Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too stand today to speak about the Water Amendment Bill 2015, and I commend this bill to the Senate extremely enthusiastically. I think it is one of the most significant pieces of legislation for the rural and regional communities of this country, particularly those communities that are along the length and breadth of the Murray-Darling Basin's rivers and tributaries.

Before I actually talk about why I am so keen to support the Water Amendment Bill, I want point out a few things to the House and some factual inaccuracies that have been put on the table, some scaremongering and some completely unnecessary comments that have been put forward by some groups who have sought to undermine this piece of legislation. Firstly, I draw the attention of the House to the dissenting report of the Australian Greens party, which is a report that was tabled yesterday. The Senate Standing Committee on Environment and Communications, of which I am the chair, inquired into this particular bill, and the Australian Labor Party and the coalition both agreed that this bill should be passed. However, the Greens did dissent, and there are a couple of things in their dissenting report that I believe should be put on the record for the factual inaccuracy of what it said. In paragraph 1.3 of their dissenting report in relation to the 1,500 GL cap on water, which this piece of legalisation seeks to amend in the Water Act, the Greens stated:

It undermines the very Act it seeks to amend by overriding the Commonwealth's obligations to achieve the Sustainable Diversion Limits mandated in the Murray-Darling Basin Plan by limiting how much water it may buy back from willing sellers.

First and foremost, I want to very clearly put on the record it that in no way, at no time, never has there been any intention by the introduction of this piece of legislation for the coalition and obviously with the support of the Australian Labor Party that we would ever move away from the targets that we said we would stick to for the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. Those targets of 2,750 gigalitres and the additional 450 gigalitres, which take it up to 3,200 gigalitres of water returned to the environment, are targets that nobody, but nobody, has ever sought to move away from. I think it is mischievous of the Greens to suggest that there is in any way any intention by anybody in this process to move away from those targets. It is entirely unreasonable, it is mischievous and, in a sense, it is quite damaging because it seeks to undermine the very process the Greens, purportedly, are there to support.

Another comment in the Greens dissenting report was at paragraph 1.6, where they say of the bill:

It risks substantial expenditure of public monies on projects that may further reduce the net amount of water available to groundwater or downstream water users across the Basin.

I am not quite sure how they managed to come up with that particular statement. There is nothing at all in the legislation and there nothing in terms of real, substantiated and scientifically based evidence that would suggest that that is in any way true. There is nothing at all to substantiate that, and I note that in their dissenting report the Greens do not really give any reason for why they would make that comment suggesting less water would be available to groundwater or downstream water users. There is no reason whatsoever that that would be the case. As I said, we have never, ever previously moved away from the sustainable diversion limits mandated in the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.

Furthermore, in paragraph 1.9, the Greens make the comment:

The water licensees who wish to sell water entitlements surplus to their requirements need the certainty of a guaranteed buyer in the Commonwealth, especially when times are tough.

There is absolutely no need for the Commonwealth to be in that marketplace. Since there has been a little bit of stabilisation in the market, we have already seen that the water market is finding its own level—pardon the pun. One of the main things that were a real problem was that, because the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder was such a substantial player in this market, its capacity to influence the water market very quickly, when something changed, was creating such a level of uncertainty that the growers, irrigators and others who wanted to participate in the water market were never quite sure from one day to the next what the market was likely to do.

For example, to draw your attention to how volatile the water market was, in 2007 the price of high-security water in the downstream regions in the southern connected Basin reach in excess of $1,200 for the temporary purchase of water for a 12-month period. When you consider that at times the purchase of permanent water has barely reached that amount, you can see how incredibly volatile this market can be. So, having such a big buyer in the marketplace can sometimes be a bad thing. If we just allow the market to operate as the market should operate, with genuine buyers and sellers of water on a commercial basis, the market will find its own price. Once again, that comment by the Greens was quite ill informed and perhaps a little bit mischievous.

Another comment made in the Greens' dissenting report was:

Only willing water entitlement sellers will sell their licenses. Indeed the unbundling of water from land has created a new asset that many irrigators have chosen to sell to create new wealth.

