Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

With the exception of the need to support extended deadlines and the greater transparency and compliance measures in the water market, you can bet the farm that One Nation will not be supporting this bill. The Water Amendment (Restoring Our Rivers) Bill 2023 is gambling with the farms in a region that produces more than $22 billion worth of Australia's food and fibre, gambling with the fate of this production in the Murray-Darling Basin while stacking the odds against it. I shouldn't have to remind the Senate that the Murray-Darling Basin Plan is supposed to be a balanced scheme supporting better environmental outcomes in addition to ensuring sustainable irrigation industries and regional economies. The balance is thrown out with this bill.

First things first: the Basin Plan has already recovered an enormous amount of water for environmental flows—more than 2,000 gigalitres per year, which is the equivalent of more than four Sydney Harbours. These environmental flows have had a positive effect, according to the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder at Senate estimates in 2020. The Basin Plan has worked, as the recent drought did not result in the same terrible impacts and the risk of the end of the river system. We see no need to recover more water from irrigators only to see it flow to the end of the system where it will evaporate uselessly from the lower lakes at a rate of 1,000 gigalitres per year. They weren't freshwater lakes before those barrages were built in the 1930s, and it's past time this place stops pretending otherwise.

We see no need for the recovery of the additional 450 gigalitres per year called for in the environmental special account chapter of the Water Act. One Nation knows this water doesn't need to be forced from irrigators. The South East Drainage System in South Australia could supply a good deal of it to reduce hypersalinity in the Coorong. Innovative projects which allow irrigators to keep farming while producing positive environmental outcomes are the kind of water reform we would be prepared to support, and we'll be moving an amendment to this effect. That's what we want to see in the basin: investment in projects that underpin the economic sustainability of irrigation and river communities. It's what the sustainable diversion limit adjustment mechanism in the Basin Plan is about: projects which improve the efficiency of delivering water, offsetting the amounts which would be bought from irrigators.

Almost 1,300 gigalitres per year has been bought directly from irrigators for the Basin Plan. We were told that water would only be purchased from willing sellers. The reality was that much of this water was bought from desperate sellers at the lowest price possible. The effect on river communities which relied on irrigation was terrible. Thousands of people lost their jobs and river communities lost some of their best and brightest people as industries closed down. The Productivity Commission's Murray-Darling Basin Plan: implementation review 2023 confirmed this. The interim report said:

Water purchased by the Australian Government to meet commitments under the Basin Plan has had negative socio-economic impacts on some Basin communities.

  …    …    …

… there have been negative socio-economic flow-on effects in some small irrigation-dependent communities, particularly following major irrigators selling large parcels of entitlements. Some Basin communities saw agricultural employment fall rapidly, without offsetting growth in other employment areas …

In communities throughout the basin, from Dirranbandi to Shepparton to Waikerie, local business closed down as their communities and economies were demolished with taxpayer assistance. Schools and essential services like banking also closed down in response.

The irrigators who stayed found themselves victims of the so-called Swiss cheese effect—forced to pick up the costs once borne by the irrigators who sold their water to the Commonwealth. This was confirmed by the Central Irrigation Trust in South Australia's Riverland region, which told the committee inquiry into this bill:

We lost 180 farms across our network in no planned way. They left, and those that remained had to pick up the additional costs and will continue to pick that up into the future.

When you look at the Central Irrigation Trust's multi-million-dollar electricity bills, which must be paid to pump and pressurise the water in their system, you might begin to appreciate the enormous cost of water reform that will not end with the completion of the Basin Plan. Labor and the Greens don't care about these impacts. They despise farmers and they despise the country communities which do not vote for them. That's why they want to remove the cap on water buybacks with this bill. That's why they want to use buybacks to recover the additional 450 gigalitres. And that's why they're effectively removing the positive or neutral socioeconomic test on recovering this water, because they could not care less what happens in electorates where their vote is in the toilet.

