Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Water Amendment (Restoring Our Rivers) Bill 2023. I've spoken in relation to water policy many times over the years in this chamber. In fact, one of the first bills that I contributed on as a new senator in this place was the Water Bill 2007. I was proud to be sitting as a new backbencher on the government side in 2007 as Malcolm Turnbull and John Howard brought forward the water bill. It was a time of critical drought and water shortages which placed immense pressure on my home state, South Australia, and on so many communities right around the Murray-Darling Basin. The Water Act, as it passed through this place, has proven to be one of the most important and most successful—I'll come back to that—but also one of the most difficult reforms that I have seen through this place.

In many of the contributions, I'm sure I have reflected on the great old Mark Twain quote:

Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over.

That is well and truly evident when it comes to the Murray-Darling. It has not been evident just in the last couple of years. It has not been evident just in the last decade or two. It has been evident throughout the European settlement history of Australia. Throughout that period, the federation debates were interspersed with arguments about how water is treated in our Constitution and whether there would be a role for the Commonwealth in leading water policy—particularly the management of the Murray-Darling Basin—or whether management would be retained by the states. In those debates, it was ultimately resolved to leave it with the states. The debates at that stage were more about river transport and navigation up and down our river systems.

But, of course, as the years went by, debates turned to the management of the river systems, flow regulation, issues of water storage, irrigation licensing and entitlements and, ultimately, environmental management. Throughout that time, the state led and state empowered approach embedded in our Constitution led to slightly more cooperative arrangements between the states, then to federal structures being put in place and then, finally, in 2007, to the Water Act being legislated through this parliament. It provided for a federally legislated architecture, melding Commonwealth law under international obligations with different federal agreements and maintaining certain residual state powers and responsibilities.

The Murray-Darling Basin legal framework and regulatory framework is a complex web and intersection. It requires, still, the cooperation of all of the different jurisdictions involved: the Commonwealth and the five different state and territory jurisdictions. It is on that score that I see the biggest concern and the biggest failing in the way the Albanese government has approached the bill that is before us. That's because their approach has lost the support of all of those jurisdictions. In losing Victoria's support and willingness to cooperate—and in imperilling it, potentially, after today's announcement of further amendments with the Australian Greens—they imperil that support from other states. We risk, potentially, seeing one of the great reforms and initiatives of Australian environmental management, water management and agricultural management undone because of the critical framework of cooperation between jurisdictions falling apart.

Why do I say this is and has been a successful reform, when all I hear from those opposite, from the Greens and from elsewhere, is a tale of alleged nondelivery? Unfortunately, for political purposes, there has been a conscious decision over the last couple of years to focus on a relatively small additional component of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan that was not part of the plan recommended and adopted but was an addendum to the plan at the time. When the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, as required under the Water Act, was finally brought to this parliament as a piece of regulation, it recommended some 2,750 gigalitres—or, for those who don't do giga-babble, some 2,750,000,000 litres of water entitlement—being recovered for environmental flows across the Murray-Darling Basin. That had been a long, scientifically driven process, one informed by community consultation, seeking to try to strike the balance of ensuring that extractions from our nation's largest river system were sustainable for the long term and that we still had the farming, agriculture and food and fibre industries that depend upon the river viable into the future.

That development of the plan saw much angst, and I lived through much of that angst and visited many of the communities both in my home state and upstream during that time. And during that time it became very clear to me, when I visited those communities, that you've got to be willing to say difficult things downstream and upstream and be consistent in all places. I've stood in Griffith, in Deniliquin and in upstream communities in northern New South Wales and southern Queensland, and explained why South Australia's Lower Lakes deserve to have freshwater flow, why they should not be purely saltwater and why the river should not be cut off at the end of the channel of the River Murray. I've equally stood in Goolwa, in Adelaide and in river communities in South Australia, and justified the existence of crops, like rice and cotton and other seasonal plantings, that provide a unique addendum to the permanent plantings and enable more efficient use of water and, from that, more efficient agricultural production across the basin. None of those have been easy conversations either downstream or upstream, but it's about being consistent with all those communities and trying to explain the different perspectives that exist.

