too is our nation.

In really advocating for this 1,500-gigalitre cap, I know it is going to give certainty to those wonderful irrigators—and they are. They are people who understand the river system and who want the very best. They do not want to see their rivers dry up. They do not want to see any environmental damage done by salinity or anything else that goes with a drought-affected river system. What we do need, and what we are getting by this legislation, is a shared common goal right throughout the Murray-Darling Basin and the capacity to manage. We are getting unity of purpose, and it is so important.

The Murray Darling Association, in a paper that they have given me this morning, say that as far as the 1,500-gig cap goes it is important and that the government obviously need bipartisan support. They understand that. They understand the politics of it. They understand the reality of it. The government does need the support of Labor and the crossbench senators to get the legislation through the Senate, and it is so important. I can not implore that enough.

The cap on buyback is the maximum amount of water that may be purchased by direct tender from water owners. It is important for the Riverina. It is important for Murray. It is crucial for Maranoa. I know that the Labor members will understand and appreciate just how important it is. I implore and urge them to get on board with this legislation. It is not just good for river communities or regional Australian; it is good for our nation and absolutely critical that it pass.

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

I want to congratulate our previous speaker, the member for Riverina. He is a champion for the whole of his community. He understands the triple-bottom-line multiple-benefit approach, and we have worked in partnership to try to bring about a better basin outcome for a long time, so I commend his remarks as important and necessary, and they should be taken on-board.

Let me say that the recent joint statement from Ministers Hunt and Joyce and Parliamentary Secretary Baldwin stated that the coalition sees the value in regional communities and the long term sustainability of these communities. The coalition acknowledged the contribution these communities make to Australia, first through supplying food for the nation through to the international trade benefits to the national economy. The coalition, it went on to say, will deliver the Murray-Darling Basin plan in a way that achieves a triple-bottom-line outcome focusing on investing in communities rather than just recovering water through an ad hoc buyback program. That was on 10 March; of course, that is the statement we are debating today.

I wholeheartedly embrace the remarks of our ministers and parliamentary secretary. The problem is that is not what is happening. That is our aspiration—that is what should happen with the Murray-Darling Basin plan—but unfortunately it is not what is happening. We have a crisis in the Murray-Darling Basin. In particular, unintended consequences of what should have been well-meaning and well-thought-through policies are not in fact giving our irrigators, in particular, any sense that they can even continue in the northern Victorian irrigation zones in my electorate. The temporary water price that at least half of them now depend on is beyond their capacity to pay, and I will come back to that issue.

The other point I want to make is that, while some of the plan's aspirations were good and some of the policies were reasonable, the reason why the member for Riverina and I moved that motion to disallow the plan was that some of it was nonsense. Some of it was not well thought through and it was not based on science. It still is not based on facts and real information, and that is a tragedy for those who need to make a living in the basin today.

It is also a tragedy for those who care profoundly about the environment and environmental outcomes, and that of course includes the primary producer community, because as a primary producer you cannot ignore the environmental impacts of your farming or your work in concert with your water system, your soils, your air, your riparian vegetation or your remnant vegetation and stay in business. So our best environmentalists are our primary producers, and they are now deeply alarmed and concerned about the unintended consequences of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and the fact that the plan is still not delivering on the basis of science.

Since the plan was ticked off, there has been an extraordinary travesty of justice—a political short-term fix. The Premier of South Australia, when approached by the then Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, said: 'I'm not going to tick off as one of the states in agreement with the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. I want more water for South Australia—just more. Give us a lot more, please, or I'm going to take you to the High Court and challenge your very right to be standing there on behalf of all states. We challenge your use of the external powers in the Constitution.' So in a panic, with the help of the Greens, the Labor Party threw together what is colloquially called the Constraints Strategy. A piece of legislation was thrown into the Commonwealth parliament, without consultation with the Murray-Darling Basin community or even the authority itself, and that now requires an extra 450 gigalitres of water to be found on top of the agreed volume of sustainable delivery yields for the Basin Plan itself. The extra 450 gigalitres is—wait for it—to keep the mouth of the Murray open 95 per cent of the time without the aid of bulldozing, a nonsense idea, because it was never the natural way of the mouth of the Murray. A red gum forest rivalling Barmah would have been there had been a regular flow out of the mouth of the Murray, but it is an ephemeral stream. In fact the Murray River ends up pushing through sand dunes at the mouth. But we now have to have a channel flowing out to sea 95 per cent of the time without the aid of bulldozers.

