Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Hansard source

I would draw to the attention of the chamber that Clare does take a certain amount of its water supply from the Murray-Darling Basin. Maybe Senator Farrell lives in the poor part of Clare that hasn't got access to water from the Murray-Darling, and I'm sure his grapes are absolutely lovely because they're all rain irrigated. But, nonetheless, let's get back to the story that we're trying to tell.

At the risk of giving you a history lesson about the development of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, can I pay tribute to those opposite for the extraordinarily bipartisan way the whole of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan was developed? When it was originally established back many, many years ago, there were many people who played a significant part in the development of this plan, and I'll acknowledge many of your counterparts, including previous Prime Minister Julia Gillard. Certainly, Tony Burke has had a very big involvement, as has the previous Prime Minister from our side of politics, Malcolm Turnbull. Senator Birmingham was instrumental in the development and putting together of the plan at the time. We have all had an investment in this plan, so let's go back to that time.

I don't think the Australian public has any idea—and certainly, if you listen to her, Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, hasn't any idea—about the level of negotiation that was required to enable this plan to be born in the first place. Do many people understand that there were 11 houses of parliament that this legislation had to get through? Eleven houses of parliament had to agree for this plan to be put together. So, what I would say is: let's get back to the table and let's start talking about this in a bipartisan way—certainly, for any plan that is going to take as long as this plan will to implement. We had 12 years to implement this plan. We're halfway through that 12 years. I think that we need to constantly be going back to the plan, looking at ways it can be achieved and making sure that it's achieving its outcomes. But this is throwing in a political time bomb three months out from an election and trying to blow the thing up again.

We went through all of this debate 12 months ago when we had the issue about whether we wanted to support the SDL adjustment or whether we were going to support the northern basin review. So we threw a bomb into this place, creating great uncertainty amongst all of our communities out there in the Murray-Darling Basin. It created great uncertainty, because what we need to realise—and you can stand on your high horse and you can bleat for as long as you like—is that the cold, hard reality is that we are not going to have this plan delivered in full for the benefit of all communities, the river, the river system, the environment, and all Australians unless everybody continues to stay at the table. Constantly poking the bear has the likelihood that, if you poke the bear one too many times, one of our constituencies that have to stay at the table to get this plan delivered will walk away and we will blow the whole plan up. Be it on your head. If you're going to be smart here, you're going to cause one of the parties to walk away from this table that they've sat around. We've negotiated. There have been huge differences of opinion as we've sat around the MinCo table.

Senator Storer interjecting—

Senator, you haven't sat around the MinCo table. I have. I've seen all the people that sit around the MinCo table and I have seen all of the different competing interests from the states and everyone. We're all here for our states—for the best interests of our individual states.

Senator Hanson-Young interjecting—

I'll take Senator Hanson-Young's interjection. States don't have to just look at one aspect; they can look at many more. I can assure you that when I sit around the MinCo table—

Senator Hanson-Young interjecting—

You haven't been there either, Senator Hanson-Young. You just sit there on the sidelines, throwing your bombs. You couldn't care less what the outcome was here; you just want to grandstand on this. I care about delivering an outcome for our environment, for South Australia, for Australia and for all our river communities.

Senator Hanson-Young interjecting—

Well, that's your opinion. I've got to tell you that South Australia currently has 100 per cent of its water allocation—I will say that again: 100 per cent of its water allocation—because of the good management of South Australia over the last 40 or 50 years and the good negotiations of South Australia.

Anyway, let's get back to our history lesson. I want to tell you about my community. My community was the second established irrigation community in the Murray-Darling Basin, after Mildura. My community is Renmark. It was established by the Chaffey brothers. My grandfather was actually the chair of the Renmark Irrigation Trust. Proudly, to this day, it still stands as the only irrigation trust in Australia that has its very own act of parliament.

I am an irrigator, and I am very, very proud of my community. I'm proud of a hundred years of responsible water management. I am proud of the fact that we were innovators; we were leaders in our community. We went to pressurised, piped irrigation systems. We have been the most efficient and effective water users in the country since irrigation first started in this country and first started in the Murray-Darling Basin. So I stand here as a proud, proud member of my community—a proud member of a community that has never done anything that would have a consequential detrimental impact on the river system. So my story is one of great pride, and it's greatly disappointing, and I should imagine that every single member of my community and Mr Morrison: any others who live along the Murray-Darling Basin would be devastated, to see the rubbish that gets said in this place about the community and how they've been handling the river.

