Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Murray-Darling Basin Commission—Report for 2005-06. We have heard a lot in this place and in the wider community about the future of water management for the Murray-Darling Basin. Of course, we have had some contributions from the Murray-Darling Basin Commission people themselves on the Prime Minister’s proposal. One of the concerns amongst the many that the Democrats have about what is being proposed at the moment for the Murray-Darling Basin is that some of the people with expertise in the fieldwhether that expertise is in management, water policy, the environment or farminghave not been properly involved so far in the development of the Prime Minister’s plan.

I should emphasise—as I try to do each time, to make sure that I am not misrepresented—that the Democrats have been calling for the Prime Minister to do something along the lines of what he announced at the end of January he would do, which was to ensure clear, overarching national management of the Murray-Darling Basin Commission. Whatever criticisms you would make of the federal government in this area, quite clearly the state governments have failed in their duties, by and large, to manage water resources in the basin properly. Clearly it is at a stage where something extra needs to be done. But that something needs to be done does not mean that doing anything is okay; we need to make sure, now more than ever, that what is done is correct and will actually worknot least because there is a large amount of money being put forward, or at least promised, in this area.

With such a major step as the referral of at least some powers from some of the states to the federal government being proposed, if that step fails then it really will make it difficult for the future. That is why the Democrats have called a number of times for a Senate inquiry into this whole proposal. That would get more of the detail out into the public arena so that it would not just be a backroom deal between the federal government and various state governments looking at their short-term political agendas. Even the Murray-Darling Basin Commission people themselves need to be much more in the loop with regard to what is being proposed. As an example of that, you only need to look at the difference between the Murray-Darling Basin Commission’s understanding of how things were going to be progressing in the National Water Initiative and the like at the time that this report was put together and the Murray-Darling Basin amendment legislation, on which we had a report tabled yesterday.

Then we had the Prime Minister’s statement at the end of January, which took another direction again. Now, as I said before, we need a new direction, so there is potential there. But it has to be the right direction, not just any direction. There were some quite good statements in the Prime Minister’s announcement at the end of January. He clearly indicated, amongst other things, that we needed to look at, as a last resort, the need to buy back water allocations. We all know overallocation is one of the significant problems. Yet in the communique released on the agreement between the Prime Minister and some of the premiers some weeks later, a lot more equivocation had crept in. That may be as much the influence of the premiers as of the Prime Minister; I do not know. Then earlier this week in question time in the House of Representatives the leader of the National Party made a statement that the last resort would be buying back water from people who wanted to sell it. Well, we still need to recognise that there may well be a time when we have to buy back water from people who do not want to sell it because that is the problem with overallocation. And just putting forward another big package with another lot of big promises and a lot of extra money is no good if we are not going to take the hard decisions at the end. That would risk not solving the problem, and we cannot afford that any longer.