The act dictates a high level of water for the lower lakes and a lower level of salinity. Instead of saying, 'How best can we achieve that? Through works and measures? Through better management? How can we improve the ageing, leaking inefficient barrages to deliver better outcomes to the lower end of the South Australian system?'—none of that was put in play—instead they said: 'Oh, we've got a good idea: we'll just flood the hell out of the upper reaches—the middle and upper Murray—and we'll put $1.77 billion on the table in this act, only $200 million of which will be used to ameliorate the 2½-yearly regular man-made flooding, which is going to take out the levees, the riparian zone, agriculture and a lot of the flood plain properties which have developed into the most productive agribusiness enterprises in Australia. They're now to be flooded every 2½ years.'

But it gets worse. This constraints strategy depends on knowing how the tributaries to the Murray actually behave. Take the Goulburn, for example. We do not gauge or monitor all the tributaries to the Goulburn, so we cannot tell the people on the lower Goulburn what the water levels will be when there is a huge flush of water thrown down from Eildon to keep the mouth of the Murray open. The Environmental Water Holder will give a message to the Victorian government: 'Open the Eildon gates; let it rip.' Unfortunately, for the people on the lower Goulburn, it takes 10 days for that water to reach them. They will just have to hold their breath, because we only have accurate weather forecasts for 10 days. There could be a rain event in the next five days on top of the river flow, and you could have those tributaries pushing water into the main Goulburn River. We have no idea what the Goulburn tributories would deliver. We do not gauge them. We do not monitor them. We are expecting towns and cities—Shepparton, Cobram, Yarrawonga, Echuca, Swan Hill, Wagga Wagga—to simply cop it because of this political fix that was thrown into the arena in the dying days of the Gillard regime. We are having to wear that. It is called the constraints strategy crisis in my part of the world. I want to put it on the record as an indecency that we have got to change. But it gets worse.

During the worst drought on record, Senator Penny Wong, then minister for the environment, offered my irrigators $2,500 a megalitre for their permanent water. The banks said, 'You must sell water or we will sell you up entirely.' The state government had separated land from water titles. The bank said, 'You can sell your water and you will get a million dollars worth of your debt back in order.' So about half my irrigators were forced to sell their water in the middle of the worst drought on record. For example, in the year 2000, we had 1,650 gigalitres in the Goulburn-Murray Water authority area; we are now down to just 1,000 gigalitres. Farmers believed that they could rely entirely on the temporary water market. That temporary water market is now a fraction of the size because all that permanent water went out of the system into the Environmental Water Holder's bucket. The Environmental Water Holder is allowed to trade, but he does not; only twice has he traded. I am glad about that, because at the moment the act says that, if he trades the temporary water, he has to spend every cent he makes on that trade on further buybacks—water out of the irrigator's pocket again. That is even though, through the on-farm water use efficiency grants, or least half of each project's savings goes into the environmental bucket, on top of what he has already got accumulated from out of direct water buyback.

My irrigators now cannot afford the $135 per megalitre the temporary market is commanding for temporary water. A dairy farmer cannot pay them more than about $80. A dairy farm wants to fight back from the drought, regrow its herds, grow its capacity to produce milk; it has got an export market waiting. It cannot pay $135 for temporary water. I have been told today—it might not be true; I hope it is not true—that the South Australian government is in my irrigators' market right now looking for eight gigalitres of water, half from New South Wales, half from my Victorian irrigators. What are they going to do with that eight gigalitres of primary producers' food- and fibre-producing water? We do not know, but I understand that tender closes on Monday. I am terrified about the impact of that. It is not right. A state government should not be in there buying irrigators' water. For what purpose? They are going to get 450 extra gigalitres to keep the mouth of the Murray open. Isn't that enough?

