Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Basin Plan 2012, made under Part 2 of the Water Act 2007, be disallowed.

I rise today to speak in favour of this motion. It is with a heavy heart that I do, because I would have preferred that we could be celebrating the passage of a plan that would have set the river up for a living future—set the river up over the next 20 years to be a system that is healthy and can sustain itself and, of course, the communities and the ecosystems that rely on it. Unfortunately, the plan as tabled by the minister earlier this week does not do this. I know the minister talks about the fact that it does, but when you look at these things the devil is always in the detail, and the devil in the detail in this plan is that we do not have the water being returned that the best available science says we need if we are to set the river up and give it a fighting chance. This plan is meant to be the blueprint for how the river system will be managed for the next 20 years, yet this plan does not even include the impacts of climate change or how to deal with the system in an increasingly drying environment.

We know that the coalition and the government have agreed to endorse this plan and pass it through this place today. This plan has had the support of the coalition to pass through this place, because it is not a plan that will save the river; it is a plan that appeases those who did not want to give back as much water as they have been greedily taking. It is not a plan that is set up to support the long-term interests of the environment. It is a plan not based on the best available science. It tries to balance interests rather than the long-term health and resilience of the basin overall.

This process has been all political, not scientific; and, unfortunately, that is backed up by the very fact that the Murray-Darling Basin Authority has not even done the modelling for its long-term forecast of the impact that this plan is going to have. The modelling that has been done has been limited and has no comparison. There is no modelling of the impact of the massive increase in groundwater extraction, which is allowed for under this plan. I know the coalition have now decided they do not like figures; that was Tony Burke, the minister, 12 months ago. The coalition have now adopted this and do not want to talk about the figures. Unfortunately, the figures do not add up to the rhetoric of the outcomes that this plan is meant to achieve.

The whole point of this plan is to set the river up for a healthy future, to get back the water that has been overallocated for generations. I stand here as a representative of my home state of South Australia. We know that, when there is less water in the system, when the drought years come, it is South Australia at the end of the system that always cops it the hardest. That is because we are at the end of the river. When there is less runoff, when there is less water in the system, the upstream states continue to take, take, take and leave basically nothing for South Australia down the end. That means, of course, that our precious environment—our Coorong, the Storm Boy country, our Lower Lakes—and the irrigators in the Riverland have to scrape by with the little amount of water that is left.

Let's not forget that South Australia takes only seven per cent of the overall water within the basin. When the drought is on, it is even less. During the millennium drought, which South Australians remember wholeheartedly and which was not that long ago, we were not even getting that seven per cent flowing across the border. We had far less than that.

As I have said, this plan as tabled today and debated this afternoon is, unfortunately, not the plan that will save the Murray-Darling Basin system. It will not give river communities, particularly in South Australia, security into the future, because it is not based on what we need to do in order to save the system. A friend of mine put it to me like this: if you have any infection and you are seriously sick and you are prescribed by the doctor a course of antibiotics yet are only given a few of those antibiotic tablets and not the whole packet, you are not going to knock that bug off. Everyone knows you need to take the entire course to get your health back on track. That is how antibiotics work. In this instance we have the minister and many others acknowledging that this system is not healthy and that we have to build resilience back into the system because it has been so crippled after decades of overallocation. We really need to realign what the environment is entitled to to keep itself going, to give itself some resilience, to keep the ecosystems alive, particularly in those harsher and drier years. And yet we are not giving the river and the environment the opportunity to do that, because we are not prepared to give it its full course of antibiotics. We are not allowing it even the best fighting chance to get its health back on track.

The best available science says we need 4,000 gigalitres. We have not been given that under this plan. We then saw modelling released by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority and backed up by Minister Burke. He flew with the Prime Minister all the way down to the Murray mouth in South Australia and said, 'Hey presto, we know now that 3,200 gigalitres will be somewhat what the river needs if we are even to try to give it a sense of being able to get healthy again and to keep it healthy.' The Greens would have been more than happy and supportive of working with the government to guarantee that minimum amount of 3,200 gigalitres, which would have kept our river red gums alive; which would have flushed out that two million tonnes of salt each year to keep the water healthy and to ensure that the water quality is good enough for domestic use, for stock use, for Adelaide to keep drinking from; which would have ensured that we could protect the iconic Coorong and Lower Lakes. But this is where the devil is in the detail. This plan does not even give us that minimum amount of 3,200 gigalitres, and that is of course why people like Senator Barnaby Joyce, who is sitting in here this afternoon, are I am sure going to stand up and tell people all about how they got a good deal for their constituents and the irrigators upstream—because they have. This plan is for the irrigators. This plan is not about protecting the environment. There are no guarantees in this plan for the water the river needs, particularly to keep South Australia going when the dry years hit. That is not the water that is guaranteed under this plan. When you add in the massive extractions of groundwater—1,700 gigalitres—that has a big impact on how much water is genuinely being returned to the river system.

The coalition do not want to talk about figures. Barnaby Joyce does not want to talk about figures.

Sue Boyce (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Please refer to members by their correct titles.

Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I apologise. The coalition senators in this place do not want to focus on the figures, and neither does the minister. It is because they do not add up. This plan is a plan to deliver less water for the environment than science says is needed. It is delivering less water for the environment than even the environment minister says is needed if we are to give the river any chance of survival.

