Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Many years ago, a wise lecturer said, in my criminology and sentencing class, that he believed that future wars would be fought over water. At the time, I thought that that sounded a little far-fetched, but, listening to the debate in here over this piece of legislation, the Water Amendment (Restoring Our Rivers) Bill 2023, I can now see his argument. Indeed, our nation has fought over how to equitably share the river system since Federation. It has been a contested space. Between 1884 and 1887, individual colonies conducted their own royal commissions on how to manage the waters of the Murray. Reading through the 1898 Australasian Federation Convention debates, I see the South Australian delegates had much to say about the river. Their concerns were much the same as the concerns raised by many South Australians today who live at the end of the river. South Australian MP at the time Sir John Hannah Gordon, in giving his contribution to the debate, discussed the principles of equity:

When a river rises within the bounds of one state and empties into the sea in another, the inhabitants of the lower state have a moral coequal claim to its use.

That is our case. This great river system has its rise in other colonies; but it flows through Victoria and South Australia, and Victoria and South Australia for that reason have a moral co-equal claim to the use of the water, and that use should be controlled in the interest of all …

Is … The nation lower down the stream.

to be crippled in its resources and made to depend upon another's caprice for a great part of that which makes nations fulfil their vocations in the world?

Is Victoria relatively to New South Wales, and South Australia relatively to New South Wales and to Victoria, to be placed at their mercy or caprice for the enjoyment of that which was designed by Providence for the benefit of the whole continent? Can it be seriously contended as a matter of principle that New South Wales and Victoria can deduct so much water from these rivers as will leave them absolutely and only at a navigable point, and will allow South Australia to take nothing for the irrigation and fertilization of her land?

Despite the pleadings of South Australian representatives in 1898, in 1901 the states gave the Commonwealth power over navigation of the river systems but left the states with the powers with respect to extraction of the river for irrigation purposes. It's from there, I think, that we have the crux of the conflict of river politics and the expansion of irrigation with little consideration for the environmental health of the river or the impact on communities downstream.

Since that time, we've seen quite a few royal commissions. The first was conducted in 1902, conducted by three states who were in drought—there was a massive drought at the turn of the century. In 1914 the first River Murray Waters Agreement attempted to set out how we share water in our nation. In 1917 the River Murray Commission was established, and, if we fast-forward, in 2004 the National Water Initiative, which committed to a national approach for the management of our water trade, was established.

There are some universal truths about the Murray-Darling Basin system. Truth No. 1 is that the Murray-Darling Basin is overallocated. Too much water is taken out of the river for it to be a healthy river for future generations. The water has been overallocated and overextracted. This has been exacerbated over the decades as more water licences have been issued by individual states. River water has spread across lands where natural rainfall would normal preclude the successful growing of some crops without the mass extraction of water, much of which is still stored in open channels and worse, large storage dams, where evaporation ensures that so much water is wasted. Cotton grows in outback New South Wales towns like Walgett, and towns like Dirranbandi and St George in inland Queensland—a crop that takes an enormous amount of water to grow. It is grown in areas where the average rainfall is low, like in St George, where annual rainfall is just 436 millimetres a year, or just over 17 inches.

I like road trips. You really know you're in Australia when you're travelling across our nation by car. I remember road trips back in the nineties. Back then, Hay was all sheep country. In fact, it's still today home to the Shearers Hall of Fame. That makes sense; it's got an average rainfall of around 14½ inches. It's good sheep country. But you'd be hard pressed to find lambs now. Now you find kilometre upon kilometre of open-channel massive storage dams, which I think should be called evaporation pans, and cotton blowing across the highway.

I'm not against cotton, rice or almonds per se, but they are all incredibly thirsty crops, and we need to have a sober conversation about what we can sustainably grow where. How can it be that the plan in place, with the commitment of all the states, to return water to the system is at the same time that we have seen a mass expansion of the growing of almonds and permanent plantings in places like Tooleybuc and across the Mallee. Almond crops require, according to the Horticulture Industry Network, between 1,200 millimetres and 1,500 millimetres of water in a season, and yet most of these crops are grown in areas where we have rainfalls of between 300 and 350 millimetres annually. What a failed policy space it is when we look to grow high-water-use plants in areas of low rainfall. It ensures that those crops will only survive by burdening the river and taking water out of it, in many cases from many kilometres away, with little thought of the impact of that extraction on the river.