We must immediately amend the Water Act to make sure that when the Environmental Water Holder sells his water, it goes into environmental works and measures investment, not buying back more water. This has the support of the independent panel of the Water Act review. I hope Labor supports that. It is a sensible thing to do.

Half of my irrigators survived the drought. They are on their knees now because of the unintended consequences of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. We have had the constraints strategy, the temporary water market collapsing to only half the volume of water that was once there and the speculators playing in that market: VicSuper, Melbourne Water, and now it looks like the South Australian state government is wanting to make a dollar as well. It is not acceptable. We have got to fix this situation.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this very important issue, representing as I do the seat of Maranoa, which covers 95 per cent of the area that is affected under the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. The other member who is affected is the federal member for Groom, who has the region around Toowoomba which is impacted by the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.

I have long argued the point that there are two systems: one is called the Murray system; the other is the Darling system. They are lumped together for the benefit of talking about the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. From my point of view and that of many irrigators and communities in my electorate, the Darling system is seen as being a totally different ecological system from the Murray system.

Much of the Murray's water comes out of a Mediterranean-type climate. A lot of the water in government storages is from melting snow. The Darling system, on the other hand, and much of the Darling, goes through very arid lands—the rainfall events are irregular and often of high intensity. The rainfall has quite a different impact on the rivers, creeks and streams in the Darling system, which do ultimately contribute some water into the Murray system at the bottom end—but of course there is still one big impediment on the way: the Menindee Lakes. The Menindee Lakes are used as a water storage system for Broken Hill; I understand that. That is one of the things that has to be addressed as part of this whole plan. I recently had the parliamentary secretary, the Hon. Bob Baldwin, and his advisers in my electorate. We went to Dirranbandi, St George, Goondiwindi and on to the Brookstead and Cecil Plains irrigation areas and spoke with users across that area.

I support, as do many of the farmers and irrigators, the 1,500 gigalitre cap that is now being legislated. I think it is currently going through the Senate. We only hope the other side of the House will support that—as a maximum, not as the target. I also note that the irrigators in my electorate—particularly those in the Lower Balonne and along the Macintyre, which I share with the member for Parkes—are frustrated and reform fatigued. This has been going on for the last 10 to 15 years. A plan came in under John Anderson, the Deputy Prime Minister under John Howard, to look at how we could cooperate with the states so that this issue, instead of being a political one, could reach an outcome that was sustainable and gave certainty to irrigators—because certainty for irrigators also means greater certainty for the businesses in those towns that are so dependent on the irrigation farmers and the welfare that is created from water. Water is wealth in these areas, never more so than in the recent drought years. The dryland agricultural sector is confronting that right now—if you have water, you can generate income. That income creates jobs and those jobs create wealth for the people of the towns.

Water users from the Lower Balonne have said to me and the parliamentary secretary that they cannot afford to lose any more water from the Lower Balonne. They say that we have to get smarter and look at how we deal with meeting the targets, that we need to look above the Beardmore Dam—right up as far as Dalby, perhaps—to see whether there are some allocations that could be purchased without having an impact on the general economy of the towns which are so dependent on the water.

Over the last 15 years, these communities on the Condamine-Balonne system have gone through water allocation management plans—referred to as WAMPs—and resource operational plans. They gave back 15 per cent of their allocation without compensation. Their allocations now are events based allocations. What that means is that the event and the time of the year that the water flows through the river will determine whether they can harvest water or not. Simply put, at this time of year, if an event came through, the idea at a certain level is that it would go through as environmental water—because it may be nine months before we get into a more regular season, the summer rainfall, when common sense tells that you will get a similar event and you can therefore harvest water. They have provided that as the model for the way they harvest water. Only recently there was a very small flow-through of the Balonne below St George that came down the Maranoa River. That went through. Notwithstanding that they needed water, they let it go through for environmental purposes. It went on down through to Bourke in the electorate of the member for Parkes. They did not harvest it. They let it go through for environmental purposes. So they are working with us. If only some of these decisions could be managed at a local level at the time the water events occur. They believe, and they have said this to me, that you could get a good outcome for the environment if you only took some of those decisions locally—when the event occurs and at the time of year it occurs.