I think Senator Rhiannon made reference to this in her contribution a moment ago—that only willing sellers were selling their water. I can advise Senator Rhiannon that that is not the case. I come from a community in South Australia that is reliant on the River Murray for its very existence. Without the River Murray and the irrigation communities, my community would not exist. Many, many people sold their water entitlements in the past few years because of pressure from the banks. Sure, many of them did make a decision based on their business operations at the time, but in many instances those business operations were in such a dire state because of the uncertainty about their future due to water; the amount of water that had already been taken out of our communities and had put additional pressures on those that remained; and other impacts like the high price of the Australian dollar, low commodity prices and the like. So, while these people were not forced in any way, shape or form to sell their water by the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder or by the Commonwealth government, many of them were in a position where they had no choice but to relinquish their entitlements because of the bottom line and pressure from the banks.

The survey from which Senator Rhiannon was quoting was done in 2012. It needs to be noted that that survey was undertaken at a time when there were very high quantities of water in the river. We had had a couple of years of extremely high inflows into the river, with very high rainfall in the catchment area. It was also before the implications of the start of the implementation of the Basin Plan had been seen. Quoting from a survey done at a time when there were a whole of circumstances that are largely irrelevant to the situation we find ourselves in today is probably opportunistic in terms of using a report that suits your argument but does not necessarily accurately reflect the current situation.

In the committee's hearings during the process of inquiring into the bill, the most disappointing thing was the obvious complete and utter selfishness of organisations like the Australian ENGOs, some of the green groups and even the Alexandrina Council from down around the Lower Lakes. My argument to them is that there is nothing at all in this legislation that should give anybody any concern that we do not intend to meet our targets as set by the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. Therefore, why would an environmental group even care where the water came from as long as those targets were met? To be out there actively advocating that we should not have a cap on water—something that irrigators have been desperately crying out for and something that will be of immense benefit to our irrigators, our irrigation communities and the support businesses that rely on them—and that these people cannot have the kind of security that this piece of legislation is likely to deliver is, I think, the height of selfishness. All the narrative about establishing the Basin Plan in the first place was around the fact that we needed a certain amount of water for the delivery of water for environmental purposes.

I think in the end we established an agreed position on the amount of water that we would seek to return to the environment. For ENGOs and some of the green groups to come back and say that we need to take more money from irrigators and not even allow a process that tries to get water other than by taking it out of productive use is, I think, just extraordinary. It beggars belief that they would even consider that that was an acceptable thing to do. As I said, the most important thing about this piece of legislation, which caps the amount of water that can be returned to the environment from buybacks at 1,500 gigalitre, is that it means our river communities can now have some certainty and surety into the future about the decisions that they are going to make around their businesses.

For the last four or five years, perhaps even longer than that if you take into account the impacts and the effects of the millennium drought that the basin has been suffering from prior to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan negotiations and initial implementation, irrigators have been living in an extraordinary world of total uncertainty. They do not know from one day to the next what is likely to be taken out of their community. They have no idea of what their entitlements are likely to be. They have no idea of what the future of their community will be, and they have seen their communities decimated by a thousand cuts. One week we take this amount of water out of the community. The next week somebody sells their water because they are desperate. The next week somebody sells some more of their water, possibly because of an opportunistic reason where they see it as a way of getting out and liquidating some of their assets.

What we have seen over the last six, seven, eight and nine years is extraordinary uncertainty for the communities in the basin. The possibility of being able to return some certainty to those irrigators and the irrigation communities by them knowing that only a small amount of water is likely to be taken out of productive use from buying it back from irrigators means that they can now start making plans about their future—whether they are going to replant or whether they are going to seek to buy water. It would give stability back to the water market and allow the price of water to stabilise for the first time in as many years. This is really good news for our river communities.

As I said, I was really quite distressed to think that the ENGOs and the green groups would think of denying irrigators the opportunity to be able to get some certainty back into their lives simply because they think there might be some hidden agenda here somewhere and somehow, all of sudden, miraculously, the Australian government, the Senate or, for that matter, the Australian Labor Party would countenance moving away from the mandated targets that we were seeking to achieve.

The other thing that is probably really quite distressing in the debate that we have seen from the Greens and the ENGOs is the suggestion that the coalition actually does not care about the environment. At the end of the day, the sustainability of our entire community is going to rely on a healthy river system. We recognise very clearly that a healthy river system is something that is absolutely essential. But there is no point in us having a healthy river system when we have achieved an excess of water but we have actually taken it all from productive use and there is no more water available in the basin for agricultural production. That seems to me like a very short-sighted approach to achieving water for the environment.

