Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to provide some very brief comments to what is a quality report out of the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee, ably chaired by Senator Heffernan, into an iconic system in our nation and one that has been a part of our national history pre- and post-European settlement, the Murray-Darling Basin. It is home to over two million people and 11 per cent of Australia's population. Forty per cent of Australia's total agricultural production comes from the basin. I could go through a whole list of produce which is proudly produced right throughout our basin but I am sure that is already on the record somewhere else, and in the interests of time I had better keep trucking.

From my own perspective as a Victorian senator in this debate and conversation, the basin in my state is home to a very hardy people. The Mallee people are hardy men and women one and all, soldier-settler blocks right throughout the Murray-Darling Basin in northern Victoria. They and those in Goulburn Valley and the upper catchment areas of Victoria have all been concerned and quite vocal throughout this very protracted process in coming to a way that we as a national body manage the Murray-Darling Basin. So, the Senate referred the inquiry to RRAT on 28 October 2010, almost 22 months ago. And here we are today: 381 submissions, 14 public hearings right throughout the Basin, two interim reports and an almost exhausted secretariat who have done a sterling job in bringing all of that research and data together to bring a report for the Senate today that, other than some additional comments from Senator Xenophon, has been agreed to. I think that is quite an achievement—something that our forefathers at Federation could not quite get to, but the secretariat has managed to get us all on the same page.

It has been this process that has taken an exhaustive amount of time. I was present at the time of the Guide to the proposed Basin Planin October 2010 in a very angry Mildura. Fruit growers were very, very angry with the Murray-Darling Basin Authority and their Guide to the proposed Basin Plan. There were iterations of the proposed Basin Plan, a revised draft, the ministerial council comments on the draft proposed plan, an altered proposed plan in August 2012 and a final Basin Plan being delivered in November 2012. I, with other senators in this place, realised that it is an imperfect plan. But because we are committed to a triple bottom line on this side of the house, where environment counts in equal parts with the community and the economy, we are committed to actually making it work.

During that process the Nationals moved amendments to clarify the socioeconomic no-detriment test within the plan. Unfortunately, those amendments were not successful, but we live to fight another day. And that is what I think, within the body of this report, we flesh out quite well in chapter 7: the impact that the Murray-Darling Basin Plan has had on the local community and the processes that communities have had to go through to get to the point where we are now. I think that is a really worthy chapter for understanding the local impact and why so many of us are concerned about the socioeconomic impact on the regions—that it is both people and the planet together that ensure the environment; otherwise, you are just living in a museum. Chapter 8 is another particular favourite of mine, because it focuses on the future, and it focuses on areas of research and development.

I know Senator Ruston spoke about it this morning on an earlier bill—about soldier-settlers and the things that we have learnt over time in the way we farm our nation and our patches of land: what we grow where, and how. We have made huge steps. We have gained an incredible amount of knowledge, thanks to our scientific community and also thanks to the common-sense approach of our agricultural specialists—the farmers on the ground—who have actually driven this innovation, not only this increased productivity but this increased environmental responsibility that is happening, going hand in hand in our local communities. I believe there are some key areas going forward in which we can get better at what we do—which is why I think we argued against a number in the Basin Plan in the first place, because it restricted us. We do not know what science is going to be able to deliver for us in terms of engineering solutions and infrastructure development and farming practice to do more with less water. So I think chapter 8 is fantastic. Environmental and socioeconomic development of the Basin is actually discussed and debated. This committee has been able to not just harness the conversation that was happening out in communities in regional Australia and bring it to the Senate but to distil that, analyse it and come up with some really great solutions to move forward—highlighting the issues but being a real positive contributor to the ongoing conversations that we will be having in our communities.

Just briefly, in the interests of time, I would like to point out a couple of my favourite recommendations. You might want to check out recommendation 5. From a Victorian perspective, some of the modelling that indicated we were going to have X gigalitres flowing down the system did not recognise the fact that that would flood actual people; it might actually have negative environmental impacts on its way to somewhere else. Particularly for the upper catchment in Victoria, that was an area of issues that was of particular concern for us.