The other issue has been the purchase of the entire water licence from Ballandool, south of Dirranbandi, without any replacement for the impact that that would have on the community. That purchase of water has meant—and that has gone to the Environmental Water Holder—that it has gone. Businesses have said to me that up to a third of their business was lost the moment that was purchased from Ballandool. The crop sprayers and aerial contractors from St George put off two pilots and two other workers, because a third of their business was related to the work on Ballandool Station and their irrigation operations. But there has been no money invested in alternative businesses to assist in that structural adjustment—in other words, it has been a stranded asset and it has had a big impact on these communities.

When you see a third of the businesses in your town affected because of one decision to buy back a significant quantity of water that provided, obviously, cash to the seller—the land title has been separated from the water entitlement—it has left a lasting impact on these communities that have been built up through agriculture but also the irrigation industry.

In Goondiwindi—and perhaps the member for Parkes might touch on this issue—we share the Macintyre River. Recently, and not long before I was there with the parliamentary secretary, we had a situation where, on the Queensland side, the licence has been issued by the Queensland government—the pump water—but on the other side, because licences have been issued by the New South Wales government, they could not pump. That creates that across-river anger and stupidity in the system that we are trying to reform and change. But I can assure you, once again, on one side, they are able to harvest in a very difficult and dry season; and, on the other side, they could not. This has to be addressed.

I will go to the Warrego River in the west of my electorate, which comes down from Charleville, Wyandra, Cunnamulla and eventually flows into the Darling just near Bourke. There is no plan at the moment for any water on the Warrego to be required for environmental purposes. In fact, 8,000 megalitres was provided by the former Queensland Labor government without any compensation or consideration of what impact that might have on the towns way back in about 2006-07. But the water users of Cunnamulla have got more water than they can effectively utilise. They would like some Healthy HeadWaters money, if they could, or be able to sell some of their allocation upstream of the town of Cunnamulla. That would enable them, if they were able to trade it up or sell the licence upstream where there may be another opportunity for other users, particularly around Charleville, to develop some economic activity and wealth that would be created from that.

I have touched with the minister on that issue and I know that he has listened to me. I only hope that we can deal with some issues like the Warrego, quite apart from all the other issues dealing with the Condamine–Balonne system, the Macintyre system and the Mooney system. They are totally different systems from the Murray. We have got to look at the impact that it has already had and we need to resolve this quickly. I call on the Labor Party to support this side of the House as we try to manage this system and not lose jobs and wealth in our community.

Mark Coulton (Parkes, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak about the ministerial statement made by the parliamentary secretary, Mr Bob Baldwin, the member for Paterson. Legislation will be introduced into the House in the next couple of weeks to make sure that the buybacks do not go beyond the 1500 gigalitres that have been agreed upon.

This is not a change to the plan. It is not a grab for any more water by any one part of the basin. It is merely putting into legislation something that has been agreed upon so that in the future it will be difficult for someone to interfere with that agreement for political purposes and to severely impact on communities around the basin. I am hopeful, because of the sensible nature of this legislation and the obvious need for it, that we will get support—not only in the chamber from the opposition but also in the Senate and from the Senate crossbenchers.

The Murray-Darling Basin is a very complex place. I would go as far as to say that I do not believe that any one person in Australia completely understands the complexity of this system. The Parkes electorate, which I represent, covers 25 per cent of the Murray-Darling Basin; it is entirely in what is known as the northern basin. My electorate encompasses the areas bounded by the Lachlan River in the south through to the Macintyre River or the Border Rivers, as they are known, in the north. That part of the basin is an ephemeral area. The water runs on a seasonal basis as and when the rainfall occurs. It is different from the southern basin, which has the reliability of snow melt and much more infrastructure to handle that. Many of my rivers are disconnected from the rest of the basin. The Lachlan River hardly ever—maybe once or twice in a century—flows through to join up to the Darling. Maybe every 30 years or so, the Gwydir River will flow through the wetlands and join up with the Barwon River—indeed, not on all occasions, as the Macquarie River goes through the Macquarie Marshes and up into the Barwon River. So it is a very complex system, and that needs to be taken in mind.