We know that $11 billion is going to be spent on this plan, and that is why we must get it right. The motion today is about sending the plan back to the minister and saying, 'We need to get this right because, if we're going to spend $11 billion dollars, we'd better make sure it will return the amount of water to the river that will give the environment a fighting chance, that will ensure we can maintain our majestic river red gums, that will ensure we can give Adelaide healthy drinking water, that will ensure our Coorong can survive the next drought.' $11 billion—what an opportunity to implement true reform. What a fantastic challenge that we all have in this place to make sure that we can overcome the mistakes of generations past when the river was compromised over and over again for vested interests. This plan was an opportunity to get this right, but unfortunately what is before us today is not that. It is a plan that cuts the environment short and appeases those who are upstream and who never wanted this process in the first place. Senator Barnaby Joyce is going to stand up here at any moment and say: 'This is the best deal irrigators were ever going to get.' It is a bonanza for upstream irrigators because they are about to pocket $11 billion and they do not even have to give back to the river or to South Australia the water that the river really needs. The $11 billion should be setting us up for a healthy future.

The plan is a blueprint for how this system will be managed over the next 20 years, and what is on the table today locks in failure. It spends $11 billion of taxpayers' money and locks in failure. It will cost $11 billion and only achieve 57 per cent of the key targets that the plan says and the Water Act requires the plan to achieve. This is $11 billion, yet we are only going to get half of what we are meant to. We know what that means for South Australia: it means big losses in years to come because this plan does not even take into consideration climate change. It does not take into consideration the long-term effects of increased groundwater extraction. It is not a plan that has been written for the drought years—and the minister has said this himself. This plan is based on average flows. We know that when there are less than average flows things really start to bite for the environment; it is when things really start to bite for my home state of South Australia, which is located at the bottom of the system.

The Greens have moved a motion to send this plan back to the minister so that we can get it right. The minister said himself that we need 3,200 gigalitres, yet that is not what is in this plan. So let us put that in. Let us make sure that we have a minimum of 3,200 gigalitres. If that is what science says is needed, if that is what the minister believes is needed and if that is what Jay Weatherill, the Premier of South Australia, says is needed, let us do it. The Greens would be more than willing and happy to deliver a minimum of 3,200 gigalitres, because that is what even the minister says is required. But, unfortunately, that is not what is in this plan. This plan has 2,750 gigalitres. It fails half of the key environmental targets that it needs to keep the river system alive. On the table today is $11 billion, only half the job done and locked in failure for the next 20 years.

Unfortunately, it seems as though we lost the courage to manage this process when the sky opened, the rains started coming and the millennium drought broke two years ago. Two years ago, people were crying out for proper reform. Let us never go back to a situation where there were kilometres and kilometres of dry river bed, where the water was so high in saline content that it was too salty to even irrigate pasture, let alone to feed stock or to use in the houses of those communities who rely on it. Two years ago, before the millennium drought broke, people wanted urgent action and proper national reform, and they wanted a system that was fair—a system that would manage the water in the basin fairly. That courage seems to be all but forgotten today, because what we have in front of us is not a courageous plan. It is an appeasement on the part of the Labor Party to those upstream and to the coalition to allow them to continue their business as usual. There is talk of an extra 450 gigalitres that maybe some day, if they could—ooh, let's see—be added on by 2024. There are no guarantees about that. It is not in the plan; it is not locked in. The legislation before the other place does not say that it has to be delivered, even though $1.7 billion will be spent long before any water is seen.

The courage to actually do the right thing by the environment and to stop compromising the very real needs of the river have been all but forgotten by this minister, who is desperate to cut a deal with the coalition and to appease those upstream. Let us not forget that Senator Barnaby Joyce, at the height of the millennium drought, said to South Australians when they could not even drink the water in the Murray because it was so salty, when they could not even get their pumps and their pipes past the kilometres and kilometres of mud: 'Chin up. Move upstream if you don't like it.'

That is what Barnaby Joyce thinks about South Australia's predicament when there is less water in the system. That is what Senator Barnaby Joyce thinks about South Australia's opportunity for a fair go when it comes to sharing the waters of the rivers.

The Greens will continue to work to get locked in that minimum of 3,200 gigalitres. I stand here today urging the government to do the right thing, to find the courage to fix this. You do not have to cuddle up to Tony Abbott and Senator Joyce just to get this passed.

Sue Boyce (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am sorry, but once again, Senator Hanson-Young, please use the correct titles of the members. You mentioned the Leader of the Opposition and did not use his honorific.

Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I guess it depends on your definition.

Sue Boyce (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Hanson-young, you refer to members of the House of Representatives as Mr or Ms et cetera.

Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government do not have to be cuddling up to Mr Abbott and Senator Joyce just to appease the upstream states. If they are truly into reforming the system—saving our river and doing what is right by the environment, setting us up for a future we can rely on for the next 20 years—then they should be putting in place a plan that will save the river for the future, based on the best available science, backed up by the modelling, including the realistic impacts of climate change, not carrying on with the Nationals' approach of head in the sand and ignore, ignore, ignore, that everything will be all right, somebody else will look after it. That is the response of the Nationals to anything in relation to the environment in years to come. It is unfortunate because they are cutting their own communities short by doing it.

What an opportunity to get reform right is $11 billion to ensure that we start rebalancing and paying back to the river the water that has been ripped away from it for so long. As I said at the outset, I stand here with a heavy heart that we have not been able to convince the government to do the right thing by the river, the right thing for South Australia and to stand by their commitment to proper reform. What is in this plan is a dud. It does not protect the river system for the future, it does not set us up for resilience and it is going to waste $11 billion in the meantime. It needs to go back and it needs to be fixed. The Greens will continue to fight for that to happen.

David Feeney (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government does not support this disallowance motion and expresses its deep disappointment that the Greens are engaging in a deliberate strategy to delay the achievement of what is a significant environmental reform for this critical riparian system.

