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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (Senator Conroy) to a question without notice asked by the Leader of the Australian Greens (Senator Milne) today relating to the Murray Darling Basin Plan.

The questions that Senator Milne were asking were in relation to the amount of water to be returned to the river system under the new plan unveiled by the Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities, Tony Burke, this afternoon. The main question was very clear: is it true that under this plan there is no guarantee for 3,200 gigalitres of water to be returned to the system? The answer to that was that that was right and it was correct. So there is no guarantee that even that amount, which is far short of what science says we need in order to achieve the best fighting chance for the River Murray, is going to be guaranteed. When you factor in the massive extraction of groundwater from the system—1,700 gigalitres of water—you see that the sum total in terms of what is returned back to the river is negative. We are not seeing a plan that will save the river—far from it, as this plan is a plan for the big irrigators. We saw after Minister Burke made his announcement, at the National Press Club this afternoon, that the national irrigators could not wipe the grins and smiles off their faces. They think all their Christmases have come at once. They have managed to convince the Labor government to cosy up with the coalition and to pass a plan that is not in the best interests of the river or its future and definitely not in the best interests of my home state of South Australia.

The plan has been massively compromised, as even the Australian Conservation Foundation are saying today, while making the point that the plan as signed off by the minister today will only deliver 57 per cent of the ecological target that it is required to meet under the current Water Act. It fails to do even what the act asks of it. It is not going to put the river on a trajectory for a healthy future. It is not going to save the Lower Lakes and South Australia's Coorong. It is going to ensure that in years to come, when we are back in drought, South Australia will continue to miss out. We know that this plan is not a plan for drought years. The minister has said that this plan will only deal with the water when it is available in an average year, when average flows are available. Of course, there has been no factoring of climate change into this plan. So there are absolutely no guarantees that this is a plan that will save the River Murray, the majestic river red gums, the Coorong and Adelaide's drinking water in years to come. The plan is not even going to take place until 2019.

So far from it being a historic announcement made by Minister Burke today, what we see is a plan that the national irrigators, the National Farmers Federation and the coalition cannot help but smile about. It is exactly what Barnaby Joyce was after. Rather than this government taking the opportunity to reform the system for the future to ensure that we protect our environment, that we look after the watering of our majestic river red gums and to do what is needed to save South Australia's iconic Coorong and that we protect the quality of Adelaide's water supply, we see the government missing the opportunity and missing the boat and instead falling in line with Tony Abbott, Barnaby Joyce and the big irrigators. It is a missed opportunity, but the plan does not take effect until 2019, so there is something that can be done, and the minister should take back the plan, fix it up and ensure that the Water Act is actually strengthened so that it is able to deliver the reforms that are needed. This debate has been happening for decades and we know that this system's water has been so massively overallocated. People have been used to being able to use massive amounts of water, amounts they should not have been able to have access to if that water were being fairly shared. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.