Kate Lundy (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I table two ministerial statements relating to the reform of the Murray-Darling Basin, together with advice from the Australian Government Solicitor, and the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission.

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I move:

That the Senate take note of the documents.

This is an interesting time that we live in. It is a time of complete and utter confusion—a confusion which personifies a government which seems to have gone through more contortions on water than one would deem possible. I am fascinated to go back and read some of the statements that were given by the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. On 10 August 2010 she said she was determined to implement the plan. Again on 10 August she said, ‘I am determined we will do what is necessary to implement the Murray-Darling Basin Authority plan.’ She was going to implement the plan—until such time as they released it. Unfortunately, after they released it, what we had in our nation was a virtual riot. Throughout the Murray-Darling Basin there was evidence of complete social disharmony and a sense that the government had become completely disconnected from reality. People were terrified that a government that had brought us the ceiling insulation debacle and the Building the Education Revolution program, a government that had got us into $164 billion of gross debt and had managed to deliver to our nation the biggest deficit since Federation, was now going to start turning its particular talents to our nation’s food bowl and capacity to feed itself. The government was like a seven-year old who had decided to fix the vacuum cleaner: there it was with a sledgehammer, a couple of forks and a fire hydrant and it was going to end in absolute disaster.

And we have now seen Mr Burke completely jettison Minister Wong and the Prime Minister. Minister Burke has said, ‘It is not my plan.’ It was their plan only a matter of days before, but it is not their plan now. If it is not their plan now, it must be somebody else’s plan. They have now gone out and got legal advice to say the bleeding obvious: that they should have been looking at the triple bottom line. If they are getting that legal advice now, what were they doing when they were delivering to us this guide to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan? If the minister’s statement is correct, we now have a guide that is completely without form. It is completely inconsequential. It only answers 33 per cent of the question. It talks about the environment but does not talk about the social and economic impacts. Even the chairman of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, Mike Taylor, says it does not talk about the social and economic impacts.

I have had the privilege—and the misfortune—to go to some of the seminars that have been held and see some of the poor old bureaucrats there trying to defend the indefensible. I am dealing with a government that is completely and utterly incompetent, but the bureaucrats have been put up as bunnies to try and explain this government process. It is just like the way the Labor government is dealing with the issue of illegal entrants and the new shelter they are building for them in the Adelaide Hills: they just put up the bureaucrats out there. This is a sign of a government that just does not know what it is doing, and it has become quite dangerous. There is nothing this government can put its hand to that it is actually able to deliver—except this perverse claim that they somehow saved us from a recession. I do not quite know how they did that. I thought it might have been the minerals boom that did that. That is Mr Swan’s fig leaf, and even that is without substance. However, the reality is that this is the granddaddy of all stuff-ups—and it just gets more complicated, nefarious and nebulous by the day. Every day seems to contradict the day before it. Every day seems to bring a whole new chapter into the rolling Greek tragedy of the government’s desire to somehow reconfigure Australia’s capacity to feed itself.

What is their solution? Where are we now? Where on earth have they left us? As we speak, people are out there spending money to defend themselves against a plan which the Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities has said is without meaning. Why does the minister not go out and tell those people that they can stop spending the money to do the hydrological surveys and the surveys into the habitats which they are now doing to defend themselves against some of the ridiculous propositions that have been put up in this guide?

This guide was perverse in the extent it went in some areas. We had a situation where, a year before, people had received letters saying that even though they wanted to sell water there were no environmental assets around them—there was nothing of consequence for which the government needed to purchase water. A year later, we find the government wanting to collect back in excess of 20 per cent of the water in some of these areas—and I refer to the Macintyre Valley. Where did these environmental assets pop out of? How is it that in one year there are none and the next year you have to give up in excess of 20 per cent of the water?

Then we have the Gwydir Valley, where they say they are contributing approximately the same amount of water to the system as the Macintyre Valley. The problem with that is that the Gwydir River ends in a wetland and it is only in high rainfall years that it actually spills into the Darling. But, if you believe their report, it is a flowing river—it flows into the Darling. Then you have the position with the Moonie, where there are only about three irrigators. All of a sudden, it is one of the hardest hit rivers in the system. They are thousands of kilometres away from South Australia. You have the same situation on the Warrego. Everything about it is confusing, and this confusion has led to such resentment being built up in the Australian people.

The coalition put the plan forward, but we did not pick the players. The players are over there opposite, as picked by Minister Wong. I do not know what she is now. She must be bad cop and Minister Burke must be good cop—or is Minister Burke the patron saint of confusion? How does it all work? How do we have two people on the same side who, only a matter of months apart, have completely different views and different positions on the same subject? How can this be seen as a government that can manage our nation responsibly?

For the two million Australians who live in the Murray-Darling Basin this has really been a shock, and that shock has been conveyed through to the polls. The polls have turned against the government, because people are really scared about what the Labor government is up to. The fact that this government could have put at threat our capacity to feed ourselves as a nation is really something startling. Even the good, honest supporters of the Labor Party could not believe that this government could be that naive. Paul Howes is even out there slamming the Labor Party and slamming the plan. Your own people have turned against you.

Then there is the ridiculous proposition that 800 people are going to lose their jobs. Up to 3,000 people left Moree during the drought. There were 3,000 people who left one town. Judith Stubbs’s analysis is that between 20,000 and 30,000 people could lose their jobs because of this plan. And you said that you were going to look after working families! Is that how you do it? What did you think you were going to do to the price of groceries when this went through? What was going to happen to the capacity of our nation to feed itself? I might remind you that tomorrow the Food and Grocery Council will announce that Australia is now a net food importer. That is right: we are importing more food than we export. This would lock that situation in. This would have locked the drought in for the basin. It would have locked the drought in in a flood.

That is the sort of remarkable social engineering exercise that the Labor Party participate in—and for what purpose? What was the desire? Who drove this agenda? It could only have been the Labor Party. The Labor Party picked the committee. The Labor Party were so diligent that it took 18 months to pick the committee that delivered this to us—18 months to pick six people. That is incredible. That is a record.

So this is what we have been delivered, and this is why the Australian people have taken the Labor Party to their lowest polling figures since 1903. Since 1903 they have not been this low. The Labor Party have become so ridiculous now that even in seats in Brisbane the Greens are beating them—the Labor Party are coming third. Why have the Labor Party put themselves in this position? Because they are totally and utterly incompetent, and the Australian people are seeing them as totally and utterly incompetent. They were elected claiming that they would support regional Australia, and look what their first decision was going to do to regional Australia—destroy it! (Time expired)

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to join Senator Joyce in taking note of the ministerial statement on the Murray-Darling Basin. I welcome the ministerial statement and the release of the legal advice that was tabled by Minister Burke yesterday, but the core question that needs to be answered is: why did it take this long? Why did it have to come to this? Why have we only seen this legal advice presented at this time, which is, frankly, so late in the piece?

It is so late in the piece that it is now jeopardising a reform program that is critically important to get right for farmers, communities, the river system, environmental assets and a whole welter of people who expected that the Murray-Darling Basin reform agenda—set in train three years ago—would be delivered as set out three years ago. Instead, we have seen bungle after bungle and debacle after debacle from this government as they have failed to implement the reform agenda set out three years ago.

Having failed to deliver on the infrastructure projects that they promised and having failed to deliver a socioeconomic analysis of any decent quality in the report that was released recently, we now find that they have also allowed the Murray-Darling Basin Authority to proceed in releasing a guide to the proposed basin plan that is based on a false interpretation of the Water Act. That is the fact of the matter. The authority have been out there for the past 2½ weeks now highlighting that their interpretation of the Water Act was such that they had to give consideration to all of the environmental assets and that then precluded them from giving equal and fair weighting to the economic and social impacts of reforming the Murray-Darling Basin. That has been proven to be wrong, in the advice that Minister Burke has tabled.