One Nation opposes all of it. We will never support more buybacks from desperate irrigators because we've seen for ourselves the devastation they've caused in river communities. We will not support any change to the cap on buybacks. We will not support any reversal of the outcomes of the Northern basin review, which confirmed the negative socioeconomic impacts of water reform and sensibly reduced water recovery by 70 gigalitres. We will not support any removal of watering down of the socioeconomic test on water recovery.

This was put in place to help ensure the economic and social sustainability of river communities because it was acknowledged water reform was most definitely going to cause harm—and it did cause harm. You can see it for yourself—from Saint George to Menindee to Mildura, right across the Murray-Darling Basin—in the clothes shops, on the main streets, in the dead orchards and vineyards, in the deserted schools and, tragically, in local cemeteries. Labor and the Greens deliberately caused this harm. They are responsible for the cost in lives and livelihoods their anti-farming policies have created. And now they've teamed up to deliberately cause more of this harm to the farmers and country communities they hate. In the long term, it will do little for the environmental health of the river but it will make our grocery bills a lot more expensive.

This bill also seeks to implement some changes recommended in the Water market reform: final roadmap report. The value of water traded in the basin continues to rise every year and is approaching $5 billion annually. I have always had strong concerns about the separation of water from land and how this enables speculation and profiteering. I have always had strong concerns about foreign ownership of Australian water for trading purposes and the lack of transparency around it. It's estimated that about 20 per cent of traded Murray-Darling water is foreign owned. It's only an estimate, because the facts are being hidden from the Australian people.

In one important aspect, I support water trading between irrigators. The basin is a big place in which some parts can experience low flows and others can experience higher water availability at the same time. Water trading allows some flexibility during times of drought, improving the sustainability and resilience of farm businesses and irrigation industries, but there must be some limits.

One Nation wants an annual cap on the value of water trades. We want to make sure that only irrigators with thirsty crops are able to trade it as needed. We support greater transparency measures, compliance and enforcement powers, and information sharing powers involving the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and the Bureau of Meteorology. We strongly support provisions that stop insider trading and market manipulation. We support broader information about trades being collected and published, but we note this measure falls short because you would not identify who owns the water being traded, including foreign owners. I know, because I have tried to obtain this information only to have the door shut in my face.

The very idea that foreigners own our water, our primary farming land or any property in Australia is obscene to most Australians. One of the largest water entitlements in the basin, Cubbie Station, is majority owned by a Chinese company. They control enough water to fill more than 90 per cent of Sydney Harbour. Does China allow Australians reciprocal property and water ownership rights in China? Of course not, and this is fundamentally wrong and unfair.

The other issue of water ownership goes to the Greens's deal with Labor on this bill. While I don't have an issue with some existing environmental water being used for Indigenous cultural purposes, I outright oppose water being taken from irrigators and just given to Aboriginal land corporations to make money. This industry, which is rife with corruption and nepotism that prevents support from getting to the people who really need it, already gets up to $40 billion per year from taxpayers. That's more than enough.

As I said during the referendum debate, Australia is a democracy where there can only be equal rights for all and special rights for none. It's the only way that's free and the only way that's fair. We won't be supporting this deal between Labor and the Greens, the parties which are attacking Australian farmers on multiple fronts. Seven-hundred gigalitres—that's the bare minimum that will be taken directly from irrigators and river communities if this disgusting deal sneaks through the Senate. This will absolutely decimate irrigators and river communities, which have already sacrificed too much in water, jobs, businesses and lives to the Basin Plan. Enough is enough.

Labor-Greens environmental Marxism, which puts the interests of fish and frogs and birds and trees ahead of Australian human beings, must be held accountable for the disasters it is creating. It must be stopped before it's too late. We have the opportunity here to show farmers and regional Australians that they still have some support in this parliament. One Nation stands with our farmers, with our irrigators and the basin communities against this direct attack on their very survival.