Some of the challenges we today come from the fact that we separated water from land. What we have created is a water speculation market which, I would argue, does not serve the national interest; speculative markets never do. Let's be realistic. What we are doing when we are planting such permanent crops is setting investors up to fail when we have more droughts, and now we're going into an El Nino period. What we're doing is setting the environment up to fail by putting more and more pressure on the fragile river system.

Truth No. 2 is that the Murray-Darling Basin Plan has been thwarted since 2013. I've been in this chamber for much of it. What I've seen with my own eyes is an expansion of irrigation—$13 billion effectively being spent, with very little in return. With respect to the 450 gigalitres, we know that just two gigalitres have been returned to South Australia in that time. It's because we had legislation that stymied water buybacks. I can't understand that, because water buybacks from willing sellers is the ultimate free market. If you have people wanting to sell their product, why would we stop that from happening? I remember when, a few years ago, South Australian MPs were so concerned that we came together with respect to the 450 gigalitres. It has always been part of the plan. It is not a 'nice to have'. It's absolutely integral to the plan.

I expect those South Australian members that stood together when we were concerned about the 450 gigalitres being taken off the table to again stand together to support this legislation. I remember when former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull needed to provide surety that his government was committed to the plan after the then water minister free-ranged on the issue. Despite such assurances, in June 2021 just two gigalitres of water out of 450 gigalitres had been returned. We have seen in the last year that go from two gigalitres to 26 gigalitres, which is somewhat of a miracle really. But we won't get the full 450 gigalitres returned to the environment without this legislation passing.

Truth No. 3 is that South Australia uses the river for agriculture too. At times in this place I have been heckled by people saying that in South Australia and particularly my part of South Australia, Mayo, we only use the river to float our yachts. That is not true. We use the river for irrigation. We farm too. But we recognise it's a finite resource and allocations are tightly managed because of this realisation. You will not find open channels and flood irrigation in my electorate. Water is just too precious for that. You cannot have productive agricultural land without a productive and well-cared-for environment.

Truth No. 4 is that the river dies from the mouth up. Mayo is home to the Coorong, a Ramsar listed site of environmental significance. In total, there are 240 bird species, including nesting colonies of cormorants, plovers and globally endangered species such as the orange-bellied parrot. Low flows into the Coorong over many, many years has led to hypersalinity and is seeing huge damage to the area.

This bill has six schedules in it, and I will just go to a couple of those. It postpones the requirement for the minister to conduct a review into the Water Act until the end of 2027. It broadens the purpose of how moneys in the Water for the Environment Special Account is to be used. It requires a third independent review of that account to be conducted and removes the cap on water purchase entitlements by the Commonwealth. It requires the basin states to report on actions specified in an action plan with a long-term annual diversion limit for the water resources of a water resource plan area.

I will be introducing some amendments to this. I would like the minister of the day to come into the parliament and express exactly how much has been returned and where the plan is up to. I think we need that for transparency. I would urge the government to support that amendment. I hope the government will support that amendment.

I would ask all South Australian members and senators to support the legislation. If you vote against this, you can never say that you truly care about South Australia or that you care about the River Murray. The only way, I think, we can get that 450 gigalitres back into the river for the environment is to support this legislation. As the member who represents the community at the very end of the river, the most vulnerable part of the river, I say: let us learn from what was raised more than a century ago and let us ensure that we think of the national interest and not vested interest with respect to this river and with respect to our nation, the environment and future generations. Let us put them first. I commend this bill to the House.

Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have been listening to some of the contributions in this debate on the Water Amendment (Restoring Our Rivers) Bill 2023 saying that people on our side of politics don't understand the Murray, aren't part of the Murray and have never been to the Murray. I am a Labor member of parliament, I am a Victorian and two of my local government areas are part of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.

I also am here to say that I really hope my Labor colleagues in the Victorian government are listening and get on board with the plan. The reason I say that is there is a lot of opportunity for us to actually work together. The fact is that we need more time to deliver the plan. We need more options on how we can return the water required to the Murray. There is more funding on the table. This is where I strongly urge the Victorian government to pick up the phone and start working with us. In my part of the world, we still have channelling, as the previous speaker spoke about. We still have open channels in Greater Bendigo, Mount Alexander and the Macedon Ranges. People still order their water by ringing up Coliban Water and saying, 'We'd like some water, please,' and they literally flush it down their channels. About 60 per cent of that water is lost in evaporation, so there is still lots of opportunity to modernise the water infrastructure in my own electorate. My electorate is about 30 minutes—

Ian Goodenough (Moore, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! It being 1:30 pm, the debate is interrupted in accordance with the standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour.