David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

We are dealing with an update to legislation governing the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, which, it seems to me, was an ambitious but imperfect plan. It has clearly resulted in some improvements in river health in many parts of the basin, but managing a basin as a connected system is a complex undertaking. Considering the health of the basin's many environmental assets as well as the economic value of the water is full of trade-offs and contested viewpoints.

This year, I was lucky enough to visit communities in the south and north of the basin. I met with a broad range of stakeholders on those visits—irrigators, other farmers, First Nations groups, environmentalists, people who lived in towns along the river who were concerned about what water reform meant for them, and people who just genuinely loved the river and had a special connection to the river that flowed past their property or through their town.

I would like to thank Senator Davey for her engagement on water and for hosting me in Deniliquin, where we saw the Barmah choke and the Barmah-Millewa forest, then went to Menindee Lakes and saw the spectacular Macquarie Marshes by getting out on them on horseback. We then flew over big areas that still are Ramsar wetlands but look more like dry paddocks while being talked through the consequences of lack of flows around places like the marshes.

I'm grateful to the many people who engaged with me on this issue, the stakeholders who have come to Canberra, the many people who attended the two roundtables I held in Parliament House to learn more about the complexities of this issue, the people on all sides affected by this and people who have spent many decades working on either a specific part of the basin or an issue that encompasses many of the river systems.

The contentious part of this is obviously to do with water buybacks which, again, is an issue where there are many views and, rightly, concerns about what buybacks mean for communities. When water is being bought to be returned to the environment, administered by DCCEEW, who, from what I could see, are doing a fantastic job in most instances, we need to take into account what effect that has on regional communities. We know how tough so many regional communities have it when it comes to access to different services and the distances that they cover to get to school or to health care or to weekend sport—whatever it may be. We also need to ensure we maximise benefits by ensuring water is purchased in catchments where it will do the most good. Something that I heard echoed from most stakeholders is we need water in the right areas, so we need an undertaking from the government that when water is bought part of the consideration be that it's going to go into the right areas to ensure that we have healthy rivers.

Another thing I heard was concern about the focus on water quantity coming at the expense of water quality. Again, this is something we need to look at clearly. Many of these river systems need more water at the end of the day. But we need to be looking at: catchment management, farming practices along rivers, the way we are funding Indigenous rangers to get involved in river management, the way we are working with communities on riparian restoration projects and other conservation initiatives ,which we know are not just important environmentally but have huge social benefits. We've seen the data. The University of Canberra did a big study after the last big drought, looking at farmers who were engaged in Landcare or who identified as a regenerative farmer and their mental health through the drought fared a lot better than farmers who were not involved in those practices and did not have that support structure around them. There are far-reaching benefits for engaging and looking after these incredible rivers together.

Senator Thorpe just raised issues about First Nations water. Clearly, this is something that, as a country, we have to come to terms with. We saw $40 million allocated in 2018 and it has just sat there; they have not spent a cent. That is now worth probably 60 per cent of what it was worth. I welcome the announcement of $100 million for First Nations water. We have to take this seriously and ensure that there is water for First Nations people not only for cultural reasons but also for economic reasons, that there is water owned by First Nations people so that they can benefit from the water economically, so they can farm and make a profit. On top of the funding, I agree that we need to look more at the consultation and the way that the 40 or so First Nations groups in the basin are engaged and then the way that they are empowered to actually manage water and to benefit from it.

I would like to thank Senator Hanson-Young for her work on this issue for many, many years. I note that there a number of other South Australian senators for whom water at the end of the river is a huge issue, and many of them have kept this on the agenda for many, many years now.

I would like to take a few minutes to draw the attention of the Senate to part of the Murray-Darling Basin. I would argue it's an incredibly important part of the Murray-Darling Basin that has been missed by the Basin Plan. The upper Murrumbidgee has its headwaters in the Snowy Mountains and it flows past the towns of Adaminaby and Cooma and then through the ACT into Lake Burrinjuck, where it then joins the Murrumbidgee. It is in the Basin Plan. This important river has been the forgotten river. It has totally missed out on ecological improvements from the Basin Plan. It has been run by Snowy Hydro with one goal in mind, and that is to generate electricity. We have seen it starved of historical flows, with 90 to 99 per cent of its flows taken away. We saw in the last drought that it stopped flowing in the ACT, with disastrous implications for the ecological health of this river that is so loved by the people who farm and live along it and by Canberrans, who spend a lot of time walking along the river, swimming the river and enjoying its beauty.

The upper Murrumbidgee is an important source of water for towns such as Cooma and it's a backup water supply for Canberra. We know that population growth and climate change are putting increasing pressure on water supplies, on river health and, indeed, on whole catchments and on farmers in those catchments. We saw water trucked into Tharwa for drinking and for firefighting reserves.

It is this overallocation of the upper Murrumbidgee that I think needs to be addressed. We have seen decades without the political will to do this, and here we are dealing with an update of the Water Act to make good on the promises of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. That can extend the thinking and the care to the upper Murrumbidgee and the alpine rivers. The river needs more than reviews. It needs a guarantee of sufficient water. It needs a guarantee that it can continue to function.

Minister Plibersek said this morning in her joint media release with the Greens:

This is a critical time for our environment—I don't want communities to wake up one day with a dry river and know their governments could have done more.

Yesterday, I visited the upper Murrumbidgee at sunrise and was lucky enough to watch a couple of platypuses feeding. It's extraordinary to live in a place where you can do that. This is the continent that we have and that we can and should be caring for. Clearly, when it comes to these complex pieces of legislation, with trade-offs and such different views on the same issue, the thing that I would keep reminding colleagues in here is to ask: how far ahead are we looking? Are we making decisions where we can pass things on to the next generation and be proud of our contribution, with more platypus for our children to see and with healthy rivers for them to swim in, and still with water allocation for farmers? Will we work out a system where we can have these trade-offs and don't end up in ultrapolarised debate over this?

At the end of the day, we rely on these rivers for our health and wellbeing, for food and fibre and for all the emotional and spiritual connection, and we know that First Nations people have done that for tens of thousands of years. They've used the Murrumbidgee to walk up into the high country. They've met at specific places, year after year, for hundreds and hundreds of generations. While there's a huge amount of detail in this, we can't lose sight of the fact that we're part of these systems. We're part of nature and, if nature goes down, we go down with it. I thank the many people in this place who've been pushing to ensure that we can look after these rivers and also the many communities that rely on them.