I'd just like to comment on a couple of the things that Senator Hanson-Young put forward. She said that the river system is in collapse. Well, certainly, the northern part of the system is suffering an extreme amount of hardship and stress because of the fact that we are in one of the worst droughts that anyone can remember. We remember, in the southern connected basin, the millennium drought and the consequences that that had on us and our irrigation communities, on the health of the river and on the people who rely on the river, whether it be for drinking water, for public amenity or for growing the food that every single one of us in here is quite happy to put on the table for our families and our children to eat for dinner tonight. Let's not forget where that food comes from. So as to suggesting that the river system is 'in collapse': certainly I will accept the fact that the northern system is under a lot of stress. But in South Australia, with 100 per cent of our water allocation, the southern part of the system is actually in reasonably good health at the moment, and part of that can be attributed to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan working. We have 2,100 gigalitres of water that has been returned to the environment. That's flowing down the river as we speak. We've still got some more to go, and we are absolutely committed to getting to the 3,200 gigalitres of water that we said would be returned to the basin under this plan. But in 2024, we have the opportunity to assess where we have actually got to.

In another comment that Senator Hanson-Young made—and I'm not quite sure she actually realised the ridiculousness of her comment—she referred to the Murray-Darling Basin as the food bowl of the country. Well, yes, Senator Hanson-Young—it is the food bowl of the country. But it won't be if you take more water away from irrigators and completely decimate the communities. Just a little lesson in economics, Senator Hanson-Young: if you take so much out of a community that it can no longer exist as a community, the entire irrigation district collapses.

What we sought to do with the Murray-Darling Basin Plan is to make sure that we took a responsible approach to making sure that we delivered the outcomes that addressed the concerns and the needs of the entire basin and all of its stakeholders. We're not just going to return the river to pristine environmental condition and completely trash the food bowl of the country and the people who grow the food that will sit on your table for dinner tonight. We're not going to trash river communities so they no longer exist. We're going to work systematically, sensibly and thoroughly through a 12-year process to deliver the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in full.

Others may want to prosecute whether there's enough water or there isn't enough water. I'd like to think that the Labor Party will remain committed to the bipartisan position that they came to this place with in the first place, and that is that we are going to deliver this plan in full. We accept 3,200 gigalitres is the amount of water that we want to deliver by 2024, when we will reassess the success of the plan. So I'm hoping that they haven't moved away from that—that this particular publicity stunt for political purposes is only about the 1,500 gigalitres, which I'll get to in a minute.

The other comments that we heard coming from the other end of the chamber were about large corporate irrigators sucking the river dry. Certainly there are corporate irrigators along the river system. But what about the tens of thousands of mum-and-dad irrigators, the tens of thousands of people who live in communities just like mine, who might have 20 hectares or 30 hectares? In my case, I had only 11 hectares. These are small irrigators. They are integral parts of the fabric of the community in which they live. They are responsible water users. They have bought their entitlements completely legally. They have participated in the process of trying to find water savings to put back for environmental use.

Our river communities have been through a really tough time, but they're still standing. They're resilient. They've done the hard yards. So it's really disappointing that we should even be standing in this place today. The question has to be: why now? We're halfway through a process. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do a great environmental, social and economic readjustment in a system. Why are we talking about it today, but halfway through?

Our international reputation in terms of water management is second to none anywhere around the world. But, standing in this chamber, you'd be excused for thinking that we were anything other than the most incompetent water managers in the world. What I would say to you is that we need to allow the process to take its course. This is a really complex plan. I'm not making any qualms about that whatsoever. We had the initial plan at 2,750 gigalitres. We then dealt with the 650 gigalitres of the sustainable diversion limits, which we put through the parliament with the support of the opposition last year. We are locked into providing the extra 450 gigalitres of up water to supplement the amount of water that's returned to the environment to 3,200 gigalitres. We put in the Northern Basin Review so we can make sure the northern basin considerations are taken as an iterative process as the plan goes forward. It is a very complex plan. If it was easy, it would have been done an awfully long time ago. It's not easy. It is really, really tough balancing the triple bottom line needs of the environment, the social impacts on communities and the economic driver that the Murray-Darling Basin is for the Australian economy. This is an absolutely fundamental piece of public policy that has been supported by those opposite up until now.

