Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

I stand to speak on the Water Amendment (Restoring Our Rivers) Bill 2023. As somebody who has lived on the Murray-Darling for just about all of my life, I know that, along the entire corridor of the Murray-Darling Basin, everyone wants a healthy river system. That includes the farmers who live in the communities who rely on the river and who grow our food—the food that we all enjoy at our restaurant or dinner tables every night in cities and towns around the whole of the country. Think of the export earnings that we make from the abundance of product that's grown in the Murray-Darling Basin, much of which is exported to places around the world. Think of the amazing tourism opportunities that our wonderful river provides for so many of our communities, for the enjoyment not only of our international visitors but of Australians the length and breadth of this country, who come to waterski on our river and to canoe and kayak up our creeks and backwaters. Tourism is a huge part of a healthy river system. The river is also important in our cities, when people turn on the tap and expect the water to flow. This all comes about because we have the Murray-Darling Basin, and every single one of those people should want a healthy river system.

I categorically state once again that I support the delivery of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in full. If it takes some more time—which this bill seeks to achieve—then that's okay too. It's more important that we get the outcome without doing the damage. No state could be more impacted or aware of the impacts of the delivery of the Murray-Darling Basin than my home state of South Australia. I put on the record that, for 50 years, the South Australian consecutive governments of all persuasions have always been responsible with the way we have managed water policy within our state. We have never breached our caps. We were very early in adopting water-saving measures by investing in water efficiency measures before many other places around the basin even considered them. Water was being delivered in my home community of the Riverland under pressure pipes before anywhere else in the country.

But I cannot support this bill unamended, despite the fact that I absolutely am committed to the delivery of the plan in full. The reason I cannot support this bill unamended is because a very, very important component was built into this act that meant there needed to be no socioeconomic detriment delivered to river communities in the achievement of the outcomes. That was put in there for a very good reason, because the destruction of our river communities was something that could not be tolerated by any state or territory in the basin or by the Commonwealth when this plan was first put together. I can't support this bill unless we maintain the cap on buybacks and maintain that buybacks are only used as a mechanism of last resort. Buybacks are plain lazy policy. The minister says that the buybacks will only be voluntary. I can tell you: if you are a farmer who is under pressure from your bank, and they're breathing down your neck—because we know that many of the commodities that are currently being grown along the Murray-Darling Basin corridors are suffering the impacts of low commodity prices—you are not a willing seller. You're a seller who is being forced to sell because your bank is putting pressure on you. There are plenty of markets out there where you can buy and sell water at the moment. Do not be convinced when the minister says that people are voluntarily wanting to sell all of their water into the buyback schemes that she's putting forward. That is simply not true. A willing seller is not one with a bank breathing down their neck.

I also would argue that we need to audit the water that is already available for environmental use through the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder and what outcomes are currently being achieved, and to make sure we do not take any more water out of productive use unless we can actually demonstrate how that water is going to be used and how it's going to be moved through the system. What is being done in relation to constraints and the actual moving of water throughout the system? What about investing more time and effort into more innovative ways to make sure that we are securing the water that the environment needs, when it needs it, but not necessarily taking it out of productive use when it is not needed?

We know that not every year will the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder need the full amount of the water that it is seeking to achieve through this plan, so why don't we leave that water in the hands of our irrigators? Let the irrigators continue to own the entitlements to use that water to grow the food and fibre that Australia so heavily relies on, which has such a huge impact and delivers so much to the economic benefit of this country. Why don't we leave the water in the hands of those who are going to productively use it, until such time as it's needed for the environment? There are so many innovative proposals currently out there that this government could be looking at. But, instead, it's gone for the lazy, easy option of saying that buybacks will be the easiest way to go. If that's not the case—if the minister says buybacks aren't going to be the be-all and end-all in terms of the delivery of the targets in the plan—then let her leave the caps in place. More importantly, for communities like the one that I live in, can we please make sure that the no-socioeconomic-detriment test remains in place? I don't want to see my community destroyed as a result of an ideological policy position of this government that has not been properly thought through.

It's also clear that the government really doesn't care about what these communities think. It doesn't care about the impact on these communities of the changes being proposed by this bill we're debating here today. If they did care, they would've gone out to those communities and spoken to them when this bill was being debated and when it went to committee. But, no, we didn't go out to the communities; we did not go outside of Canberra. We had a hearing here, in Canberra. The government refused to move outside of Canberra, outside of their Canberra bubble, which is serving them so well at the moment, isn't it? They refused to do that. They refused to go out and face the people in these communities who will be most immediately impacted by this bill.

