Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak to the Water Amendment (Restoring Our Rivers) Bill 2023. Water is life. Millions of Australians rely on the Murray-Darling Basin for drinking water, for jobs, for recreation. Without water flowing through our rivers, ecosystems will die. Communities will suffer. The truth is: you can't eat cotton and you can't drink mud, and there are no jobs on a dead planet or a dead river.

The Murray-Darling Basin Plan was intended to address the impacts of overextraction on the health of the river system, yet it was a compromise from its inception. Since then, greed, vested interests and politics have trumped science, resulting in cuts to real water delivery and further decline of the whole health of the Murray-Darling Basin. As climate change has continued to get worse, the health of the river has been further compromised. The failure to deliver the Murray-Darling Basin Plan on time is a broken promise to our rivers, to South Australians and to ecosystems and communities basin-wide. And yet we have seen this coming for a long time. For over a decade Australians have watched the Murray-Darling Basin Plan fall apart with rorts, water theft and delays, leaving our precious rivers in a precarious position. I have smelt the stench of thousands of dead fish on the banks of the Darling/Barka. I have seen our Murray Mouth run dry. I have heard from countless people across the basin—from First Nations peoples, farmers, fishers and environmentalists—each with their own stories of watching the river die, begging politicians to stand up to corporate interests and overextraction, and to save our river for all of our interests, for the national interest, for the interests of our environment.

Governments can no longer sit by and let our river die at the hands of greed, vested interests and political game-playing. We need water flowing across the whole Murray-Darling Basin, and we need it urgently. We need to be fighting for more water, not less. Without it, we will see more fish kills, blue-green algae, species decline, and the degradation of floodplain and wetland ecosystems. Basin communities will suffer. Jobs will be lost when climate change will see the river dry up. We cannot simply continue a plan that just kicks the can down the road without changing business as usual. That is why the Greens have today secured a critical lifeline for the Murray-Darling Basin. This is a significant win for the environment and river communities to stop our rivers running dry. The changes that the Greens have secured in negotiation with the government will guarantee delivery of real environmental water across the basin—north and south. It will close the loopholes in the plan to increase transparency and accountability, and deliver First Nations outcomes.

In the plan's first inception, South Australia fought hard for the inclusion of the extra 450 gigalitres for the environment. Scientists said it was needed. And yet, since then, this 450 gigalitres has been viewed as optional. South Australians have been told by upstream states for a decade they would never get the water they were promised. More than a decade on and six months out from the current deadline, only 26 gigalitres of that 450 gigalitres has been recovered. Rivers die from the mouth up, and that's why it is critical and crucial for the Coorong, the Lower Lakes and the Murray Mouth to be healthy for the entire river system. Deadlines for recovery cannot be extended without a guarantee that the minister will treat the 450 gigalitres as a core part of this plan and ensure its delivery in full by the new deadline. That is what the Greens have fought hard for and that is what the minister has announced today that she will accept.

Now, for the first time, the minister for the environment will have a legal, enforceable obligation to recover the 450 gigalitres and deliver real water for the environment in full and on time. For the first time, there will be consequences for ignoring this part of the plan. This guarantee, coupled with the lift of the cap on buybacks, will ensure real additional environmental water can be brought and returned to our rivers. The minister will be held accountable along the way, with the Greens securing a requirement to publish an implementation schedule for the delivery of the 450 gigalitres. This will detail the government's plan to recover the 450 gigalitres by the new deadline of 31 December, 2027. It will include interim targets and milestones. There will no longer be an excruciating wait, a question mark around when we will see water flowing for our environment, or whether we will see it at all. In securing this commitment, the Greens have ensured water will be brought back for our rivers as soon as possible. We will see water flowing in our rivers before the next election.

Despite the plan being a compromise to begin with, over the course of the last decade we have seen cuts to real environmental water across the basin—for example, through the creation of the SDLAM offsets projects, which have resulted in 605 gigalitres less of real water recover. If we're extending the deadlines of the plan, we will need to be fighting for more water, not less, and that's why the Greens have secured a commitment that will ensure the scrapping of the failed water-saving projects and the ability to start recovering real environmental water in its place sooner rather than later. The Greens will amend this plan to ensure that failed SDLAM projects can be unilaterally scrapped by the Commonwealth government. The states will no longer be able to drag their feet on projects that we already know have failed. Real water will be bought back to make up this shortfall. Not only is this commitment critical to stopping further delays and excuses from the states; it puts real environmental water back on the table.