It is of no surprise to any of us that it has been proven wrong, because the Water Act that the coalition proudly passed in 2007 sought to deliver the triple bottom line of social, economic and environmental balance in order to balance basin reform in a way that would leave us with a sustainable river system and sustainable basin communities that are able to produce goods for the benefit of all Australians. Somehow that balance has been thrown off course. This legal advice provides an opportunity to put it back on course. Why has it taken this long? The reason I ask is that I have sat at meetings—like Senator Joyce but at different meetings—of community consultations the MDBA has undertaken and heard the MDBA chairman Mike Taylor explaining the authority’s interpretation of the act. Mr Taylor said that he raised the interpretation of the act with the water minister, Mr Burke, at his very first meeting after Mr Burke was appointed minister, which was before the release of this guide, the document that has sparked controversy throughout the Murray-Darling Basin.

Why did Minister Burke sit on his hands for one week, two weeks, one month or six weeks—however long it was—between that first meeting and all hell breaking loose across basin communities and allow a misinterpretation of the act to stand? Why did he allow that? Why did he not say to the chairman then and there that basically every parliamentarian understood that this act was about getting a balanced, equitable and fair outcome? If the authority disagreed with that, why did he not call in the lawyers to give some decent advice after that first meeting? Indeed, why didn’t the government act sooner? I am pretty confident, from the way Mr Taylor has explained his conversations with Minister Burke, that Mr Taylor would have raised this issue with the previous minister, Senator Wong, as well. We asked that question in question time today, and I look forward to seeing the response as to when this government was first warned about the authority’s interpretation of the Water Act versus what this parliament’s understanding was and what the lawyers have said the interpretation should be.

I am pretty sure this government has known for a long period that the authority was going down the wrong path. In allowing the authority to go down the wrong path, it is the Labor government that has jeopardised the success of the process of water reform. Even if Mr Taylor did not mention this to Senator Wong prior to the election—as remarkable as that would be, given the way he has highlighted it again and again since the release of the guide and the fact that it was the topic of his very first meeting with Minister Burke—there was a warning back in March, which Senator Joyce highlighted in question time today. That warning came in the Productivity Commission’s report into the water buybacks. In that report the Productivity Commission stated:

The value people place on environmental outcomes, the opportunity cost of forgone irrigation, and the role of other inputs such as land management must also be considered. If the Water Act 2007 precludes this approach, it should be amended.

So the Productivity Commission, back in March this year, called into question the interpretation of the Water Act, but there was absolutely no action at all from the government to achieve a balanced outcome and not jeopardise the process of Murray-Darling reform.

Let’s take a look. The act talks about balancing those economic, social and environmental factors numerous times. Section 3(c) seeks to promote the use of water ‘in a way that optimises economic, social and environmental outcomes’. Section 4(2)(a) requires the MDBA to follow principles that ‘effectively integrate both long-term and short-term economic, environmental, social and equitable considerations’. Section 20(d) states that the basin plan is intended to provide for ‘the use and management of the basin water resources in a way that optimises economic, social and environmental outcomes’. Section 21(4)(b) requires that the MDBA ‘act on the basis of the best available scientific knowledge and socioeconomic analysis’ in developing the basin plan. Section 21(4)(c)(ii) expects the MDBA to have regard to ‘the consumptive and other economic uses of basin water resources’ in developing the basin plan. Ultimately, it requires that, when the basin plan is presented to the ministerial council for consideration, the MDBA must provide the ministerial council with advice on the ‘likely socioeconomic implications of any reductions in the long-term average sustainable diversion limits proposed in the basin plan. That is in section 43A(3).

It is comprehensive and it is clear—as clear as you could hope—that this act was written with the intention of getting a fair balance between economic, social and environmental considerations, and yet the government allowed the authority to charge on ahead without due regard to those objectives and details of the act. The questions remain as to why they did that and, in doing so, how much damage have they done to the water reform process in communities that are now very concerned about the credibility of the process and the credibility of the government and the authority in delivering on this process for communities that rightly deserve answers as to how it could have been so comprehensively botched. Frankly, we know the reason why it was so comprehensively botched: the Labor government simply wanted to play politics with this issue during the election campaign.

