David Feeney (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise in support of the Water Amendment Bill 2008. This is a historic piece of legislation. It marks a new phase of cooperation between the states, the territories and the Commonwealth in tackling one of our most urgent problems—the critical water shortages now affecting the Murray-Darling Basin and the human communities dependent on the Murray and Darling rivers. This bill amends the Water Act 2007 to give effect to the agreement on the reform of the management of the Murray-Darling Basin completed by the Commonwealth, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory at the COAG meeting on 3 July.

The bill has been made possible by the agreement of New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia and Victoria to refer certain powers to the Commonwealth under section 51(xxxvii) of the Constitution. The states have agreed to refer these powers, despite the vital economic and environmental stakes they have in the future of the basin, because they have confidence in the Rudd Labor government and particularly the Minister for Climate Change and Water, Senator Wong, to use them in the national interest.

Using these referred powers, this bill does two things. First, it transfers the current functions of the Murray-Darling Basin Commission to a new and more powerful body—the Murray-Darling Basin Authority. The authority will carry out decisions made by the Murray-Darling Basin Ministerial Council and the Basin Officials Committee. The authority will also prepare a corporate plan annually, for approval by the ministerial council, in relation to the exercise of these functions. Secondly, the bill extends the authority of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to include all bodies that charge for water use and all irrigation infrastructure operators, thus creating a uniform regulatory regime for water use and water trading over the whole of the Murray-Darling Basin.

This bill brings to an end more than a century of disputation among the states of the Murray-Darling Basin, and between these states and the Commonwealth, over the management of the basin and its resources. It is a pity it has taken a crisis of the scale we now face as a result of the threat of climate change and drought to bring about this resolution, but it is nevertheless welcome. It is not often remembered that the issue of water rights and control over the Murray River was in fact one of the most vexed issues at the constitutional conventions of the 1890s that framed our present Constitution. Delegates from New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia wrangled for days, weeks and even months to find a formula that would safeguard what each of them saw as their vital interests. What they came up with was section 100 of the Constitution, which reads:

The Commonwealth shall not, by any law or regulation of trade or commerce, abridge the right of a State or of the residents therein to the reasonable use of the waters of rivers for conservation or irrigation.

In other words, the Constitution expressly forbids the Commonwealth to regulate the use of the waters of the Murray by the states. This was done mainly at the insistence of the South Australian delegates, who feared that a Commonwealth dominated by New South Wales and Victorian politicians would steal all the waters of the Murray, thus leaving no water for South Australia. As we know, this fear is still alive and well in South Australia and has been expressed here by Senator Xenophon and others from time to time.

The key to section 100 is, of course, the word ‘reasonable’. The Commonwealth was forbidden to prevent the reasonable use of the waters for irrigation, but presumably it could still regulate the unreasonable use of such waters. But who would determine what was reasonable? The framers of the Constitution saw this as one of the functions of the Inter-State Commission, which was created by section 101 of the Constitution for:

… the execution and maintenance … of the provisions of this Constitution relating to trade and commerce, and of all laws made thereunder.

Unfortunately, a restrictive decision by the High Court rendered the Inter-State Commission unworkable and it was abandoned in 1920.

The demise of the Inter-State Commission meant there was no-one with overall responsibility for supervising the use of the water resources of the Murray-Darling Basin. The result was 80 years of unsupervised and irresponsible use as New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia all encouraged and indeed subsidised irrigated agriculture on the Murray—from Wodonga in the east to Murray Bridge in the west. Even before the onset of the current crisis, the chronic overuse of water from the Murray-Darling Basin was having severe ecological effects upon the rivers and on the wetlands which depend on the rivers for their very survival. The result was the death of the wetlands and the associated plant and animal life, the salination of the soil and a resulting loss of productivity, and downstream communities being starved of the water needed for consumption by humans and animals. This is clearly not a sustainable state of affairs even if the more pessimistic scenarios about the effect of climate change on Australia are not borne out.

Responsible governments have to plan for the worst even while we hope for the best. We cannot know what the climatic patterns of the future will be, but it does seem clear that Australia must make a major and permanent reduction in our water consumption and that competition between the states must be replaced by the cooperative management of our water resources. All Australians, whether urban or rural dwellers, share a responsibility to take action to reduce water consumption. But, since 70 per cent of all the water used in Australia is in fact used for agriculture, the national focus must as a matter of course be on ending the wasteful overallocation and overuse of water in agricultural industries, particularly for irrigated crops. In the Murray-Darling Basin, 80 per cent of all water used is for irrigation. The key to saving the basin is thus the reform of the management of the irrigation system. All states now have programs to reduce water consumption in irrigated farming. It must be asked, however, whether it is possible to save the Murray-Darling river system merely by preventing waste and using water for irrigation more effectively.

In 2000, before the onset of the current drought, about 27,000 gigalitres of water were allocated annually for irrigation. Of this, the cotton industry used 2,900 gigalitres and the rice industry used a further 2,200 gigalitres. These two industries together used 5,100 gigalitres of water, or about 20 per cent of all the water used for irrigation. Today those figures have dropped to less than half. I think we have to ask some serious questions about whether Australia can go on producing such water-intensive crops as rice and cotton if the current climatic conditions continue or even worsen, as many believe they will.

