Fiona Nash (NSW, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Education) Share this | Hansard source

I am very happy to stand here and join my coalition colleagues in this debate, because there is probably only one word that can properly describe this government’s management, if you want to call it that, of the Murray-Darling Basin water reform—that is, an absolute shambles. How they have run this has been a shambles from day one. It took them six months to get to a water policy and 18 months to actually establish the Murray-Darling Basin Authority. It has taken them 36 months to get to any kind of understanding that there needs to be a proper analysis of the social and economic impact. It is an absolute shambles.

As my good colleague Senator Birmingham has just pointed out, we have had a situation over a period of time now of who actually has the responsibility for all of this. Apparently, it is a guide to a plan, and the Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities is not going anywhere near that. The government says, ‘This is simply a guide. Don’t be scared, everybody; don’t be worried.’ Let me tell you: the minute it hit the public domain, people out there in regional communities were, quite rightly, so concerned about what this meant for them that they mobilised and took to the streets and their towns and community halls. It had nothing to do with any kind of fear campaign, so-called by the other side, in this place. It was genuine heartfelt fear about their communities and what the future holds in store for them.

Senator Penny Wong, the former Minister for Climate Change, Energy Efficiency and Water, said on 1 July last year that the final decision on the basin plan ‘rests with the Commonwealth minister for water alone’. Then, during the election campaign, we heard from the government: ‘Gee, we’re going to absolutely accept whatever the authority throws to us.’ Now they are apparently distancing themselves again and saying, ‘No, it does come back to the minister.’ They have not got a clue. It is an absolute shambles, and those on the other side of this chamber and in the other place have no idea of the impact on our regional communities of permanently removing the water.

I do have to place on record that I am a farmer and I do live in a basin community, but this government has not a clue about what permanently removing that water is going to do. It is going to give those communities under the guide to this plan—this Court of King Caractacus plan that they have going over there—a permanent drought. I asked the minister in May 2009 about the development of the plan and the consultation process with communities on the social and economic impacts of the decisions that are going to be made in the development of the plan. I asked, ‘What is the process for that?’ I got a wishy-washy answer. Over a year ago, the social and economic impacts, and how important it was to get a proper understanding of that, was being raised with this government. We have heard absolutely nothing.

It is only now because of community concern—because people out there in the communities have risen up and had their voices heard—that we are now going to have a report and another inquiry. The guide states that 800 jobs would be lost through the implementation of the plan. What a load of rubbish! Every single person that lives in a regional community knows that that figure is a furphy. The Cotton Catchment Communities, the CRC, commissioned a report recently. The estimation was that a 25 per cent cut in water equates to 14,000 lost jobs. This government has not a clue. It did not even understand its own legislation—the environmental versus the social and economic impacts. We had the authority out in the community saying the guide was only written under their interpretation of the act, which meant that the environment had to take priority over the social and economic impacts on those towns.

We now have the minister commissioning his own advice, which is telling him that that is an absolute furphy, that you can treat them equally. How can that minister not understand or have any input into the interpretation of the act that the Murray-Darling Basin Authority was working under? This is the crux of the whole thing, and the minister simply had no understanding of his own act. Here we are in October 2010, and he has to go off and get some advice on what the act might mean. It is not good enough. How this is being managed by this government is an absolute shambles.

What we have seen from this minister is total incompetence. He just distances himself and says, ‘Well, it is only a guide to a plan.’ My good colleague Senator Joyce said that apparently this afternoon he has been out there bucketing his own guide to the plan. When is this government going to take regional Australia seriously? We have heard from the Prime Minister—since the last election campaign, of course—on how important regional Australia is, yet they have simply no understanding. Not once since this guide to the plan has been announced has the minister, Tony Burke, been publicly out into any of these communities. He has not been to any of the community meetings. He says, ‘That’s for the independent authority,’ but he will send his department. There must be some link to government, I would imagine, and the link is the minister. He should have been there to see those people at the meetings I went to in Deniliquin and Griffith.

These are real people that this policy is going to affect. These are not just numbers that are pulled out of thin air. These are real people with real families, real lives and real businesses in the communities that this policy is going to affect, and it is about time this government realised the impact it will have. These people are dead scared about their future. This is the region that feeds this country. This is the region where we have our farmers toiling away through hardship and through difficult times, still, to provide for this country.

If we are going to rip the rug out from underneath them and not give them the capacity to produce—not give them the ability to grow food and fibre and feed this nation—then we are going to go down the road of becoming a nation of importers. I do not think anybody in this country wants to go down that route, with its lack of quality assurance and lack of security of supply. It is about time that this government stopped mouthing words and started paying attention and listening to those people living in the communities in those regional areas, who truly understand what sustainable nature needs to be for those regional communities—not some guide to a plan that is going to scare the willies out of them. That plan should never have been dropped on them like it was, and this government has to take responsibility for that uncertainty out in the community. And this government has to take responsibility to make sure those regional communities have a sustainable future.