Prime Minister Gillard flew into Adelaide during the election campaign and promised to implement the independent authority’s report. That was the promise. There was no caveat about ministerial discretion—nothing of the sort. She was greeted with a front-page picture in the Adelaide Advertiserthe entire front page was taken up with a picture of Ms Gillard and the river under the banner headline ‘River Queen’. The ‘River Queen’ has turned river rat as the government has back-flipped on that election promise.

Senator Wong went out there and gleefully sold Ms Gillard’s promise in the days afterwards and said, ‘The cap will ultimately be set by the independent authority.’ She said, ‘This is a government that is prepared to back the independent authority in its determination on what the rivers need.’ What we have seen is that this was nothing more than electoral posturing by the Labor Party. They went in, they made whatever reckless promises they thought they could to try to win the election, and now they have back-flipped on all of those. It is back to ministerial discretion as the final power, as it should have been all along. We said time and again: this river system deserves a good plan, not just any plan, and it deserves the balance that was put in the act, and the government should have known that from day one.

Bill Heffernan (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In addressing this debate on the minister’s statement, I do not intend to play politics with people’s livelihoods, and a lot of people have. I think it is a disgrace that the government has set about ambushing rural Australia. For most farmers, this has been one of the biggest ambushes at the most vulnerable period in the life cycle of a farm. Irrigated dairy farmers, having seen the rice crop, for instance, go from 1.2 million tonnes to 18,000 tonnes over three consecutive years, are physically, mentally and financially exhausted. The government has then gone out and propositioned these people with a remedy based on no known science. If the government had had the brains to say—and privately a lot of them will admit they have made a mistake—‘This is the science we are facing, this is the vagary in the science until 2050 and these are the possibilities for solutions,’ it may have made sense, instead of going out there and telling people they were going to absolutely decimate some towns, as some speakers have pointed out. During an estimates hearing the other day the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics said, ‘The figure of 800 job losses is actually net at the end of the tunnel.’ That is when Griffith shuts down and Coleambally shuts down or St George shuts down, and they all go off and get a job in a mine somewhere. But what this fails to recognise is Australia’s participation in the global food task.

You do not have to believe the science, but if your doctor said, ‘That little mark on your arm is a melanoma’, you would either get a second opinion or get it taken off, wouldn’t you, Senator Joyce? The science is saying that, by 2050 with nine billion people and by 2070 with 12 billion people on the planet, half the world’s population will be poor for water. One billion people will be unable to feed themselves by 2050 and 30 per cent of the productive land of Asia will have gone out of production. Two-thirds of the world’s population will live in that area, the food task will have doubled, and there could be 1.6 billion displaced people on the planet. The same science—and you do not have to believe the science, but you sure as hell ought to have a plan to deal with it if it is partly right or three-quarters right—is saying that by 2070 places like China will have one billion people that they will have to feed from someone else’s agricultural resource.

Here we are in Australia proposing that we are going to return a certain amount of water to the environment, and I think that is fair enough. All governments of all persuasions for a long time have made some serious mistakes in water management, and they are still making them. The present government has absolutely decided to ambush rural Australia, without regard to the impact on the global food task and Australia’s contribution to that food task. So by not having set out the problem it has absolutely set terror in some of these communities. Some of these places are absolutely, diabolically distressed now. And what are we going to do about it?