On Monday the Water Act Basin Plan 2012 was tabled in the Senate. This instrument brings into effect the Murray-Darling Basin Plan announced by Minister Burke last week. The plan brings to an end 100 years of disagreement. The plan restores our rivers to health, supports strong regional communities and sustains food production. The plan implements the Murray-Darling Basin Authority's recommendation to return 2,750 gigalitres of surface water to the environment. The Murray-Darling Basin Authority has consulted widely in the development of the plan. The government is acutely aware of the range of views expressed in those consultations. As was said in the Senate last week, the foundation for this reform is unequivocally and unapologetically to restore the river system to health. The plan takes the pathway that is most sensitive to basin communities.

The biggest risk to this historic plan is the disallowance of the plan in either chamber of the parliament. All Australians concerned about the health of this great river system and the wellbeing of basin communities need to promote to their representatives the importance of supporting this plan. The river system cannot survive any further delay. As senators know, the plan is already law unless of course the disallowance motion is successful here and now. Senators need to be aware that, if this plan is disallowed, the future of the Murray-Darling Basin will continue to stagnate and deteriorate. Redrafting the plan would take years. The processes under the Water Act 2007 would require a new public comment period, two rounds of ministerial consultation and the authority's consideration of the minister's suggestions. Even if the plan was not changed, it could not be reintroduced as a disallowable instrument for another six months.

The Murray-Darling Basin is too important to be used as a platform for political posturing. The Greens party does not have a commitment to sustainability. It is a party that is only committed to conservation at any price. The Greens judge success on what they stop, not on what they protect. They had a chance to support an emissions-trading scheme to address climate change three years ago but urged against it. They just want coalmining to stop. The question is: what will the Greens allow? They do not consider the economic or social implications at all. They do not take a triple bottom line approach. They just have a single bottom line. If there is an environmental impact, it is bad. To paraphrase former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, they represent the impotence of purity.

The Murray-Darling Basin Plan has been crafted by expert advice and years of consultation. The Greens party need to comprehend that they live in a pluralistic democracy. If you have the option where everyone's interests can be considered and not just simply your own, that is in fact a virtuous thing.

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

Isn't it amazing the sort of empathy you get from someone whose office is at level 7, 147 Pirie Street, when they want to talk about the basin. If you have so much empathy for the basin, Senator Hanson-Young, here is my suggestion: get your office and move there.

Show a real desire to actually put your actions and your reality on the same page, because you have not done it. And that is what is so frustrating: when we are in the basin and we have the profits, you ride in from somewhere else to shut down our communities.

At level 7, 147 Pirie Street you cannot see Dirranbandi—

Sue Boyce (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Senator Joyce, you should address your remarks through the chair, not to individual senators.

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

Certainly, Madam Acting Deputy President. At level 7, 147 Pirie Street, it is rather hard to understand what happens at Dirranbandi when the town shuts down. It is rather difficult to understand how you go to the people of Collarenebri and leave them in destitution. It is rather difficult to understand and comprehend what happens at Coleambally.

No, at level 7, 147 Pirie Street, you can say some wonderful things and make some marvellous gestures—the faux empathy, the grimace and the emotive pause—but they are not fair dinkum. It just goes to show you how absolutely lacking real empathy is, because people who believe in things actually go and place themselves exactly where those things are.

I have lived, and have always lived, in the basin—we live with the people. There is this assertion that it is all about—as Senator Hanson-Young said before—multibillion-dollar irrigators. I will tell you about the houses where some of these multibillion-dollar irrigators live. If you go to the town of Dirranbandi you can pick up a house for 50 grand, hardly the sort of opulence that I think you could understand at level 7, 147 Pirie Street.

We have heard that, of course, it is about the community. What community? If you are going to look after the community come and live in the communities. Come and think that there is more to this: it is about, and has always been about, a triple bottom line—an environmental outcome, which the coalition put the money on the table for. But there is also the social outcome and there is also the economic outcome, and that goes beyond, as has rightly been said, just a play by the Greens to divide and destroy, and to talk in these riddles that they never, ever have to deliver on. They never, ever have to live with the consequences of their decisions.

We have worked with the government because we understand exactly how incredibly important this is. It would have been absolutely incredibly easy to mount a demonstration—gosh knows, I have done them before—up and down through the basin. It would have been easy. The trouble is that it would also have been pyrrhic because it will not actually have brought a result.

And I apologise for wanting to look after people. I apologise for wanting to put people on the same level as frogs and newts and swamps. I apologise that when you walk into a town people actually talk about their futures. I am sorry that I do not have the Green ethos where we can just flush them all down the toilet. I am sorry that I do not have that! I have never actually managed to be able to do that.

And the talk in all those metaphors—'greedily taking'! Who is 'greedily taking'? The paper shop in Moree? Are they 'greedy takers'? Or maybe it is the person who is a teacher in Goondiwindi? Are they another 'greedy taker'? Or maybe it is the person who is trying to start a motel in Forbes—are they another 'greedy taker'? Is that who these people are? The 2.2 million people who live in the basin, are they just all greedy? They are all greedy because they want a future!

We talk about wanting to be the food bowl of South-East Asia. Well, the first thing we actually have to be is the food bowl of Australia. That is a good start. But there is this sort of nihilist philosophy that the Greens revel in; this nihilist idealism where success is destruction, where success is Smithton in Northern Tasmania, with 30 per cent unemployment. And the Greens are cock-a-hoop—they have kicked a goal. They have kicked a goal when people are poor and they can revel in the benefaction of the welfare state. They are from a community that is completely removed from the disaster that they cast on the people around them. And that is supposed to be some sort of beneficial outcome.

The coalition has worked with the Labor Party. We have worked not just at a federal level but at a state level over a long period of time, and we have tried our very best. To be honest, we have stayed out of the media, we have trusted one another and we have worked for an outcome because we know that the ramifications for the people who we represent of not coming to that outcome would be disastrous. They would then be at the behest of the whims of the Greens, represented by Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, who said at the start that she wanted 7,600 gigalitres to be taken from the basin. That was her kick-off point—7,600 gigalitres—which would absolutely and utterly send people up and down the river destitute, and their final cause—the issue du jour—to return us all to eating beetles and nuts on the forest floor would be one step closer.

