Lisa Singh (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Hansard source

I warn the National Farmers' Federation that it will be disappointed by the government because allowing the states and territories to mark their own homework is exactly what this government plans to do. This government will weaken the National Water Commission's formal assessment tasks into a far less rigorous procedure of voluntary self-reporting by the Commonwealth, states and territories—a procedure merely coordinated by the Productivity Commission. This far less rigorous process will ensure states and territories mark their own homework. The No. 1 fear of the National Farmers Federation will come true. Partly this is because the Productivity Commission simply is not an auditing agency. There are other bodies better equipped to undertake this kind of function like, for example, the National Water Commission itself.

Most submissions to the Senate inquiry dismissed the government's claim that dispersing responsibility for the administration of the National Water Commission's responsibilities between the Productivity Commission, the Department of the Environment and the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences would deliver anything like the effective and constructive contribution of the NWC to water reform priorities in Australia. And to quote the Australian Conservation Foundation:

To abolish the National Water Commission … and give responsibility of water management to the Productivity Commission would be a short-sighted and backward step, particularly in the absence of substantial changes to the mandate and operation of the Productivity Commission. It would likely result in another wave of conflicts over water due to the absence of what all sides regard as a well-respected expert independent body.

So the Productivity Commission is not currently equipped under its enabling legislation nor its staffing profile to deliver the kind of collaboration and stakeholder engagement needed on this unimaginably important social, environmental and industrial issue.

Ironically, in its 2012-13 annual report the Productivity Commission described the 'diminution of specialist public sector research bureaux' as a contributing factor to Australia's failures in the area of evidence-based policy development, which it describes as 'an essential element of all good policy'. But the government has given no indication that it will address the weaknesses in the Productivity Commission's legislation to better equip it to carry out its new responsibilities. By now, the government has admitted many times there is no budget crisis, there is no budget emergency. It should reconsider the necessity—