In the northern basin, overextraction and barriers to connectivity have resulted in mass fish kills. We need to ensure better regulation of overextraction and, instead, get the water flowing to the places where it's needed most. The Greens have ensured that this plan will include real additional water for the Darling-Baaka, allowing rule changes that increase connectivity in the northern basin to be recovered towards the shortfall.

Rule changes in state water-sharing plans have long been called for by scientists, academics, environmentalists and farmers. We need embargoes on extraction to ensure that, in our driest times, irrigators are prevented from taking water that is critical for the survival of the ecosystems and communities downstream, because in the worst times we all need to pull our weight and do our fair share of heavy lifting. These changes will be critical in promoting better connectivity across the northern basin and through Menindee Lakes, allowing benefits to flow through the Murray to the Lower Lakes and the Coorong.

As well as guaranteeing real additional water for the environment, the Greens have called for measures to close loopholes and build back public confidence. That is why the Greens have today secured an independent basin-wide audit of the water in the basin to stop the rorts, inject integrity and restore trust after a decade of mismanagement from vested interests. It is critical that the Basin Plan is underpinned by up-to-date, scientifically robust models and methods. Otherwise, as we have seen, it will not deliver the environmental water the river needs and that has been promised. This independent audit will be conducted by the Inspector-General. The Inspector-General will be provided with the powers and resources to audit water accounts, determining if they match the reality of water in the basin—what is on paper and what is really there. Doing so will determine whether the processes and systems underlying the plan are fit for purpose and helping to achieve what was intended. This important audit, won by the Greens, will be critical in identifying areas for improvement ahead of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan review.

Further, it will hopefully create a model that is reliable, is trusted and has integrity, to lead to more regular auditing processes and ensure that they are being performed at their best and can be regularly updated to inform adaptive management of the basin. The government will be required to publish a tracking mechanism to track recovery progress towards the plan. The public will be able to track water flows in real time and hold the government to account if they are not meeting the milestones to recover the real additional water that has been promised—integrity, transparency and truth. Further amendments will close loopholes that have allowed overextraction in New South Wales for years and will increase the powers of the Inspector-General to enforce compliance. This will allow the Inspector-General to do his job properly, forcing the basin states to comply with limits on extraction.

First Nations people have been critical of the delivery of the Basin Plan, and rightly so. As my good friend, Major 'Moogy' Sumner, who grew up on the mouth of the Murray in his country, Ngarrindjeri, said: 'We've been looking after our river for thousands and thousands of years. When the waters are sick, everything is sick. The government needs to not just be listening but hearing and implementing the teachings from First Nations people on how we look after our rivers and our water systems.' He is right. The knowledge, rights and interests of First Nations people have long been left unacknowledged when it comes to the Basin Plan.

To rectify this, the Greens have ensured that the undelivered money from the Aboriginal Water Entitlements Program to deliver cultural flows will be increased from $40 million to $100 million to reflect its lost value. To complement this measure, we have pushed for recognition of First Nations' interests to be enshrined in the objects of the Water Act for the very first time. This is a significant step towards recognising and enshrining the rights and interests of First Nations people to our nation's water resources. The Greens will also move amendments to require the Basin Plan review to consider First Nations' rights and interests and whether these are being adequately promoted through the Basin Plan and water resource planning. This will help create a clear road map to holistically considering and implementing changes to benefit First Nations peoples and their communities.

These significant changes are throwing our basin and our river system a crucial lifeline. The Greens have secured amendments and improvements that will ensure the Basin Plan gets back on track and will be finished on time. But let's be clear, we still have a lot to go and a lot of work to do for the future. In particular, climate change and First Nations have been left out of this plan from the beginning, and it's time they were put in. We are facing what experts predict will be another summer of extreme heat. We cannot afford to delay the actions we know are urgently needed to protect our river. We need overextraction stopped and real water flowing before El Nino and the hottest summers, driven by climate change, leave the river high and dry again.

I want to quote Gloria Jones, the wife of the late South Australian fisherman Henry. They have been a family of fishers in South Australia at the mouth of Murray for generations. Gloria Jones said about the current state of the Basin Plan: 'A healthy sustainable river should come first and then you'll have healthy, sustainable communities. If we don't reverse this trend, we'll have let our future generations down. We must take this opportunity to get things back on track and to deliver a much-needed lifeline for our environment and our river.' That's what the Greens have been working hard to do—a critical lifeline for the Murray-Darling Basin. Real water, real accountability and listening to First Nations people will create a better future for our river and a better future for all of us. This is in the national interest, and it's time that we got it done.