I can assure you that there are people who are not happy with this plan in towns. I can assure you that we are quelling resentments as they ring up our offices, saying, 'We feel uncertain. We are unsure. We are taking you, the Australian government and the responsible parties'— who actually have to live by the decision and even though they have had their differences—'in this chamber on trust'. We are responsible for it. They are taking us on this incredible thing called trust. They are trusting us not to be perverse in the outcomes that we bring into their lives. Gosh knows, that is what we hope to do.

The reality is that whether it is the coalition or the Labor Party we have to live with the decisions as well. It actually has to go beyond the spruiking; you actually have to pay for them. You have to live with them, you have to deliver them and you have to go back to the people and be responsible for them. It is all very well to be the marginal party with the nihilist ideals that appeases a constituency with the sweat, the blood and the reality that someone else has to live with.

They want 3,200.

By the end of this, through the course of state actions and the Living Murray agreement, there will be more than 3,200. There will be 3,700. There has already been 950 delivered. We have got 2,750 here. We will have 3,700 gigalitres that, over the course of a range of programs, will have been delivered back to the river. There is still the capacity for a five per cent movement of total extractions, a capacity of 710, that is still there. We are still in the process, within that upside, of allowing extra money to go towards 450 gigs of that five per cent limit. There has been an immense amount of movement.

All that this is really about is that the Greens have said, 'The Labor Party are there and the coalition are there, so we'll sit over here and throw rocks.' That is their process. Senator Hanson-Young has had a range of numbers. She started with 7,600, then it was 4,000, now it is 3,200—and then she accuses us about numbers. We have got a number: 2,750. It is there—2,750, with the potential of five per cent up or five per cent down, and with 450 gigs going towards the upside to actually finance it.

The other issue that has to be dealt with from the person from level 7, 147 Pirie Street, Adelaide—Senator Sarah Hanson-Young—is about when the drought was on. The millennium drought did not just happen in Adelaide or the Lower Lakes, it happened across the whole basin. The reason there was no water at the lower end of the system is because there was no water at the upper end of the system. I can prove that because people in my area went broke—that is, the banks came in and kicked them off their place. I am not going to name those people here but I could go through quite a list of them. They went through humiliation for trying to do something for this nation. They did what this nation asked of them: they went west, they scratched out a living in the dirt, they borrowed in some instances tens of millions of dollars, it did not rain because the drought happened and they went broke. They are now live with the humiliation of not having a house, of living with sons and daughters. What does Senator Sarah Hanson-Young call them? Greedy. They are greedy people. Greedy for trying to do the right thing by our country; terrible, shocking people trying to feed people, trying to clothe people, going without, going through the privations of trying to start a business. And what do they get accosted with? They are greedy. A nation of people who—if that is what they call them—are greedy like that, who make the sacrifice for our nation, will make our nation a great place and will actually build our nation.

It is such an absolute insult from someone who, good luck to them, lives with the benefaction of the taxpayers' dollar in the job we have here, in an office in the middle of a town, where the closest they will ever get to the basin on a day-to-day basis is when they turn on the tap—possibly. That is about as close as they get. For them it is a philosophy, it is an ideal, it is over the hill—but it makes sense when you get down to the manic monkey cafe to bang on about this. If you can just create a bit of resentment, create a bit of hate, create a bit of division and then build on that, you can be the real destroyer, the total nihilist for which, if our nation followed that path, it would be completely and utterly led to a social and economic oblivion.

We are working to try to come to a resolution because it is the responsible thing to do. And it is an absurdity to think that there has not been a movement that hurts us in what we do. I will explain to you some of the hurt that we have had so far. When they purchased the water from Twynam's, from John Kahlbetzer, they basically made the town of Collarenebri defunct. It has no water licence. There is no reason for there to be a cotton gin anymore. What do we say to those people? What is Senator Sarah Hanson-Young's message to those people? What is it? Can they move down to level 7, 147 Pirie Street and get a job? Maybe we can send the whole town down there.

We have got to realise that when the drought was on it was not just a drought for one corner of the basin, it was a drought for the whole basin. It was privation for the whole basin. I know that because I live there. My office is there. My office is on the river. My business is on the river. My property is in the basin. Our family are not irrigators. In fact, we are below irrigators, but we acknowledge that that is part of the economy because above us is a town called Cunnamulla and they have got a little bit of irrigation. Good luck to the people of Cunnamulla—they have a bit of irrigation so the standard of living has slowly advanced.

This is what terrible people we are in my own town of St George. In the town of St George, with about 4,000 people, agricultural output on a yearly basis is between three-quarters of a billion and a billion dollars every year that they put towards our nation—these terrible greedy people. Year in, year out, they are putting it towards our nation. It is actually how we make money. These people make money and then they pay taxes, and they go without and they live out in the sticks, and with their taxes they pay for a whole range of things that this nation needs. One is level 7, 147 Pirie Street—that is one of the things they pay for. What they get for that is the prophet from over the horizon preaching to them about how evil they are, how greedy they are.

The approach of the Greens, after the nihilist destruction, is now to destroy the plan. It is their form of 'burn the plan'. It is their little day of destroying things: come out, wreck the joint. I suppose then we can all cop it. As they say, we will 'just have to cop it'. And we have ridiculous things like the metaphor they draw: 'We have to take our full course of antibiotics.' As prescribed by who? As prescribed for what purpose?

Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Science.

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

The full course of antibiotics from these people? Not one of them is prepared to live in the area they are talking about. What total and utter hypocrites.

