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

I move opposition amendment (4) on sheet 5640:

(4)    Schedule 2, page 318 (after line 32), after item 162, insert:

162D  At the end of Part 12

Add:

260  Water saving infrastructure program

        (1)    The Minister must, by legislative instrument, determine a scheme to achieve water efficiency measures through Commonwealth investment in water saving infrastructure.

        (2)    A scheme determined under subsection (1) must set clear targets for water to be saved from on-farm and off-farm infrastructure projects.

        (3)    A report is to be prepared as at 1 July 2009, and for each subsequent six-month period, containing a schedule for each project being undertaken or planned and, for each project:

             (a)    the expected water savings;

             (b)    the share of savings to be dedicated to environmental, irrigation or other purposes;

             (c)    the licence associated with those savings.

In this amendment we are calling for the minister, by legislative instrument, to determine a scheme to achieve water efficiency measures through Commonwealth investment in water-saving infrastructure. Our intention with this amendment is to make sure that there are very, very clear water-saving targets set for on-farm and off-farm infrastructure projects. The importance that the coalition attaches to ensuring that we have a very structured and rigorous approach to water saving and water efficiency will be no surprise to this chamber, as I have talked about it on very many occasions. In spite of the words the minister has been trying to place in my mouth, we do agree that there is a place for buyback. But we want to see a much more rigorous and structured approach to ensuring that water savings throughout the basin are attained and that water efficiencies to achieve those savings are achieved wherever possible.

Recently, as the chamber would be well aware, on a tour through the Murray-Darling Basin a number of irrigators and communities put forward very strongly the identified amount of savings that they believed they could procure with some assistance from the federal government. With this amendment, we would like to make sure that there is reporting and that there is a much more structured and clear approach to the water-saving infrastructure program to achieve some clarity and direction for this very issue.