I note that the opposition is supporting this bill and I welcome that. I read with interest the speech made in the other place by the shadow minister for climate change, environment and urban water, Mr Greg Hunt, in support of the bill. He noted that in its last year the Howard government—when the current Leader of the Opposition, Mr Turnbull, was the relevant minister—introduced a $10 billion water plan and I, too, acknowledge that. But I note that many of Mr Hunt’s colleagues in the opposition are continuing to do their best to undermine his efforts, let alone the efforts of the government. It is an open secret that many of his colleagues, such as Senator Minchin and Mr Robb, do not believe in human-induced climate change at all. In Victoria the Liberal and National parties are opposing both of the Brumby government’s major projects to address the state’s water supply problems—in particular, the Wonthaggi desalination plant and the Sugarloaf pipeline. These projects are a vital part of Victoria’s efforts to conserve water and to make Victoria less dependent on the Murray River for its water supplies.

In the previous contributions of Senator Nash I note that the National Party—the country auxiliary of the Liberal Party—once again propagated various lines on and constructions of the purpose and the role of the Sugarloaf pipeline which fly in the face of the facts. For starters, Senator Nash accused Melbourne of using this pipeline without any regard for its ongoing sustainability in water use as a capital city. A brusque and rhetorical comment like that demonstrates the absolute paucity of public policy knowledge that exists on the other side of this chamber. In fact, Melbourne has the lowest annual per capita water use of any capital city in this country. That is the result of serious, long-term and effective public policy measures undertaken by the state Labor government, which have, from 2001, cut domestic water use in Melbourne from 135 gigalitres to 110 gigalitres. I have no doubt that Senator Nash was unaware of that, but I think it falls upon her to make herself aware of these critical facts before making such brusque comments in this place.

Senator Nash set out some terms which the National Party considers would be good grounds for good water policy. To paraphrase Senator Nash, one ground was ‘Absolute priority must be given to efficient on-farm usage of water and the savings that will flow from that.’ That is a very sensible pronouncement. But, having made that sensible pronouncement, Senator Nash then went on with a farrago of misunderstandings concerning the situation in Victoria, particularly with respect to the Sugarloaf pipeline, which demonstrated that she does not even understand her own party’s principle that she seeks to articulate.

Sensible, efficient on-farm savings sit at the very centre of what is currently going on in Victoria. The Northern Victoria Irrigation Renewal Project, NVIRP, is a project which has at its very centre the task of making Victorian farms more water efficient. This project is about directly funding and assisting farmers to become more water efficient. Archaic pieces of infrastructure—open channel irrigation systems—are being improved, modernised and reformed as part of that project. That project is delivering real gains for Victorian farmers by modernising their farms and their water infrastructure. The end result of that very impressive piece of work and these very important initiatives will be that some 225 gigalitres of water—which, for all intents and purposes, do not presently exist—will be saved.

Senator Nash said, ‘Under no circumstances should water be taken out of the basin for capital cities.’ There we have, essentially, the National Party willing to condemn Melbourne and its inhabitants to death and deprivation. What happens to critical human needs with this blithe comment? It might very well serve Senator Nash and the cheap populist politics in which she engages in northern Victoria, but it does not provide the hard public policy solutions that this country needs to address its water challenges.

Even Senator Siewert fell for this line when she said ‘Victoria is extracting an additional 75 gigalitres from the Murray at a time of crisis’. That is a nonsense. Of those 225 gigalitres of water that are being saved—that is to say, the 225 gigalitres of water that do not presently exist—one-third is being returned to further agricultural activity in Victoria, one-third is being returned to the river in environmental flows and another third is being distributed by way of the Sugarloaf pipeline to Melbourne and to several important regional communities. There is a small detail that the Liberal Party’s country auxiliary would do well to look into, because one of the regional centres I speak of is Bendigo.

This is all part of developing a modern, effective and fair water grid in Victoria. The utterances from the other side, misconceiving and misconstruing what the Sugarloaf pipeline is doing and what it is a part of, are just part of the continuing problems we have concerning water policy when those opposite do not do the hard public policy work of understanding the problem they speak of.

This bill represents a very important and significant realisation of the Labor Party’s commitments at the previous election. Notwithstanding that Senator Nash said that the National Party is not impressed by election commitments—core and non-core promises of course having been a feature of the previous government—let me say that the Australian Labor Party is indeed impressed by election commitments, particularly when those election commitments are endorsed by the Australian people and mean we are able to form a government in the other place. Perhaps the National Party will say it needs more than a mere mandate but, for the Labor Party, a mandate is something that we cherish and a sacred trust we will honour.

Mr Truss recently said, ‘We can achieve worthwhile outcomes without having to destroy rural economies or tear at the heart of the availability of water for irrigators and others who are so dependent upon that system.’ Well, we all hope that is true, but the current indications are that that is not so. If Mr Truss thinks we can go back to a situation in which irrigators can take 27,000 gigalitres a year out of the Murray-Darling system, he is deluding himself, and he is deluding those communities along the Murray-Darling Basin who believe his assurances that everything will return to normal soon. The simple fact of the matter is that drought and climate change mean that there is not sufficient water in the system to realise those allocations.

The sad fact is that we have to assume that the drought is here to stay for some time—in other words, that it is not a drought as traditionally understood but is perhaps indicative of a permanent change in Australia’s climate and our climatic conditions. Maybe that will turn out not to be the case—and, if that is indeed so, no-one will be happier than me—but a responsible government cannot work on that assumption. The responsible thing to do is to maximise our water savings. And, given the figures I cited above, that must mean more rigorous scrutiny of our irrigated farming industries, which are, of course, the largest consumers of water in Australia.

The states of the Murray-Darling Basin have discarded their old parochial attitudes by referring powers to the Commonwealth, which has made this bill possible. It is time other people in Australia also discarded their entrenched attitudes and desisted from continuing to peddle sheer inaccuracies in the broader community—inaccuracies and entrenched attitudes which of course all go to the fact that they have a policy that no longer conforms to Australia’s needs. We need a new water policy for a new era, and this bill is a very important part of realising that objective. I very proudly commend this bill to the parliament.