With their ideas, not only would we have social and economic destruction but also in some areas a complete compromise of the economic infrastructure—of bridges, of roads, of easements. In some areas it is not even possible to move the water that they require. It just does not have that capacity because of natural choke points, or choke points put in by man such as those other terrible things of civilisation, bridges—we cannot have bridges anymore.

And what is the final goal? What do they want? Why don't we just remove every piece of infrastructure? This is the peculiar thing: the water that is going to provide the environmental outcome in many instances is going to come from man-made structures and, if those man-made structures were not there, wouldn't it be hard to deliver the water? If we deliver water in a drought, the water will probably come from man-made structures—those evil man-made structures. They will be delivering the water in order to deliver an environmental outcome. Surely a purist could not possibly take water from those man-made structures that are actually going to have the capacity to deliver an outcome that sustains the environment!

People who live in the basin, and that goes beyond people who are irrigators—the townspeople, the people who live in the weatherboard and iron, the brick and tile, who put their rubbish out on a Monday or Tuesday night, who live in streets like mine—are put at risk because of a nihilist philosophy that wants no more than to destroy things, and then has the hide, basically, to not have to live with their decisions. They foist on other people their philosophy and outcomes. They are not prepared to pay the price, but they are prepared to take the cheque. They are prepared to live by the benefaction of a taxpayer's dollar whilst they destroy the economy that actually provides it.

It would be interesting to know exactly what their purpose is. Maybe the real frustration about this is that through the Christmas period—because this issue after many years of work is coming to a conclusion—one of those final things that the Greens are out there to destroy will not be there. They will have to find some other thing to destroy. They have destroyed the timber industry, they have destroyed the fishing industry, and they want to destroy the irrigation industry. They want to destroy our capacity to feed ourselves, and with their ideas surrounding the excesses of the carbon tax, maybe they just want to destroy the economy, full stop. They are running out of things to destroy. What other things can they get rid of? What is the next stage of nihilism for them? When will we hear that they are actually trying to create something that is a reasonable expression of something with a sustainable economic base? Do we just have to put up with the position that every time Senator Sarah Hanson-Young turns up it is about something that people in the Murray-Darling Basin live in fear and trepidation of? They know that the only utterances that will come from the Australian Greens are ones that are going to make their lives—the lives of people whose socio-economic condition is vastly inferior to that of so many people in capital cities—more difficult, and that the delivery of the Greens will take them from poor to destitute.

Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to support my colleague's move to try to secure an improvement in the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. People listening might be excused for thinking, after the contribution we have just heard from Senator Joyce, that the Senate was engaged in street theatre. I think that people in the National Party would be quite disappointed to think that in an opportunity to debate the merits or otherwise of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, all we had was a rant and an attack and no real engagement with the merits or otherwise of the plan.

Contrary to the view that somehow the Greens do not have to live with the decisions that we make, it is in fact because we have to live with the decisions that this parliament makes that we think very carefully about the positions we take and the consequences of those decisions for everyone who comes after us, and not just this generation but future generations.

I go to the first point: why are we having a Murray-Darling Basin Plan? It is an attempt to save the river. Australians love the Murray-Darling. They love the river system and they have been distraught in recent years to see that the mouth of the Murray is not open and that there are high levels of salinity in the Lower Lakes. Right down the river system communities have been under enormous pressure as a result of the river failing. It has been failing because of the drought, and the drought occurred in part because of climate change.

And we now have a Leader of the National Party who is refusing to acknowledge that climate change is real and urgent. We are seeing reports coming out daily that it is far worse than anyone anticipated and now we have a Murray-Darling Basin Plan which fails to take account in any shape or form of the climate predictions that we are going to live with in Australia. How can you save a river system if you do not anticipate the changes in the climate and the impacts of those changes on the river system? How can you genuinely say that you are interested in the livelihood or wellbeing of people who live in a river basin if you are not taking into account the health of the river that will sustain them into the future? That is the point here.

The figure of 7,600 gigalitres came from the Murray-Darling Basin Authority and from the Wentworth Group. Both of them came out and said that if you want to restore the river to its optimum level of health, that is the amount of water that needs to be in the river system. It was not some extreme group of people who said that; it was the Murray-Darling Basin Authority and the Wentworth Group. They actually take a science based approach. That is something the National Party does not take. Senator Joyce has made it quite clear that he does not believe in climate change and he does not believe in carbon pricing to reduce emissions. He obviously does not think it is appropriate that the Murray-Darling Basin Plan anticipates the needs of the river in a climate scenario. The amount of water that this plan has in it—2,750 gigalitres—is actually only for so-called average years. It does not take into account the needs of the river system in anything other than average years. I suggest that there is no such thing as average years any more in a world that is rapidly responding and having to adapt to the climate crisis.

Senator Feeney would suggest that the Greens are politically posturing. His extraordinary example of that is that the Greens voted against the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. Indeed, we did. We did it because we knew we would have to live with the consequences. If it had gone through and Senator Feeney had his wish, Australia would now have a five per cent reduction target and the carbon price in Australia would be $1.25, the equivalent of one euro, with no institutional capacity to change the target. What a complete nonsense that would be. We would have no Clean Energy Finance Corporation, no Renewable Energy Agency, no Biodiversity Fund, no Carbon Farming Initiative and so on and so forth. I think Senator Feeney should reflect on the fact that all he is doing is highlighting the complete embarrassment that this country would have had for carbon pricing if the stupidity that was engaged in at that time had been allowed to stand. Equally, in relation to living with the decisions you make—and I draw this to the attention of both Senators Feeney and Joyce—there are the decisions you made on asylum seekers as well. You raced in here and lectured the Greens about standing here saying, 'We can't compromise on fundamentals. We actually have to look at what might really save lives.' Now we are living with the consequences of that stupidity.