Let us put some facts on the table. No-one likes to talk about the facts. The Murray-Darling Basin has 6.2 per cent of Australia’s water run-off—23,400 gigalitres. I went to estimates the other night and asked ABARE to tell me what the assumption which they were told to model an outcome for the government was based upon. Eventually, with great struggle, we got it out of them that they were told that there would by 12,300 or 12,400 gigalitres of run-off for consumptive use. That is, they allege, a three per cent decline by 2020 in the run-off. The Murray-Darling Basin has 6.2 per cent of Australia’s run-off, 23,400 gigalitres, and 38 per cent of the run-off coming from the two per cent of the landscape between here and north-east Victoria. The minimum decline in run-off due to an increase in temperature of two degrees and a 15 per cent decline in rainfall—and the rainfall pattern is moving south, so south-west Queensland is actually going to have increasing run-off and rainfall, and rivers like the Warrego, the Paroo and the Culgoa will increase their run-off—is 3,500 gigalitres. The maximum is actually 11,000 gigalitres. We are saying, for the purposes of this plan to the never-ending journey through the forest on the water plan for the Murray-Darling Basin, that we are going to have a three per cent decline in run-off.

We do know that, if we made efficiencies between the point of extraction and the point of delivery, we could save about 2,500 gigalitres, before it gets to farm use. We have made some dreadful mistakes in the way we have allowed willy-nilly buying of water and trading of water. They separated water from the land and made it tradeable, and they then set in motion all the sleeper licences. If you are the banker and your client owes you $200,000 and they have got a sleeper licence, you are obviously going to tell him to sell the licence, which wakes up the licence, which further adds to the overallocation of the river system. Then, if you trade those licences up the river, you lose the advantage of water that is traded down the river—having the freight and environmental carriage while it is getting to a point of use down the river. All of these things are a serious mistake.

The government should have said, ‘These are the propositions that the scientists are making. This is the known science on water improvement technology and plant improvement technology.’ In the Ord area they have just got rid of their sugar and got new wonderful crops like Chia. Carnarvon, in Western Australia, is 40 times more efficient with its water use than the Ord and 20 times more efficient than the average across the Murray-Darling Basin. Instead of saying to our farmers, ‘Here is the solution: we are going to shut your town down,’ we should have said, ‘What is the solution to all of this?’—because our best farmers are our best environmentalists in Australia; they are inventive and they are resilient.

While all of this is going on, there are some fundamental problems that have not been addressed. One is: the Murray-Darling Basin plan and the Murray-Darling Basin Authority are toothless, because, while the states still have veto power, it is all a waste of time. While all of this is going on, while we are telling Griffith and Mildura and all these other towns that we are going to take all this water off them, the Queensland government, for God’s sake, is about to issue a 469 gigalitre overland flow licence to Cubbie Station. While all this is going on, we are saying, ‘Hang on, we’re going to issue another licence.’ The biggest water licence that will ever be issued in Australia is yet to be issued. It is not sustainable. The Culgoa has 1,200 gigalitres of mean flow, it has 1,500 gigalitres of on-farm storage and it has destroyed the biggest floodplain in Australia with the plan they have. There is no environmental input in the plan, and yet we are supposed to sit around and cop this.

I have to say: we have made a serious mistake. I think people ought to own up to the mistake. To that end, I intend to move a motion in this chamber to refer the matter to a committee to look at all aspects of it—including the fact that the more efficient you make your irrigation the more pressure you put on the aquifer, because a lot of the so-called waste from the irrigation is actually recharging the aquifer and, at some sections of the river, 40 per cent of the river flow is actually groundwater entering the river. We have not taken that into the calculations. We have not in the past taken into the calculations the 2020 vision for forestry and the 2.5 megalitres per hectare that is intercepted at 35 inches of rainfall by monoculture forestry. So there are a whole lot of things we ought to be dealing with.

If it is going to work, farmers will take it on—non-paddy rice is a good example. Most people do not realise that the paddy in a rice field, which is highly evaporative, is only there to moderate the temperature of the plant. You do not even have to have the water there if you have the gene modification to have the thermostat in the plant, rather than having the blanket, the insulation, of the water. So there are a whole lot of things that we can do, and I am sure Australia’s farmers will meet the task, will be productive and will feed Australia, if they are given the opportunity to do it. But the first thing we have to do is make politicians in this place—most of them have no idea—understand what the challenge is and present that challenge to the farmers and they will come up with a solution. Thanks very much.

Question agreed to.