Perin Davey (NSW, National Party, Shadow Minister for Water) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

I rise to take note of the Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee report into the Water Amendment (Restoring Our Rivers) Bill 2023. From the outset it was bitterly disappointing that this committee, which had a two-month inquiry into the bill, failed to hold any hearings in any basin community outside of Canberra, outside of the ACT. I acknowledge timing is a factor; however, in the two months of this inquiry the coalition backbench committee on agriculture was able to put together a four-day, three-state, five-town tour of basin communities to hear firsthand from the people who will be impacted by this bill. We did that without any support—without any secretarial support, without the support of Hansard—and yet we were able to conduct those hearings just like it was a Senate committee. It is absolutely appalling that this committee would not travel to basin communities to see and hear firsthand what the impact of this bill would be.

In saying that, the core recommendation that the committee has put forward—there are 15 recommendations, but the core recommendation is that this bill needs to be amended. I agree wholeheartedly. This bill absolutely needs to be amended because this bill proposes to allow an open tender, open slather, free-for-all buyback of 450 gigalitres of water from communities, irrespective of the social and economic impacts that may be felt.

Now, a bit of a history lesson for people. Back in 2012, when the Basin Plan was being negotiated through this place and with communities, Tony Burke, to his credit, travelled to Griffith, travelled to Deniliquin, travelled to Adelaide. He listened to people; he heard the concerns of the communities.

This is after five years of open-tender, open-slather buyback conducted by the Labor government at the time without a basin plan in place. So they didn't even know what the water they were purchasing was for.

At that time, Tony Burke wrote into the Basin Plan that any pursuit of 450 gigalitres of water had to be done in a way that was either neutral or had positive social and economic impacts, because he acknowledged there is a downside to open-tender buybacks. He also prohibited the Commonwealth resorting to open-tender buybacks for the 450. I have not seen any justification for the change in the Labor Party's position. The coalition—the Liberals and the Nationals—will not support open-tender buybacks as a method for recovery of the 450. We will not support lifting the cap on buybacks, as this bill proposes, and we will not support pursuit of the 450 in the absence of a socioeconomic test.

I do want to commend the work of the committee and the chair of the committee for the way she conducted the hearings in Canberra—unfortunately, only two days of hearings in Canberra.