I come back to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in terms of living with the consequences. What is the point of spending $11 billion if you fail to save the river; if you fail to put enough water back into the river to maintain the ecosystem? Four thousand gigalitres has been mentioned because that is what the Wentworth Group said was the absolute minimum that would be needed to give the river system a chance. The Greens asked the minister to model that 4,000 gigalitres, and that ought to have been done in the interests of science, but the minister did not do it. Now we have 2,750 gigalitres and a promise of 450 gigalitres. Much has been said about 3,200 gigalitres. It is a wish and a promise at this stage. There is no promise that there will be a minimum of 3,200 gigalitres. In fact, that could well end up being a maximum that is never achieved.

This is not evidence based policy. This is policy where you have brought in a political fix. The reason I say that is that the Murray-Darling Basin Plan does not come into effect until 2019. The money flows but the water does not get restored to the river system until 2019, by which time Minister Burke, Senator Joyce and Senator Feeney will be long gone from here and will not be living with the consequences of their actions. The money will be spent but I can assure you that the senators who are here in 2019 will be trying to fix the plan that has failed because the consequences of climate change will be something they are living with. You can rest assured that there will not be average years between now and 2019. There will be another drought—there always is in Australia—and it will be more extreme than previous droughts because of the intensity factor of climate change.

Senators will be in here saying: 'How is it possible that $11 billion was spent but the river was not saved?' The excuse will be then, as it always is: 'If only we had known in 2012 what we know now, we would never have agreed to a plan that did not provide for restoring the river.' Every single one of us in here knows right now that this is inadequate in terms of the science. It is not science and evidence based policy; it is a policy which says that this is the political fix that will deliver the money in the short term and by the time the river actually gets to have the water everyone will be long gone and it will be revisited.

Minister Burke knows as well as I do that the 450 extra gigalitres will not be there until 2024. Senator Feeney was saying: 'We cannot delay this any longer. Who would want to delay the water coming into the system?' Well it is not coming into the system until 2019 initially and the extra 450 gigalitres, if indeed that 450 gigalitres gets into the system, will not be until 2024. So, yes, we do have time to get this right. We should be getting it right now. I really think it shows that neither the coalition nor the government believes that climate change is real or urgent if they can all laud a plan which delivers to the river far less than the scientists say is the minimum that is necessary and you are prepared to tick off on a plan which does not anticipate or take into account climate ramifications in Australia.

You think you are doing the people who live in the river system a favour by ticking off such a plan, but you are not. All you are doing is condemning them to an extremely uncertain future because, as much as they would like to think if we spend this $11 billion now their future is assured, it is not assured, because you cannot have an economy without a healthy environment to underpin it.

Without the environment there is no economy, and it is no more so than with a river system. That is why we need to get this right from the start. That is why we need an absolute minimum of what the science says is necessary to give the river a fighting chance—and with the river having a fighting chance come the communities who live along that river system. That is why we need to stop this in its tracks and improve the plan so that we get an evidence based outcome, rather than have the government and the coalition browning down the plan and abandoning the science in favour of a political fix.

Nick Xenophon (SA, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am not lauding the Basin Plan 2012 as I have reservations about it but the alternative concerns me. I want to make it clear that I do not consider for one moment that the Greens are engaging in an act of political posturing in relation to this. I have worked closely with my colleague Senator Hanson-Young from the Australian Greens to seek the best outcome for the environment and to seek the best outcome for South Australia, which has the unenviable position of being at the bottom of the river system. So, while I understand the intent of this motion, I am concerned that it is a risky path to take.

I understand that this plan is far from perfect. I understand that this plan has many flaws in it. There has finally been a rigorous process with a number of inquiries—Senate inquiries and House of Representatives inquiries—and there has been the whole process around the guide to the Basin Plan, which was a bit of a farce. Finally, when the draft plan was released, there was a more thorough process of consultation. So as imperfect as this plan is, my concern is simply this: what happens if this plan is disallowed and if the version that comes back is worse than the one that we have now? What happens if we have a change of policy or if we have a change of government and whichever government is in power wants to start the process from square one? We could well be in our next drought by then. There is a real concern amongst the communities I speak to—amongst those who have a genuine concern for ensuring the production capacity of land for our food security and those who have a genuine concern for the environment—that we could potentially be in a worse position.

I believe the Basin Plan will make a difference to the environment in terms of what the government is proposing with the Water Amendment (Water for the Environment Special Account) Bill 2012, and I note recent comments of the environment minister, the Hon. Tony Burke, where he has said that we need to address the issue of a flaw in that bill which referred to up to another 440 gigalitres being put into the environment to make it much clearer that that is the mandated amount that we need to go for. So that gives me some comfort.

I understand the concerns of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists. They have added to this debate invaluably. People such as Peter Cosier, Tim Stubbs and others in that group have the highest integrity and I 'get' their concerns and I have pursued their concerns in relation to the issue of the interaction between groundwater and surface water. I am pleased that there has been some attempt by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority to respond to questions that I put to them on notice just last Friday at a Senate committee hearing.

But ultimately this is about certainty. This is about communities wanting to be able to move forward in a constructive way to deal with these matters. If this plan is not adequate in years to come, then we need to tackle that but right now with the alternative I believe the risks are too high. We need a plan for this river system and I believe disallowing the plan carries with it a real risk for little guaranteed benefit, which is why I will have difficulty in supporting this motion, but I do not under any circumstances criticise the Australian Greens for bringing this motion. They have that right and they have reason to be concerned, but to me it is a question of risk. It is a question of the risk of not supporting this plan, as imperfect as it is. I believe it ought to be continually monitored. We ought to hold the government and the opposition to account in terms of the promises made. There is nothing to stop a further motion being moved in the new year, because of the way that the time limits for disallowance motions operate, by either Senator Hanson-Young or indeed another senator for a disallowance of this plan to debate this issue again. But right now on the evidence available I reluctantly cannot support this motion because I believe the risk is too great.

Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for School Education and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the question be now put.

Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for School Education and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seek leave to make a brief statement.

John Hogg (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Leave is granted for one minute.

Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for School Education and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It seems that today is a day for a couple of inadvertent responses to circumstances. It has become apparent to me that, in the debate on the disallowance motion, there was not an opportunity for a member of the Liberal Party to make a contribution. Senator Birmingham was the next on the list. During these votes we agreed that Senator Birmingham would be able to speak up until 7.20 pm.

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

I seek leave to make a short statement.

John Hogg (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Leave is granted for one minute.

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

Isn't it the absolute height of hypocrisy: after the Greens sought to destroy the Murray-Darling Basin Plan with a disallowance motion, they then seek to destroy the vote with a guillotine. And it is a guillotine on their own motion. They are guillotining their own motion. It is the essence of why they cannot be responsible in any way, shape or form for the livelihoods of the people living in the basin.

They are all theatre, they do not care, they are all about destruction and they are total and utter nihilists, whose only desire is for the theatrical and for a response to the theatrical. And the outcome of the theatrical is the destruction of the livelihoods of the people who live in the basin. It is a clear sign to all those who are listening to this debate that this is why you cannot trust them and this is why we had to do a deal with the Labor Party, because God help us if we ever had to deal with the Greens.

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

I seek leave to speak on the division just taken, until 7.20 pm.

Leave granted.

Thank you, Mr President. I thank the Senate and I thank the government for their facilitation, whilst in no way of approving of the gag that was just applied by the government and the Greens to this debate.

I come to the issue. I rise to support reform. I rise to support action. I want to support change. I want to support something that will deliver an improved management system of the Murray-Darling Basin. That is why I opposed this disallowance motion. That is why I opposed the wrecking of the plan by the Australian Greens. That is why I opposed the fact that the Greens have simply voted to stop action, to stop reform, to block any type of change.

I said in my maiden speech that I was a great fan of former President Theodore Roosevelt. President Roosevelt was in fact one of the first great environmentalists—someone who started the process of establishing national parks and implementing environmental reforms. I want to quote Roosevelt:

Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty …

Perhaps nothing relates more to effort, pain or difficulty in a policy sense than achieving Murray-Darling reform. There have been 120 years worth of arguments and bickering—120 years since the states first gathered to establish Federation and this place and, in so doing, the arguments were had over who should manage the Murray-Darling Basin.

Sadly, the wrong decision was made then. Today, it has been righted slightly because today we are a step closer to now having a national management plan for the Murray-Darling Basin. We have seen, unfortunately, in the last 120 years, especially in the last 40 to 50 years, serious mismanagement of the water resources of the Murray-Darling.

What is the source of the problem? Who is the source of the problem? The source of the problem, very clearly, has been state governments. Labor state governments, Liberal state governments and National Party state governments all share the blame. They all saw the extraction of water from the Murray rise at a dramatic rate, especially in the period since the 1960s and, in rising at that dramatic rate, it reached levels that came to be accepted as being overallocated. It was too much for the system to withstand. There was too much extraction of water from the system; therefore, there was a need for reform.

But let us be very clear: state governments were to blame here—not farmers, not irrigators and certainly not irrigation communities. They simply took advantage of the opportunities afforded to them by their state governments, to take a water licence and undertake business, grow food, grow fibre, make produce and help the economy of this country. That is why, in fixing the problem that has been created, we must do it in a way most sympathetic to those farmers, those irrigators and those communities. They did not create the problem; their state governments did.

When we got to the last great drought that began at the turn of this century, it was evident that the Murray-Darling system was under more stress than ever before. It was clear it had been overallocated and it was obvious that action was demanded and warranted.

That is why the Howard government, having tried in 2004 through the National Water Initiative to initiate reform and yet seen the state governments drag their heels yet again—fight and bicker yet again—in 2007 said: 'Enough is enough. We must have national management of the Murray-Darling.' They put $10 billion on the table. We put $10 million on the table—I say 'we' because I am proud to have been a member, albeit briefly, through that important period when that solution was actually implemented—when the Water Act was passed through this parliament and when the funds were budgeted and set aside for the recovery of the water to restore some sustainability.

The solution of the Howard government was to establish an independent authority under the Water Act—the Murray-Darling Basin Authority. We hear a lot sometimes about the fact that this authority has not done its job. People attack it from all sides. People suggest it has no credibility and has compromised the outcome. Let us remember the people sitting around that authority table, the six members of the authority, do genuinely constitute an independent authority. I want to thank them for the work that they have done in preparing this Basin Plan—for the difficult task they have undertaken. They have not always got it right. They have not always engaged as they should have with the communities. But around that table there is an environmental scientist—you would not think that listening to the Greens, but there is—and around the table there is an agricultural scientist. Yes, there are economists and former public servants. But around that table are credible people trying to fix a very difficult problem.

The other aspect of the solution in terms of establishing the authority was to task it to come up with what has been coined as a triple-bottom-line approach—one that said we must optimise the economic, social and environmental outcomes that we seek through this process. That has been a very, very difficult thing for them to achieve, because it involves trade-offs, it involves compromise and it has been seen to be a painful process.

