Fiona Nash (NSW, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Water Resources and Conservation) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make a few comments on the report of the Senate Standing Committee on Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport inquiry into water management in the Lower Lakes and Coorong, including consideration of the Emergency Water (Murray-Darling Basin Rescue) Bill 2008. I acknowledge that my colleagues also want to make some comments, so I will keep this very brief. Certainly there is no easy solution. While the inquiry focused on the Coorong and the Lower Lakes, we did take into account some broader issues relating to the basin itself, and I want to touch on a couple of those today.

One of those is the important issue of water buyback. During the course of the inquiry we tried to see if there was any water available for the Coorong and the Lower Lakes, which eventually led to discussion around buyback. What became very clear in evidence from the department that was given to the committee was that, with the $50 million buyback that the government has recently undertaken, for which the Prime Minister and Minister Penny Wong indicated that there would be 34 gigalitres of entitlements, in actual fact only 4.8 gigalitres—not 34 but only 4.8—and only 443 megalitres of real water had transferred to the government. So it became very clear that the indications given to the community of how much water was coming back as a result of the government buyback were not happening. The amount reclaimed, which they said would be 34 gigalitres, was only 4.8 gigalitres and, as I said, 443 megalitres in real water.

That leads to the issue of the north-south pipeline, or Sugarloaf pipeline, in Victoria, which we also took some evidence on. Interestingly, that is going to pull at least 75 gigalitres of real water out of the basin for Melbourne. Compare that to the 443 megalitres that the government has managed to save in real water for the basin so far. At the same time, we see Minister Garrett agreeing to a pipeline which is going to pull 75 gigalitres of real water out of the basin for Melbourne. So there were some very serious concerns raised by the coalition senators around that issue.

The other issue that was raised and is, again, a very serious concern to us was the lack of economic and social impact modelling being done on the effects of this buyback on rural and regional communities. We are seeing open slather from the government in terms of this buyback and yet there is no social and economic impact modelling being done on the effects of those buybacks on those communities. It is effectively putting the cart before the horse. Indeed, we had evidence from the department at one point that that modelling was going to take place but the buybacks would continue—in essence, the buybacks would continue regardless of what that economic and social impact modelling put forward to the government.

It was a very significant inquiry into what is a very difficult issue for the Coorong and the Lower Lakes. With those few brief comments: I think on balance very good conclusions were reached and, certainly from the comments from my fellow coalition senators, we definitely have some kind of a way forward to try and address the issue.