Make no mistake: it will not be just the people in rural and regional communities that will be impacted by this particular bill. Right now, you could not have picked a worse time to bring a bill into this place. In the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, this government intends to bring a bill in here that is likely to have an impact on the cost of food in this country. How out of touch can you possibly be with the people of Australia, to bring a bill in here with no regard whatsoever for the likelihood—almost the inevitability—that it will push up the price of food, particularly of fruit and vegetables, which are things that the Murray-Darling Basin grows in quite a level of abundance?

It's a pretty simple economic equation: less water means less production, and less production means higher prices. But it also means substitute products. So we will see the products that were previously being grown in a really efficient Murray-Darling Basin system, be replaced and substituted by products that are grown overseas. If we want to get the same amount of fresh fruit and vegetables onto our tables, if we're not growing them here, in Australia, we're going to have to bring them in from overseas. Many of the countries that we would seek to import our food from do not have the kinds of environmental standards that we have here in Australia. So we're going to offshore our production to places without the same level of environmental standards while, at the same time, pushing up the prices of Australia's clean, green, home-grown produce. I would say to the government, 'Have you actually thought about the impact of this on families when they turn up at the supermarket?' They're struggling currently to pay for their groceries because they're worried about paying their mortgage or their energy bill, and they're worried about what they pay when they go to the bowser. They're also having huge pressures put on them because we've seen an escalation in the price of food. But those opposite want to put policy into this place which makes that price go up even further.

They have also forgotten to actually speak to the people of Australia. We know that the sentiment has moved in relation to water buybacks, as was evidenced by an article in the Daily Telegraph and syndicated this morning. We know that 56 per cent of survey respondents actually thought investing in water efficiencies were a better idea than buybacks. Only 13 per cent of those people who were surveyed thought that buybacks were necessary. I would agree with the 87 per cent of people who don't think buybacks are necessary. There are other ways that we are able to achieve the water and to make sure we have an environment that is sustainable going into the future for the Murray-Darling Basin but, at the same time, not destroying the river communities that rely on it—river communities like the one I live in, in the Riverland in South Australia.

The other thing this bill does—and I'm not sure this bill does a lot that's particularly good, apart from allowing greater time frames—is that it ignores 12 years of bipartisanship. And it ignores the states and territories and the fact that, when this particular plan was put forward, it was a landmark decision. All the states and territories, and the Commonwealth, came together; 14 chambers of parliament voted unanimously for this plan, and that all gets thrown out by today. Every single council in the basin has said that they don't support this bill unless it is amended. It is really disappointing that we have to be standing here today, basically assuring mutually assured destruction to the delivery of a sustainable river system going forward by the actions of this government. A sustainable system is not a system that destroys the river communities that rely on it and the food they produce, which Australians enjoy eating every night.

But this is just another example of the Labor Party's absolutely contemptuous ignoring of rural and regional Australia. This is not the only thing this government is doing in terms of treating rural and regional Australia, as if we're somehow the poor cousins that can be sacrificed on the altar of their city seats. We saw it with the cuts to infrastructure—there was no regard for the fact that we have to get the produce out which makes our balance-of-payments figures so good—the thing, our resources sector, that is actually delivering the budget surplus that this government is claiming. But we won't worry about the infrastructure to support getting that to market! In my own portfolio of health and aged care, I can assure them that Australians' health outcomes and support in their older years is much worse the further they move away from metropolitan areas. It's the continued policy changes of this government that continue to make sure that Australians who live in rural, regional and remote Australia continue to have worse outcomes than those people that live in the city. It just goes to show the level of contempt that this government has for rural and regional Australia.

I'd say to anybody who is in this chamber and who has to vote: 'Have a really serious think about whether you want to be party to voting for a piece of legislation that's, firstly, going to have a much more significant impact on rural and regional Australia than anywhere else. Do you want to vote for a piece of legislation that's going to mean your grocery prices are going to be higher than they were last week? Do you want to vote for a piece of legislation that is going to mean that we will have to import our food from overseas, coming from countries that are less environmentally friendly and don't have the same clean, green standards that we do in Australia?' I think every Australian needs to understand what this particular bill does. It does nothing to deliver the environmental outcomes, because an environmental outcome can only be sustainable if the river communities that sit along our river system are there. That's because it is our farmers, irrigators and river communities that are the stewards of our river system.

You don't see too many people from Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Canberra and Perth out there looking after our river system. You see the people in the communities who actually live on the river caring for our system. So I would say: don't take the lazy option today of allowing buybacks to be one of the core sources of securing water going forward. Don't do that. Be smarter. Be cleverer. Be innovative. Let's be proud about the way we can achieve this. As I said, we all want a sustainable and healthy river system, none more so than me. I live on the river. I know what it means to have a sustainable river system but I don't want a river system that means that my community in the Riverland in South Australia would be entirely wiped out if we sought to buy back the remaining water that is required for the delivery of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.

In final, to quote a former New South Wales Labor Minister, we do need a healthy working river. However, at this rate, we may end up with a healthy river but it won't be working anymore.