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

I apologise. The coalition senators in this place do not want to focus on the figures, and neither does the minister. It is because they do not add up. This plan is a plan to deliver less water for the environment than science says is needed. It is delivering less water for the environment than even the environment minister says is needed if we are to give the river any chance of survival.

We know that $11 billion is going to be spent on this plan, and that is why we must get it right. The motion today is about sending the plan back to the minister and saying, 'We need to get this right because, if we're going to spend $11 billion dollars, we'd better make sure it will return the amount of water to the river that will give the environment a fighting chance, that will ensure we can maintain our majestic river red gums, that will ensure we can give Adelaide healthy drinking water, that will ensure our Coorong can survive the next drought.' $11 billion—what an opportunity to implement true reform. What a fantastic challenge that we all have in this place to make sure that we can overcome the mistakes of generations past when the river was compromised over and over again for vested interests. This plan was an opportunity to get this right, but unfortunately what is before us today is not that. It is a plan that cuts the environment short and appeases those who are upstream and who never wanted this process in the first place. Senator Barnaby Joyce is going to stand up here at any moment and say: 'This is the best deal irrigators were ever going to get.' It is a bonanza for upstream irrigators because they are about to pocket $11 billion and they do not even have to give back to the river or to South Australia the water that the river really needs. The $11 billion should be setting us up for a healthy future.

The plan is a blueprint for how this system will be managed over the next 20 years, and what is on the table today locks in failure. It spends $11 billion of taxpayers' money and locks in failure. It will cost $11 billion and only achieve 57 per cent of the key targets that the plan says and the Water Act requires the plan to achieve. This is $11 billion, yet we are only going to get half of what we are meant to. We know what that means for South Australia: it means big losses in years to come because this plan does not even take into consideration climate change. It does not take into consideration the long-term effects of increased groundwater extraction. It is not a plan that has been written for the drought years—and the minister has said this himself. This plan is based on average flows. We know that when there are less than average flows things really start to bite for the environment; it is when things really start to bite for my home state of South Australia, which is located at the bottom of the system.

The Greens have moved a motion to send this plan back to the minister so that we can get it right. The minister said himself that we need 3,200 gigalitres, yet that is not what is in this plan. So let us put that in. Let us make sure that we have a minimum of 3,200 gigalitres. If that is what science says is needed, if that is what the minister believes is needed and if that is what Jay Weatherill, the Premier of South Australia, says is needed, let us do it. The Greens would be more than willing and happy to deliver a minimum of 3,200 gigalitres, because that is what even the minister says is required. But, unfortunately, that is not what is in this plan. This plan has 2,750 gigalitres. It fails half of the key environmental targets that it needs to keep the river system alive. On the table today is $11 billion, only half the job done and locked in failure for the next 20 years.

Unfortunately, it seems as though we lost the courage to manage this process when the sky opened, the rains started coming and the millennium drought broke two years ago. Two years ago, people were crying out for proper reform. Let us never go back to a situation where there were kilometres and kilometres of dry river bed, where the water was so high in saline content that it was too salty to even irrigate pasture, let alone to feed stock or to use in the houses of those communities who rely on it. Two years ago, before the millennium drought broke, people wanted urgent action and proper national reform, and they wanted a system that was fair—a system that would manage the water in the basin fairly. That courage seems to be all but forgotten today, because what we have in front of us is not a courageous plan. It is an appeasement on the part of the Labor Party to those upstream and to the coalition to allow them to continue their business as usual. There is talk of an extra 450 gigalitres that maybe some day, if they could—ooh, let's see—be added on by 2024. There are no guarantees about that. It is not in the plan; it is not locked in. The legislation before the other place does not say that it has to be delivered, even though $1.7 billion will be spent long before any water is seen.

The courage to actually do the right thing by the environment and to stop compromising the very real needs of the river have been all but forgotten by this minister, who is desperate to cut a deal with the coalition and to appease those upstream. Let us not forget that Senator Barnaby Joyce, at the height of the millennium drought, said to South Australians when they could not even drink the water in the Murray because it was so salty, when they could not even get their pumps and their pipes past the kilometres and kilometres of mud: 'Chin up. Move upstream if you don't like it.'

That is what Barnaby Joyce thinks about South Australia's predicament when there is less water in the system. That is what Senator Barnaby Joyce thinks about South Australia's opportunity for a fair go when it comes to sharing the waters of the rivers.

The Greens will continue to work to get locked in that minimum of 3,200 gigalitres. I stand here today urging the government to do the right thing, to find the courage to fix this. You do not have to cuddle up to Tony Abbott and Senator Joyce just to get this passed.