During the debate many analogies have been thrown around for this process. If I can add one more, it has certainly been like root canal treatment without the anaesthetic. It has been painful for all participants. It has taken far too long, since 2007. We have seen delays, we have seen problems and we have seen mistakes. And, yes, it is a process that has been made that much harder due to the incompetence of the government at various times—the incompetence that has seen the government undertake buybacks at the expense of delivering on infrastructure projects and in doing so lose the confidence of so many of those people in the upstream communities who were and are being asked to make the sacrifices of their water back to the environment. There has been, of course, mismanagement of expectations—both upstream and downstream—of just what would be achieved and how much could actually be returned.

Nonetheless, after all of the arguments, after all of the rallies, after all of the shouting, after all of the delays that we have seen throughout this process, we now finally have a final Basin Plan. Not much has been said in this debate about what it is—what the actual solution is and what it might achieve. Again, you would be forgiven, when you listen in particular to the Greens, for believing that not much is achieved through this Basin Plan. Let us put that in some perspective. Firstly, 2,750 gigalitres of water will be returned to the environment. What does that mean, though? Well, that is 2,750 gigalitres from a 2009 baseline of 13,623 gigalitres. That is a 20 per cent reduction in water use across the Murray-Darling Basin. That is an enormous step. That is a huge change. We should not downplay the significance of the amount of water that is being recovered for the environment through this process. There is, of course, the aspiration—and I will not go into the detail of that now—to get another 450 gigalitres, taking it to 3,200 gigalitres, a 23½ per cent reduction, getting close to the point where one in every four litres of water that had been available for extraction from the basin before 2009 will no longer be. We should not in any way underestimate the extent of that change. In terms of that 40-year period of enormous growth in extractions and allocations of water, it knocks out about half of that growth. That is why this is such a difficult adjustment for the communities of the basin. That is why this is so challenging for those communities being asked to give up the water.

Let me deal with another misconception—that is, that there is no modelling behind this or it makes no difference. I will invite any senator, anybody listening, anybody who reads this, to go and look at the MDBA website. Go and look at the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of reports that sit behind this plan. Look at the modelling that has been released. Yes, the modelling that has been released and has been undertaken. And also look at the difference that it makes, because it makes a real difference environmentally. Look at some of the targets that have been set for the bottom end of the system which have attracted the greatest attention, and there are some good examples here. The maximum period in number of days where salinity in the Coorong southern lagoon is greater than 130 grams per litre: under the baseline model, that maximum period is 323 days; with the recovery of this water it returns to the without-development figure of zero days. The maximum salinity in grams per litre in the Coorong northern lagoon over the model period: without development it would be 49 grams per litre; at the baseline at the 2009 extraction levels, it is 148 grams per litre; with the return of the 2,750 gigalitres it falls back to 56 grams per litre—getting very close the without-development scenario again. Then there are water flows out of the barrages right at the end of the system—the proportion of three-year rolling average barrage flows greater than 2,000 gigalitres per year.

Without development, that is achieved 100 per cent of the time. Under the baseline model, it is achieved only 79 per cent of the time. With this Basin Plan, it will be achieved 98 per cent of the time. One could reasonably ask of the Greens sometimes what more they want. This is achieving some very significant environmental improvements—some huge steps forward in terms of the environmental outcomes—and they, just like the scale of change being achieved, should not in any way be underestimated.

However, the task of saying how much water should be returned is only one half of the equation. The other half of the equation is to address how the water is returned. With that, the coalition still has some grave reservations about the capacity and commitment of this government to do it in the most socially and economically sustainable ways for the communities who are being asked to return this water to environmental flows. The government has released a very worthy document, the Environmental Water Recovery Strategy for the Murray-Darling Basin. What it seeks to do—what it indicates will happen—is worthwhile and will manage to ensure that the economic fabric of our river communities is preserved. If it is implemented as the government has indicated could be achieved, it should ensure that our river communities maintain their productive capacity and have a strong, viable and robust future. But my concern about this document is that in large part it is indicative.

The commitment of the coalition is that we will apply the strategy outlined here. That is why in the other place we have moved amendments to make aspects of this strategy, including a cap on buybacks, law. That is a commitment we will stand by, because we believe you must deliver on the infrastructure parts of the deal. You must get the win-win projects off the ground where you can make our farmers and our river systems more efficient and return water to the environment from those efficiencies but leave their productive capacity intact so that they can continue to grow the food and the exports that we want for this country into the future. So this must be done in the most sympathetic way possible because, as I said before, it is not the fault of the farmers or of the irrigation communities that we have seen the problems that have necessitated this action. They instead deserve our support and our assistance to ensure their future is as sound as that of the river system we are trying to protect.

I want to pay tribute to some of my colleagues who have worked with me through this process—in particular to Senator Joyce. We have been in some ways described as the yin and the yang of the coalition on water. Senator Joyce is from St George and, yes, I am from Adelaide—opposite ends of the system and opposite concerns in many ways. But I think we have managed to come together to a common understanding of the need to get the environmental outcomes and the need to ensure the protection of the river communities. Many other colleagues have engaged along the way—House of Representatives colleagues as well. If I start to name some, I will end up missing some, so I will not name any, but I do acknowledge the work of my South Australian colleagues in fighting for this reform but also the work of those upstream colleagues who have equally fought for a fair outcome for their communities and who have got the commitment of the coalition to make sure that that happens.

I am pleased the disallowance motion was just defeated. It was critically important that that happen to allow for reform to occur. To borrow from Voltaire, we should not allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good. In this instance, the plan is not perfect—of course it will have problems—but equally there are many review processes built into this. Some may say there are too many review processes built into this, but I have faith that those processes and the independent authority seeking to deliver and implement this plan will address problems as we proceed through it. This plan does represent, if not perfection, at least a very good step forward that, if implemented correctly, will leave us in a situation where we have a healthier Murray-Darling system and a better environmental outcome and still enjoy robust river communities producing the food and produce this country wants for the future. I welcome this reform. It is 120 years overdue, but better late than never.