Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Greens believe that we need a third component to our approach of restructuring the Murray-Darling Basin besides the $5.8 billion buyback of water and the investment in infrastructure, because, let us face it, that is what has to happen. I will go into the reasons why I believe that in a minute. There also needs to be a component of structural adjustment. However, to just tie it—and I have indicated this to the coalition—to the purchase of water is a serious mistake. When you are look at the impacts that the basin is experiencing and the degree of change that is going to be necessary, it is entirely appropriate to look at how we can help facilitate the decision making from a community perspective and how we can help the decision making about where we should be investing and how we can help to assist the restructuring in a strategic and coordinated approach. Because this amendment is only looking at one element, we cannot support it.

The impacts that the basin is facing are significant, as is what we are going to have to do in terms of reducing its consumptive water use by around 50 per cent. There is a significant reduction in run-off being generated by climate variability and climate change. These are all significant impacts. So it is not fair or appropriate to just tag any impacts that are occurring on the community to water purchases when there are really big things coming at these communities like climate change and the need for overall adjustment.

Again, this amendment is an instance where we support the intent. We do agree that there should be resources for restructuring, because that is a real and honest acknowledgment that we cannot continue business as usual in the basin. We simply cannot. We cannot do the same with less water. Even if we were not overallocated now, which we are, in the face of climate change we are facing a very significant issue and a very strong need to decrease our water use. We would prefer to see a much more strategic and coordinated program and planning process occur across the whole of the basin. I articulated the process that we think should be undertaken to provide resources and community support for community planning in my speech in the second reading debate. We believe this is absolutely essential to enable communities to produce plans to integrate the infrastructure investment, water sales and structural adjustment, to provide incentives for them to do that and to help create community plans that actually take a strategic approach to the way that they manage their region.

I will add one thing that has not come up in the dialogue before. We strongly support the need for adjustment and the need to provide resources, but I have expressed in this place innumerable times my extreme disappointment with the way the government has refocused Caring for Our Country and taken the emphasis away from supporting regional natural resource management organisations. That, unfortunately, is undermining the very thing that we have been talking about here—taking a structured and strategic approach to catchment planning and to community planning to deal with these very significant issues.

I heard the minister say, ‘Where do you get the money from?’ The fact is that we are talking about the future of the Murray-Darling Basin. We need to invest in readjustment as well and to acknowledge, as I said, in an open and upfront manner that we are expecting these communities to adjust to massive change. To pussyfoot around that issue is not being honest. We cannot just make a few minor adjustments and expect that we are going to solve this crisis. We are not. In light of that, to say that it is just the purchase of water that is causing the impact is unrealistic. But we do agree that we need a structured approach. We support the intent but I cannot support the amendment, because it will skew the decision making to make us think that it is only this part of the package and only this part of the crisis that we are facing that we need to deal with. That is simply not correct. It is not true and it is not facing reality. As I said, we support the intent. We very strongly support the need for structural readjustment, but let’s do it for the big picture, not just for one particular component.