Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The debate this afternoon on this urgency motion, quite naturally, has reflected the importance that South Australia places on the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. I've got to say that, as someone who cares about the basin, I'm incredibly grateful for the efforts of South Australians and the advocacy of South Australians over many years, because they have played a very important role in asserting over time a call for political reform. I want to focus my remarks today on the consequences for New South Wales and specifically for the Barwon-Darling area because I know this part of New South Wales. It is important in this debate to be thinking about the consequences of failing to deliver on the plan in this area, with all of its complexity and fragility.

The Barwon-Darling corridor has a system of rivers and lakes and wetlands and flood plains, and that provides habitat for more than 10,000 birds—and that includes the iconic brolgas. The river red gums that grow along the banks of the river system and the flood plains of this system stretch out with different kinds of eucalypts and their names resonate in the popular imagination when we think about western New South Wales and its environment: the poplar box, the iron wood, the mulga, the white cypress pine.

The system is actually like a big funnel and it channels the in-flows from the tributaries further north, like the Barwon, the Macintyre, the Weir and the Culgoa. These are systems that up until now have been reasonably unregulated. There aren't big dams on the rivers, and the rivers for the most part have an integrity in the way that their flows mirror the natural flows that characterise most Australian river systems in fairly dry areas. There is a remarkable Indigenous heritage—40,000-year-old fish traps at Brewarrina protected by the World Conservation Union.

The management of water in this area is absolutely critical to the health and resilience of all of those assets, all of that natural heritage. People like to talk about how much water flows down the river like it's a big pipe, but actually what matters in Australian river systems, which are highly variable, are the floods—those situations where a big pulse of water comes down the system, spreads out over the banks of the river and into the flood plains—and it is that flooding process that provides the habitat for bird breeding, for frogs, for lizards. That is the process that drives biodiversity in western New South Wales, and so when we are talking about corrupt practice, about water theft, about illegal activity, about the collusion between government officials and the industry they are supposed to regulate, about disrespect at best from a government minister for the fundamentals of the plan, we have a serious problem.

It is not enough for governments to investigate themselves or for departments to investigate themselves. We need an investigation with substantial powers that can get to the bottom of this behaviour. A body like a judicial inquiry that can protect whistleblowers, that can compel people to give evidence and that can undertake the necessary investigations to understand what is going on and to protect the integrity of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.