I think it is always very dangerous when human beings try to manage nature. If anyone had been up in an aeroplane with me in 2012, the last time we had a flood through that area, they would have realised that mankind is coming very much second to the forces of nature. If you would like to go out into the Parkes electorate now, you would see that mankind is also coming second to nature, as we are now in the grip of a three-year drought. Many of the rivers in the Parkes electorate have ceased to run, and it was many months ago that irrigators and communities were last able to pump from some of those areas. So we do need to keep in mind that we are dealing with a very complex and ephemeral system.

In managing the Murray-Darling Basin in a sustainable way so that everyone—from the mouth of the Murray to the headwaters in Central Queensland—gets a fair share and so that the system can remain healthy long into the future, we need to make sure that we deal with the science, not the politics. Quite frankly, some of the statements made in this place in the past, through sheer ignorance of the truth, are sickening. We need to maintain a scientific and practical outlook.

Unfortunately for the parliamentary secretary, due to storms in his electorate, he was not able to attend the opening of the Trangie Nevertire Irrigation Scheme upgrade. Fortunately for me, I was able to attend. It was done under round 1 of the Private Irrigation Infrastructure Operators Program, otherwise known as PIIOP. It was a huge undertaking. I would like to place on record my admiration for the irrigators in that scheme. A large number of farms are involved, and serious decisions had to be made. Some of the farmers in that scheme ceased to be irrigators. They filled in their channels. They piped the water through polythene pipe for stock and domestic use, but they basically had to change the roles that their farms performed. That enabled the irrigators and the farmers closer to the river to have a more reliable access. Along with the redesigning and the lining of the channels, and private infrastructure such as lateral-move and centre-pivot irrigators, we now have a much more efficient and reliable irrigation scheme. Indeed, the cotton crops that have been harvested under that scheme have been some of the best crops grown for some time. That was not a gift from those farmers. They actually traded an entitlement back to the Commonwealth, back to the Environmental Water Holder, so that paid for the grant that they received to undertake this work.

There are practical ways of managing our water so that we do have a more sustainable and more reliable scheme without severely impacting on our communities. But we need to keep an eye on this. If you want to stimulate economic growth in a basin town, the best way to do that is put in a megalitre of water. The multiplication effect of a megalitre of water is such that its value is magnified seven times. If you take a megalitre of water from a basin town, that basically equates to a job. Every megalitre of water that is removed in a buyback means a job. These communities have suffered a lot because of this.

The previous speaker, the member for Maranoa, mentioned that there are cross-border issues, with the Murray-Darling Basin covering four states. One of the drivers of this plan in the era of the Howard government was to have a plan that was fair to everyone, but some cross-border issues remain. When discussions take place beyond this legislation—which I hope will be passed—I hope that we take a sensible attitude, because we are not talking about a philosophical debate here.

People like the member for Melbourne talk about restoring the Murray-Darling Basin to the condition that it was in in 1770, but he does not mention the Yarra, which runs through his electorate, and what might be done there. We are told that removing 25 per cent of the population of the Parkes electorate or those towns on the basin is for the common good of this country, but we do not see any movement in the cities of Melbourne and Sydney and other places. When people in my electorate are expected to wear the pain of the ideological drivers of others in this place, it does make me somewhat irate. So I call for this to be dealt with in a sensible and scientific manner, so that we realise that we do have to feed this nation, that the Murray-Darling Basin is the food bowl of Australia and that the communities that live in that basin are important, as are the communities further downstream in Adelaide, Victoria and southern New South Wales. Everyone has a right to this water in a sustainable way. This legislation is important. It is coming in. I am asking the parliament to support it.

Debate adjourned.