Bill Heffernan (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Well, they can still issue them. They wanted to have that auction last year and they cancelled it. There was a bit pressure put on from one or two people close to me. I have to say that it distresses me greatly that we think taxpayers should put up with an arrangement where the Commonwealth would go and spend $24 million, sight unseen, on a property to return a few thousand megalitres of low security water entitlement to that system when at the same time there is the situation with the New South Wales government in the Riverina. Bear in mind that the New South Wales government and the Commonwealth got together on this even though they did not go and have a look. The New South Wales parks mob went and had a look—they flew over it in a helicopter or something. But on-the-ground inspection is the way to find out what is really going on, which is why the neighbours are worried and why the locals are distressed. They set aside about $20 million in the Riverina to recompense people who lost their groundwater entitlements. It is the same thing: all governments of all persuasions for all time have cocked up the management of water. This is not to do with a particular flavour of government. They allowed $20 million, which is less than the price of this property, for all compensation in the Riverina for groundwater. I know one property—and I will not name them so I do not embarrass them—that spent $30 million developing almond orchards and the latest in trickle root-zone irrigation. They acquired the water licences, were ticked off and were approved. There were 280,000 almond trees. Then they got a note in the mail that said, ‘By the way, we are going to take half your water back off you.’ They tore up $10 million on one property, with no proper compensation. I know another family down there on the Murray who lost 85 per cent of their water with no compensation. And we think this is sensible? This is silly.

What we really have to do, as Mike Young said in Adelaide last week, is to go back and apply the science of the future to the redrawing of the allocations and entitlements of the entire system. Now Senator Joyce will take notice—why we would be considering issuing licences on the Lower Balonne in the full knowledge that we are going to buy them back is beyond me. Part of the draft ROP for the Lower Balonne is a rather spectacular licence—the largest licence ever issued in Australia—of 469,000 megalitres or 469 gigalitres. Bear in mind that, if the 8,000 gigalitres that smoke and mirrors Anna Bligh said she is going to return to the system were in the system and were applied to a cotton farm, you could grow $3 million worth of cotton. And if that same amount of water were scientifically used with the latest Israeli and Spanish technology, as has been proven in Carnarvon, you could grow $60 million worth of produce.

On the Balonne, having done this job on the Warrego, they are issuing a draft ROP and they are going to issue a series of licences. Then they are proposing to buy them back and that is going to cost hundreds of millions of dollars. They need to redo the plan. Everyone I speak to says, ‘Bill, you are right, but we don’t know what to do.’ I think the government have panicked about having to act symbolically, to be seen to be doing something, about the mismanagement of the Murray-Darling Basin. They have made some grave errors and we ought to rethink the way we are managing water. It is a waste of taxpayers’ money. In fact, I think there ought to be an inquiry into some of these allocations where people who are not qualified for water licences are getting water licences in the full knowledge that they are sharing in the process to give them back to the government. I think it is a fraud. (Time expired)