Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

That's right! Cutting out 605 billion litres of water. Senator Gallacher talked about improved transparency, where we are being asked to sign off on $1.3 billion worth of projects without having business plans and without knowing that they're going to work. It is just something that is totally unacceptable and something that, for me, concerned about the river—that for us as Greens, concerned about the health of this river and the health of these communities—absolutely cannot acquiesce to.

The other aspect I think that we need to talk about, going back to my point about the 3,200 gigalitres being an absolute minimum: it is absolutely necessary that we get all of that. Every single gigalitre of that water is needed for the health of the river. That is what the Murray-Darling Basin Plan doesn't actually even consider—the fact that that allocation of water, when it was worked out a decade ago, didn't take into account the impact of climate change. If we look at what's going to happen to flows in the basin with a warming climate, we're going to need a lot more water allocated to the environment than what is being proposed if we're going to keep it healthy.

A month ago I was in Swan Hill. Under a scenario of three to four degrees of warming, the climate in Swan Hill is likely to become like the climate of Cobar. These are the sorts of impacts that we are talking about with climate change, and yet we are talking about taking water out of the river!

It is just completely unscientific. It is completely irrational. It will just mean that the river will be left a dying, sad vestige of its former health.

The river under the plan as proposed—under the sustainable diversion limit adjustment mechanism—is being sold out. The river needs more water, not less. For those of us in this parliament who are concerned about the health of the river, who are concerned about the livelihoods of the people who rely on the river, who are concerned about the livelihoods of the irrigators, who are concerned about the livelihoods of community and who are concerned about the areas like the Nyah-Vinifera forests, a cultural landscape of immense significance to the traditional owners, we cannot agree to these sustainable diversion limit adjustment mechanisms to be passed.