Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak because the situation facing us today in the Murray-Darling Basin is absolutely dire and we need to be taking action. I was sitting here earlier and thinking about exactly what I want to say. I think that this bill, the Water Amendment Bill 2008, is quite important in looking at how we move forward and deal with this issue.

Every time I fly from Canberra back home to Adelaide, I fly over the Coorong and the Lower Lakes. Every week or so, when I do that trip, I look down and think how sad it is that we have allowed this situation to occur, how sad it is that because of gross overallocation of water usage and a lack of foresight we have allowed such an iconic and important part of the world’s environment to deteriorate before our eyes. Gross overallocation and a lack of foresight in managing the water throughout the entire basin have led us to this situation. Obviously, the impact of climate change is exacerbating the problem, but it is a problem because we have not managed the system properly for years and years. It is not just because of this government or because of the last government. This is due to generations of not having the foresight and not understanding the importance of giving the environment the allocations it needs.

The Lower Lakes and the Coorong, Storm Boy country, are dying before our eyes. It is the people who live in those communities along the river, around the lakes, and who rely on the Coorong that are copping the brunt. They are left hanging, in desperate need of action from the government to tackle overallocation, to give them a lifeline. We need to ensure that further upstream we tackle the overallocation issue and give the river the drink it so desperately needs to survive. We need urgent action now.

While I accept that this bill is a step forward in dealing with the issues of managing the system on a national level, the big problem with this bill is the lack of urgency. And it is so poorly patched together. The impact of the intergovernmental agreement on allowing a faster and more effective approach to dealing with the crisis before us is shameful and somewhat embarrassing. The suggestion from the ministry and the government that we as parliamentarians should simply shut up and not criticise or scrutinise this piece of legislation—which is what the minister has said publicly, to the media and in other forums, even in this chamber—is an insult to the parliamentary process. It is an insult to those who have elected all of us to represent their needs and the needs of their communities. This parliament has every right to scrutinise legislation that comes before it. It is more important than ever that we look at the agreements that are made between the states and the federal government, because they affect thousands and thousands of people across the country who rely so much on the basin and the health of the river systems within it.

This bill and the agreement that underpins it are like a house of cards. Any gust of wind, any movement of something and the minister says that it will all fall down. Perhaps we needed to think more cleverly and better about what type of house we were trying to build. It is embarrassing to think that we are dealing with such a crisis in such an ad hoc and hotchpotch way. Let us face it, the Basin Plan is far too slow. Waiting until 2019 for implementation of water-sharing plans is not the urgent action so desperately needed. When I fly over the Coorong and the Lower Lakes and see, week by week, month by month, how desperate the situation is, I know those communities cannot wait until 2019. I know that the river system cannot wait until 2019. We need to be taking urgent action now.

The other problem with this bill is the lack of teeth of the national authority that the bill seeks to establish. It is a poor attempt at setting up an independent body to manage the entire basin system, which I agree is so desperately needed. We need a national approach. That body must be independent of the whims and wills of individual state governments. That is what got us into this mess in the first place. With states continuing to have their right of veto over the authority’s decisions, this body has no real teeth. The authority must have the teeth to manage the entire system fairly and sustainably without having to go back to states and do deals each time action is needed, each time a decision needs to be made. There is a lack of urgency for dealing with the crisis in the basin and the impact on river health, the environment and the communities. This lack of action is simply irresponsible. The time frames of the Basin Plan and water-sharing arrangements with states—some of them being given leeway until 2019—are far too slow to deal with the huge crisis that faces us.

Over the few short months I have been a senator for South Australia, I have spoken to thousands of people who rely on the basin, people who live in those communities and who desperately want leadership from government. They do not want simply to be told: ‘Sit back and pray for rain. We’ll sort it out. In 2019, we’ll have a plan.’ That is not what those communities want to hear. What they want to hear is what will be done now. We know that the Lower Lakes and the Coorong are in a very, very dire situation. We know that action needs to be taken now. The Minister for Climate Change and Water and the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts have both acknowledged how bad the situation is, yet the bill before us does not deal with the urgency needed in action.

This bill does nothing to save the Lower Lakes and the Coorong in South Australia—2019 is far too late. What we really need is a rethink of how this bill should be managing the system and what type of future we want to see for our basin communities. To do that, we need to be consulting with those communities. We have not done that thus far. The consultation that a lot of those communities in South Australia have had over the last few months has been because of an urgent Senate inquiry that was brought here because a number of senators were concerned about their communities not being spoken to and the issue not being on the political agenda. Yet those communities are still waiting for a response from the minister as to the inquiry’s recommendations. This is simply a shunt of those communities and their concerns.

I am absolutely appalled at the public comments made by the government that we should not, as senators, be looking at how we can strengthen this bill, seeing as we all know how poorly it has been cobbled together. It is absolutely appalling to suggest that senators should not take on their role of scrutinising legislation and representing those people who voted for them and put their trust and faith in them to do what is in their best interests.

I hope that, when I fly back over the Coorong and the Lower Lakes at the end of this week or the end of next week, when I look down I will have some faith that the situation will improve. I do not see how this bill will achieve that unless we have it strengthened in the many ways that the government has acknowledged yet says are all too hard because of the intergovernmental agreement. I hope that the amendments to be moved by the Greens will be accepted by both sides of this chamber, to enable some type of future for the Lower Lakes and the Coorong. We should not simply be throwing away and closing our eyes to the Storm Boy country.