Moving on to the 1,500 gigalitre cap to which this particular motion refers, can I say it is extraordinarily lazy or it's extraordinarily political that we should be standing here today dealing with the 1,500 gigalitre cap. Can I just put on the record that, as we stand here today, 270 billion litres of water is still available through the cap buyback. We haven't even reached the cap of 1,500 gigalitres. So why are we standing in this chamber, three months out from an election, having a debate about the cap? If you had come in here and tried to debate some other thing, you might have had some more credibility. But to be debating the cap when you haven't even reached the cap is absolutely hypocritical. You cannot defend what you're doing in any other way than saying that you're doing this for purely political purposes, because you want to be re-elected come the next election.

So I put it on the table: it is lazy politics and it is not good policy. It might be cheaper and it might be easier to buy back water, but that is not the best thing for our river communities. It is not the best thing for our economies that live and grow the food in the Murray-Darling Basin. So it is purely lazy and cheap politics, because it does not take into consideration the communities that depend on the river and the irrigation from the river. And it will have a massively, massively devastating effect for two reasons. Firstly, it will have a devastating effect because, of course, there is more water that has to come out of these communities. But it will also have a devastating effect because you will put these communities back into uncertainty. How much more uncertainty do you want these communities to have to suffer? We have been through 10 years of uncertainty in the Murray-Darling Basin, not knowing from one year to the next how much water we're going to have and whether water has to be taken away.

We gave some certainty back to our River Murray irrigators when we put in a cap of 1,500 gigalitres. We never moved away from the target of 3,200. We stand here rock solid, with everybody in this chamber, that we will deliver the Murray Darling Basin Plan in full. We don't move away from that. All we are saying is, 'Leave our irrigators with the certainty of knowing that they are not going to have buybacks come in and take their water.' Let me make it very clear: a lot of the buybacks that initially happened were not from willing sellers. An awful lot of these people were under stress from banks because they'd just come out of the millennium drought, and they sold their water under hugely stressful conditions. So don't be conned into thinking that there is a whole heap of people out there who want to sell their water to you—there aren't.

I note that this morning, Tony Burke, the shadow minister for water, was talking on ABC Radio South Australia and he made the comment, 'Buybacks at the moment haven't reached the cap.' So Tony Burke, by his own admission, accepts the fact this is not necessary at this time. He went on to say: 'If we get to 2024 and we haven't reached our targets, well, let's have a look at the mechanisms which we might have to use to be able to get that water.' By his own admission he says that this is not something that is needed now, so why are you bringing this into the chamber now? It can only be for politics. You need to justify that to your electorates. And another thing: David Bevan, the ABC journalist who was interviewing Tony Burke, said:

There will be regional communities right across the Murray-Darling Basin who would be very worried about that, because they see buybacks as killing communities.

Guess what Tony Burke said? 'That's right.' Is that okay?

The other thing that I'd love somebody to perhaps ask Tony Burke—and maybe some of you in your contribution to this debate this afternoon could explain this to me—is where these buybacks are going to come from. Are they going to come out of my community in Renmark? Are you going to turn up in Renmark and tell people that you're going to take more water out of their community? I have to tell you right now that Renmark has just recovered from the massive number of buybacks that have come out of the community. They're just back on their feet and the economy is starting to move after a time when every second shop in the main street of Renmark was shut because of the uncertainty and the Swiss-cheese effect of ripping water entitlements out in the middle of a community. The cost of the delivery of our irrigation water went through the roof, because there were half the number of irrigators irrigating off the same system. You don't understand until you're part of these communities how it rips the very guts out of the communities when you come in and randomly take from here and there.

Senator Hanson-Young interjecting—

I'd love to know, Senator Hanson-Young, which communities you are going to take the water from. You tell me. Is it coming out of Renmark? Is it coming out of Berri? Where is it coming from?

Senator Canavan interjecting—