Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to talk about an important river system in Western Australia, the Fitzroy River. The Fitzroy River was national heritage listed by the Commonwealth government in 2011 for its outstanding First Nations cultural values. In 2016 the traditional owners published the Fitzroy River Declaration, calling for full protection of the river and its tributaries with a buffer zone to protect it from mining, fracking, irrigation and dams. It is a desert river subject to the booms and busts of the monsoon rains. In some years there are big floods and in others there is almost no rain. The river supports a huge array of wildlife, including 18 species of fish found nowhere else in the world. It is the world's last stronghold for the critically endangered freshwater sawfish, and it is up to us as a nation to protect it.

Attempts to use the waters of the Fitzroy for industrial agriculture have failed over many decades, including the disastrous Camballin flood-plain irrigation scheme by Jack Fletcher. Millions of public and private dollars were spent on this incredibly damaging project, which was washed away by the floods of 1983. The levee banks and the other infrastructure have never been removed or rehabilitated, despite the requests of traditional owners. Multiple attempts to dam the Fitzroy River have failed, with the community and the traditional owners leading the way in saying the Fitzroy was far too important to destroy through dams. Now the McGowan government in Western Australia are pursuing a policy of no dams. They are also implementing national parks at the upper end of the river and across its tributary the Margaret River, something the community has been pursuing for a long time.

At the same time, however, corporate agriculture is attempting to access the water. For example, Gina Rinehart's Hancock Agriculture wants to take 325 billion litres of water a year; and the Harris family, beef and cotton farmers from New South Wales, want to take 50 billion litres of water a year from the Margaret River to feed cattle for live export, and they have opened the door to cotton as well. To put this into perspective, according to the Water Corporation of Western Australia the two million people of Perth and the South West used 284 billion litres in 2016-17. The lessons of the past are being ignored by industry, but the consequences could affect everyone with an interest in the river, primarily the traditional owners.

In December 2018, 46 critically endangered sawfish died in the pools on Ms Rinehart's leases at Liveringa. The WA government has been investigating whether pumping from Snake Creek, which fills up these pools, played a part in the deaths. I know that many in the Kimberley continue to be concerned about the impact of pumping on the future of sawfish. Recently, large female barramundi—the breeders, over a metre long—have died in another pool on Liveringa from which water is also extracted. Again, the WA government has been investigating that. The water licence at Snake Creek is for six billion litres a year, but such are the constraints to keep alive the critically endangered sawfish and the barramundi, as well as the vegetation on the river, around one to two billion litres a year are pumped out of the creek. Ms Rinehart is proposing to pump 150 times this amount from a national heritage listed river, the last stronghold of these critically endangered sawfish.

Industry proponents say that the floodwaters of the Fitzroy are wasted as they flow 'uselessly' into King Sound. What they don't realise, or they choose to ignore, is that the floodwaters of the Fitzroy are critical for the surrounding flood plain's survival. When the waters break the banks in a big flood, fish like barramundi feed on the flood plain, and a significant proportion of their life-cycle depends on this. The culturally significant pools along the far reaches of the flood plains need the floodwaters to survive. We can see the disastrous effects of flood-plain harvesting and other water mismanagement in the Murray-Darling system right now. Is this something the nation is willing to replicate in the Kimberley's Fitzroy River? Have we not learned the lessons of the mismanagement of the Murray-Darling system? Mr McGowan's government has a choice. It can either support the traditional owners and protect the Fitzroy in perpetuity or it can open the river to corporate agriculture and turn it into the next Murray-Darling.

There have been a number of statements—very powerful words—from traditional owners of the Fitzroy River. Mary Aiken, a Bunuba traditional owners, said:

We are here to protect the Fitzroy and Margaret River from development. It's important to all of us Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people who enjoy this river for fishing and for taking children swimming, camping and learning about the environment. It's important for everyone to support us the Traditional Owners and Elders and all the groups who live off this River.

We're here to protect the Fitzroy River. We're asking the Government to protect our River, our catchment.

Olive Knight, also a Bunuba traditional owner, said:

We are not going to allow people to take the water out of this River. We don't want to see dead fish like the Murray Darling. We've got to stand up for the Fitzroy.

Lynda Nardea, a Nyikina Mangala traditional owner, said:

We want to protect those sawfish, Biyal Biyal we call them. We don't want anything happening to this Fitzroy River, we're telling Premier McGowan, we want this River to be like it was 40,000 years ago and from the Dreamtime, Boogadigadda, as it was passed down from our ancestors.

Dr Anne Poelina, a well-known traditional owner in the Kimberley, said:

This is about all of us standing for the River - we are all connected to one living River system. This River has a right to life and we as people must stand and defend the Rivers right to life.

Nyikina Mangala people are downstream and we are the ones who will be most impacted by what happens upstream. We must stand united. We need to ALL stand together united, we need 'One Mind and One voice', for the whole River.

These are the sentiments of the traditional owners. When I was there, at the Kimberley Land Council AGM towards the end of last year, the traditional owners made further strong statements standing up for the Fitzroy River. I'm joining with and supporting traditional owners and pleading with our nation and the government to listen to the traditional owners, to protect this important river forever and to learn the lessons from our mismanagement of our precious natural resources.

When we're talking about the Kimberley we have a chance to get it right—not to overuse our resources. I would argue that this is not just our national heritage but a global heritage, for which we have a duty to stand with traditional owners and protect this vitally important river system. I urge the government to listen to, meet and work with traditional owners to ensure that this land is managed properly so that it is sustainable in the long term, and to learn from the poor history of mismanagement of our water resources in other parts of this country.