Another great Mark Twain quote when it comes to water management is, 'Wherever you stand on a river system, everyone upstream is a thieving bastard and everyone downstream is an undeserving swine.' That is in some ways a reflection on human nature. But, importantly, when you are looking to try to share a finite resource like river flows in a water management regime, you've got to ensure that you are being upfront with all about the environmental needs such as those of the Lower Lakes or about the economic realities such as the benefits of seasonal plantations like rice or cotton.

So the Murray-Darling Basin Plan was adopted, with its 2,750-gigalitre target. But, as a compromise in the politics of the time, there was also an addendum of some additional 450 gigalitres being sought—but with strict conditions applied, particularly as they related to there being no socio-economic detriment to communities as a result of the acquisition of that water. It was a balanced negotiation between the state government of my home state, who wanted the extra water, and the state governments of other states, who wanted to ensure that communities didn't face the peril of losing their economic basis, their economic lifeline of water, to sustain those communities. Of course, the first task—the biggest task, the overwhelming task—was to recover the 2,750 gigalitres and to ensure that that adjustment, as had been scientifically recommended under the Murray-Darling Basin Plan to ensure sustainable extractions and river flows, was actually achieved. Sadly, nobody seems to talk about that now.

The Water Act established a new entity known as the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder. That entity, the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder, now has some 2,800, nearly 2,900, gigalitres of entitlement available to it. The Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder holds 2,888,695,000 litres of water entitlement. That entitlement has been recovered by governments—Labor and coalition—from farmers and from irrigation communities through system upgrades, investment in infrastructure and some buybacks, but it has been recovered in a massive total sum. The difficulty of that adjustment has been huge and has come at huge cost to the Commonwealth budget. But we should be celebrating the fact that that has been achieved and that that major bipartisan, cross-jurisdictional undertaking has seen a massive amount of water recovered for the Murray-Darling Basin that is now actively managed by the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder, each and every day of the year, in their decisions and their actions to create environmental watering events that support fish breeding, bird breeding, landscape enhancement and a whole range of crucial environmental outcomes that do provide, for the river and the system and the communities, a healthier outcome right across that system.

This is of a far greater scale than the 450 gigalitres that is the sole topic of debate. We have the Minister for the Environment and Water, Tanya Plibersek, other Labor ministers, Greens senators and others who only talk about how little of the 450 gigalitres has been recovered and never acknowledge the fact that the overwhelming majority of the 2,750 gigalitres has been recovered and that additional infrastructure works and management changes have recovered the bulk of the rest, ensuring that, as a country, we have actually delivered the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. That is what has occurred, and we should be proud not only of it but of the reforms and changes that it's achieving. And we should be grateful to the communities who have borne the pain of adjustment and have worked tirelessly in the delivery of infrastructure upgrades.

The approach this government has taken is, firstly, to basically dismiss the huge achievement that has been undertaken in favour of focusing purely on the addendum that was intended to exist to that achievement. Secondly, their approach has been to break the consensus of jurisdictions that has helped us deliver that huge achievement of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and, thereby, risk the cooperation for the future. Tragically, in their pursuit of this, that consensus across jurisdictions has been broken because of the abandonment of the very commitment that Tony Burke gave as water minister back in the previous Labor government that that additional 450 gigalitres—that addendum to the Basin Plan—would be achieved only by means without socioeconomic detriment to communities.

The coalition, noting that we support some parts of this bill around timing and other factors, were willing to work with the government, as long as they maintained that no socioeconomic detriment test, as Tony Burke had inserted it in the first place. We were willing to work with them if they maintained reasonable restrictions on buybacks so that they weren't hollowing out irrigation districts but instead had a strategic approach to water recovery. We were willing to see the passage of this bill, because of the reasonable requests around timing and other factors in it, if the government was going to be reasonable in sticking to some of the safety nets that had been put in place in terms of the delivery of the addendum to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. Sadly, the government has chosen the path of doing a deal with the Greens. That will only further jeopardise the cooperation of jurisdictions like Victoria and potentially others. It will only create further division in communities. It will, tragically, imperil irrigation districts, which is why even in my home state they are opposed to it. And, of course, it ignores the great success that has been the core of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and its delivery to date.