Kerrynne Liddle (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Child Protection and the Prevention of Family Violence) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak against the Water Amendment (Restoring Our Rivers) Bill 2023 in its current form.

The coalition cannot support this bill without amendments. The proposed bill is a rewrite of the original Basin Plan, which, importantly, was intended to balance economic, social and environmental outcomes. This legislation involves a cap on buybacks. The minister has proven that Labor puts its own lazy interests first. It is lazy, lazy policy. As a senator for South Australia, I'm particularly focused on the impacts of this bill on river communities in South Australia and those that rely on the river to exist. I'm talking about many communities along the river in South Australia, like Renmark, Berri, Loxton and Waikerie in the Riverland, and Murray Bridge and Mannum in the Mid Murray, right through to towns along the Coorong and Lower Lakes to Goolwa, near the Murray mouth. These communities are the lifeblood of my state, and contribute to making South Australia the great state that it is. These communities support farmers, irrigators, tourism operators and service providers. And then there are the workers that they employ. Remember the workers that Labor say they stand for? Or maybe they're just not the workers you care about, Labor, because they're not likely to be union affiliated workers. The people in these industries that rely on the river matter to me.

Where is the work? Where is the modelling that tells of the social and economic impact of Labor's grand Basin Plan? Why is the cost of this bill undisclosed? As Australians continue to hurt under Labor's rising cost of living, this decision by the Greens and Labor will only add to that pain. We will all see the impact at the supermarket checkout. Remember the cost-of-living pressures? Less water to grow and produce fruit and vegetables, cotton and farm cattle, will affect the amount of production, which will, in turn, increase the value and cost of commodities which will be paid for by Australian families. Labor almost always forgets about the flow-on effects.

And Labor ignores the end users. Between 20 November 2022 and February this year, South Australian river communities were affected by the largest flood since 1956 and the third-highest flood ever recorded in South Australia. There was an unprecedented number of impacted homes, shacks, businesses and infrastructure. River communities are still recovering. Labor may not have seen or heard them from inner city Sydney, Melbourne or suburban Adelaide, but they were hurting. I saw the houses along the river boarded up, some underwater, and others just trying to stop the flooding. I saw the farmers taking their stock to higher ground and losing vital fodder to the river, even for some time after the water had receded.

River Murray tourism was particularly impacted, like the popular river houseboat industry and environmental tourism that takes canoeing tours. Those who could survive are just getting back on their feet. Without the Victorian Labor government signing up to the new Basin Plan agreement underpinning this bill, it's not really a basin plan. Extended time frames to deliver the Murray-Darling Basin Plan are welcome. However, this Labor government's removal of the social and economic neutrality test on recovering the additional 450 gigalitres and resorting to buybacks is a handbrake on that bipartisanship. It was not the coalition who wrote in the Basin Plan that it must only be pursued if it then delivers positive or neutral social and economic outcomes. That was actually Labor. The coalition, in government, honoured the criteria written by now Labor minister Tony Burke in 2012 and worked with the Murray-Darling Basin Ministerial Council, at the time made up evenly of Labor and coalition members, to develop the social and economic test which was then agreed in 2018.

But everything, it seems, is different when Labor is in government. Ponder this example of Minister Burke speaking on ABC Country Hour in October 2012, leaving no-one in any doubt as to what the Basin Plan was about, when he said: 'The rule is that the additional 450 gigalitres can only happen through methods that have no downside, social or economic.' So that's the rule, and that's why none of this money could be used for general tender buyback rounds or anything like that, because the authorities reached a very strong conclusion that, if you did it through a general buyback, you'd get downsides for the local community. So what's changed other than who's in charge of the Treasury benches? That would be what you call a backflip.

This government's bill is a major rewrite of the Basin Plan. It includes a last-minute deal with the Greens to get it over the line by including $100 million for First Nations people to participate in water negotiations. There is no strategy or plan as to how the money will be spent. The coalition had committed funding to specifically include Indigenous people and organisations when consulting about water. $40 million was placed in trust while an agreement was to be reached about distribution. Well, guess what? With 18 months of Labor being in government, that money has not been distributed. It still sits in trust. But that's an enticing number, $100 million. It looks like a good headline. But it has not even moved to the people it's intended to benefit. Labor has no plan and no action strategy but to announce more taxpayer funding with no accountability. Announcements and outcomes are two totally different things. Labor's supposed Basin Plan fundamentally ignores the intent of the Basin Plan agreed to in 2012: to deliver a plan which would not destroy the social and economic fabric of communities and would deliver environmental outcomes, not just numbers on a page.

The then Labor government knew that buybacks hurt basin communities. We on this side of the chamber are more than concerned about the detrimental impact of water buybacks on regional communities; the Greens and Labor are obviously not. By creating a new classification of water recovery under the 450 gigalitres against which the social and economic test will not apply, the minister is effectively admitting that buybacks hurt communities, but the Greens and Labor don't care. If you don't fit their ideology, you just don't exist. The government say they will compensate communities that are impacted, but they won't say how, how the impacts will be assessed, what social and economic benchmarks will be used, or what the compensation looks like.

The real answer to this legislation is that buybacks are this government's first, second, last and only option. The millions of megalitres of water which has already been recovered for the environment over three major reforms over the past 30 years is actually having a positive impact. An exceptional combination of wet conditions plus careful use of water for the environment has created optimal circumstances for waterbird breeding across the Murray Darling Basin in 2021 and 2022, and that continues in 2023. Despite rivers running dry in the basin from 2017 to 2020—a record-breaking drought—South Australia received more than its base flow in each year of that drought. The current Basin Plan is working. With an investment in river management and complementary measures such as dealing with barriers to fish passage, invasive species like carp, cold water pollution and increasing in-stream fish habitat, we can expect to see environmental outcomes maximised while we maintain healthy and socially and economically viable communities.

As a South Australian senator, those communities are important to me, and they should be important to every single Australian. They matter. They may be downstream, but they matter. And they rely on the river because it matters to them. Sadly, this rewrite will not assist any of those communities that rely on the river.