Rex Patrick (SA, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to contribute to the debate on the disallowance motion moved by Senator Hanson-Young. This motion seeks to disallow the government's approval of the sustainable diversion limit adjustment mechanism projects. As I remarked in my contribution to the debate on the Northern Basin Review disallowance, there has been a significant reduction in confidence in the basin plan's implementation over the last 12 months, with serious allegations that arose last year of rorting, water theft, dodgy water buybacks, a lack of compliance, questionable modelling, a dearth of transparency from within the MDBA, and new claims by the South Australian Murray-Darling Basin royal commissioner, Bret Walker SC, that the Murray-Darling Basin Authority may have fallen into legal error. The proper execution of the plan has well and truly fallen into error.

There have been a number of reviews, and some of them have been mentioned by my colleagues in the chamber. There were the Murray-Darling Basin Water Compliance Review and the Matthews review in New South Wales. The Auditor-General has conducted a review. There is an ICAC inquiry ongoing in New South Wales, there is a South Australian royal commission and, indeed, a Queensland review into water related matters. I can see that some of those reviews have concluded and that there are some very good recommendations in those reviews, but those recommendations have not yet been implemented.

There are 36 SDL projects proposed for Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia, to allow 605 gigalitres of water to be returned to irrigators on the basis that the projects give an equivalent quantity of water back to the environment. These projects are at various stages of development. Some of them are at scoping, some of them are being advanced and some of them are actually in operation. Back in February, Centre Alliance sought the technical assessments that the MDBA had made in relation to those 36 projects, and did that by way of an order for the production of documents. That order for production was returned to the Senate. It was returned late, but I must admit that it was returned in full.

The day after that was tabled in the Senate, the Murray-Darling Basin Authority wrote to Centre Alliance to confirm that the technical assessments of the 36 projects that had been tabled, obtained through that order for production, showed an incomplete picture of the state of affairs. So that means that the Senate is being asked to vote on the approval of the SDL projects without a complete picture of the state of affairs. That means that we require a degree of trust and confidence, and remember that at the start I said that public confidence has eroded in the execution of the plan. It requires the confidence that the projects will be implemented in a way that will result in positive environmental and socioeconomic outcomes.

The Labor Party—and, I gather, some of my colleagues on the crossbench—obviously have trust and confidence that the projects will deliver these outcomes. Centre Alliance, at this point in time, do not. This does not mean that we will never have the necessary level of trust and confidence to support the SDL projects, but at this point in time we cannot justify supporting changes to the SDLs. A lack of transparency, coupled with the criticism of the MDBA's technical analysis, does not fill me with confidence.

I'm strongly of the view that no senator who is conducting due diligence in their consideration of the passage of the SDL adjustment mechanism instrument could possibly support the changes if they were aware of the incomplete dataset that is available to them. And it's not as though senators haven't had the opportunity to have private briefings on the proposed changes. I know this, because I have visited both the New South Wales and the Victorian state authorities that are proposing and implementing these plans. When I visited them, I asked them, 'How many other senators have come and had a bit of a chat to you about what you're doing?' And the answer was zero; I was the first. I find this quite remarkable. Not one senator who is voting on this disallowance motion, even Senator Hanson-Young, who has moved the motion, has sat down with the Victorian or New South Wales public servants who are responsible for implementing the business cases of the SDL adjustment projects.

So while Centre Alliance is fully supportive of the plan being executed in full, it has to be implemented properly. A plan by name only is not a plan, and it's not very useful. Centre Alliance's informed view is that it is necessary to stop and take stock of the situation before making adjustments to the plan. The plan should be paused, even if it's just for a short period of time, to let some of the compliance measures be put in place, or to answer some of the questions about some of the modelling or, indeed, to allow the full dataset—and I note the Senate did support an OPD today for the remaining data necessary to review these projects. But, until we have that full information, we should pause and reconsider. We need to wait for the compliance and transparency measures proposed by both the states and the Commonwealth to take effect and for the legal situation to be properly examined. There is a legal controversy now that probably needs to be addressed.

I would like to acknowledge the cooperation of Minister Littleproud and Assistant Minister Ruston as I undertook the due diligence work that I did. Although we may disagree on some of the issues, I appreciated that they undertook to provide me with further information that was necessary to increase the transparency of the SDL adjustment mechanism approval process not just for the Senate but for all interested parties. That includes the general public. The general public needs to be able to see this data. I acknowledge that Assistant Minister Ruston has given an undertaking there will be more transparency. To date, she has honoured her undertakings to me on the Murray-Darling.

However, as with all disallowance motions, time is of the essence and, despite trying to get more information, the race against time has been lost. Centre Alliance cannot support the SDL adjustment mechanisms at this time.