Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

This inquiry was referred to the committee on 21 October 2002. It received 78 submissions and held 11 hearings, in Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Darwin, Kununurra, Griffith, Moree, St George and Berri. The inquiry dealt with the important topic of the state of rural industry based water resource usage and options for optimising water resource usage for sustainable agriculture—an issue that I note we are talking about yet again. The report addresses the issue of water access entitlements, environmental management needs, water trading arrangements, structural adjustment assistance, unintended consequences of water trade and the recovery of overallocated water. Does this sound familiar to anybody? These are all clearly important and outstanding issues.

The committee report was tabled in August 2004, but it was January 2007 before the government response was tabled out of session, which leads me to question whether the government was truly interested in water before the issue became a political hot potato in the polls. Does this seem like the actions of a government that had its eye on the ball and, until very recently, had been taking the issue of water resources seriously?