What we have always said—and it is something that I have said in my community for as long as I can remember—is that we should always seek to achieve the water for the environment by means other than by taking water out of productive use. Only when we have exhausted every possible avenue within our financial limits to achieve water targets by alternative means, whether it is by constraints management, whether it is by on-farm or off-farm efficiencies or whether it is by works and measures—whatever it happens to be—only when we have exhausted every single one of those options should we start taking water out of productive use. We are a very lucky country and we have the opportunity for future economic prosperity through agriculture, but we are not going to be able to realise that agricultural prosperity for Australia if we take water out of productive use before we even try to implement efficiencies savings in the system.

There is one thing that I think has been missed in this whole argument, particularly by those ENGOs and the like who gave evidence. When I asked the ENGOs of Australia how many of the people who worked in their organisation actually lived outside of a capital city, how many of them lived, resided and participated in communities along the Murray-Darling Basin system, their answer was that they had no-one. What I would like to say to many of these groups who are very happy to stand up and grandstand about these things is that maybe it would do them the world of good to go out and spend some time living in these communities to realise that the very people who rely on the water that comes out of the river are the people who are striving to do the right thing by their river system.

If you look at the impact that has occurred within the irrigation districts in the place that I live, in the Riverland of South Australia, from the amount of water that has already been taken out of our irrigation communities, you will see that it is having a Swiss cheese effect. What it is happening is that when you take 20 per cent or 30 per cent of the water out of a community, the remaining 70 per cent of irrigators still have to pay for the infrastructure for the delivery of their water. They still have to pay all the overheads and the costs of pumping a lesser amount of water to a lesser amount of farms. So all we end up doing is pushing out the price of water and reducing the productivity in the region. This is not a responsible way to go about addressing this problem. I am not saying that, at the end of the day, the fact that we have had to take some water out of productive use may not have been necessary. It just disappoints me that we do not make that way of getting water the last resort; instead, we go out and take in excess of 1,100 gigalitres of water.

The other thing that I would like to put on the record is that in South Australia we have met our basin and valley targets of returning water for environmental purposes. Every single drop of water that has been returned in South Australia for environmental purposes in order to achieve the outcomes of the sustainable diversion limits in the Murray-Darling Basin Plan has come from irrigators—every single drop has come from irrigators. I do not think it is unreasonable for irrigators in my home state of South Australia to feel comfortable about not having any more water taken from them until such time as all other avenues have been exhausted.

Before I conclude my remarks, I would like to say that on 27 August the SDL stocktake report was tabled. The SDL stocktake report is an independent report. It was commissioned and undertaken by independent assessors. It came back and said that, of the works and measures in the projects that had been put forward to try to return water that had been put up by the state governments across the Murray-Darling Basin, in its independent opinion, after undertaking the assessment, the water recovery targets that were in train at that time after being significantly discounted and being very conservative estimates would already deliver 500 gigalitres. We said we would deliver 650 gigalitres by this means. The SDL stocktake report said we were already on track to get a 500 gigalitres. If you consider the level of discounting that had been applied to the application and calculations of the existing projects, there was a huge amount of confidence in the report that the full 650 gigalitres of the water recovery targets would be able to be met and that possibly more than 650 gigalitres would be able to be returned through the works and measures that were on foot.

In conclusion, it gives me great pleasure to be here and to be able to say to the Senate that I support the Water Amendment Bill 2015 that seeks to put a cap at 1,500 gigalitres on the amount of water that is able to be bought back from irrigators as part of the targets that are sought through the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. It gives me pleasure because I believe that it is the right thing for our river communities. I think it is the right thing for our economy in Australia. I think it is a responsible form of action to take to ensure the one thing that we said we would do in the delivery of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, which was deliver a triple bottom line.

Initially the plan was skewed towards only environmental outcomes and was devil may care about the consequences for our river communities and our irrigators. We successfully changed it in conjunction with the opposition, which was then the government. I think that we achieved a very sensible outcome. We sought to achieve an environmental outcome that reasonably and rationally considering the communities that live along the river and that rely on water and irrigation. I commend the bill to the Senate.