Fiona Nash (NSW, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to make a contribution to the debate on the Water Amendment (Water for the Environment Special Account) Bill 2012. In doing so, I note that it has been a very long five and a bit years since 2007, when this all started with the Water Act, and I have been very much involved all the way through. Indeed, at the time I had some responsibility for water and spent a week with the member for Flinders travelling from Toowoomba down to Adelaide—right down the length of the Murray-Darling Basin. I have to say it was a very educational experience in more ways than one. While I live out in the central west and understand regional communities, and am indeed a groundwater irrigator, it certainly opens your eyes to go from one end of the Murray-Darling Basin to the other in one trip. It certainly shows that there is not one area that can lay claim to being the most important part of the Murray-Darling Basin. In no way, shape or form can that happen.

What we have seen over the last five years from this government when it comes to water is an absolute shambles. I have to commend the shadow minister for water, Senator Joyce, and also Senator Birmingham for the continued work they have done in trying to make sure that we get the right outcomes for those regional communities across the Murray-Darling Basin. But it has been an absolute shambles from this Labor government. Indeed, my good colleague Senator Birmingham pointed out earlier that it took the minister at the time, Senator Wong, 18 months to appoint the Murray-Darling Basin Authority. We should have had a glimmer then that the whole process was going to be an absolute dog's breakfast. It is a shame that that trend of mismanagement has continued right throughout these five years.

As Mark Twain once said, 'Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over.' There is no doubt that there have been various views on the way forward for water, but one thing is for certain: there is in no way, shape or form ever going to be a day when the Nationals back away from a fight. We will not stop fighting, as we have done consistently for these regional communities, to make sure that they get the best outcome that they possibly can when it comes to water.

What we have seen with the legislation for the 2,750 gigalitres of water to come out of those communities is that it is not perfect. I am not happy; I do not think it is great. But it is certainly better than what we would have had if, as Senator Joyce said earlier, we had backed away, pulled ourselves out of the debate and let the Greens shape the way the Murray-Darling Basin water plan was going to go. Let me tell you, Madam Deputy President Stephens—I suspect you know anyway, having such great regard for regional communities as you do—that would have been an absolute disaster. There is no way that the Greens were ever going to take a triple-bottom-line approach and get a balance between the social, economic and environmental factors that all have to be considered equally when it comes to water in the Murray-Darling Basin and how the removal of water impacts on those communities. There was no way the Nationals were going to stand here and let that happen.

While I know a lot of people out there think that, perhaps, the outcome we have seen for the Murray-Darling Basin plan is not the one they would have liked to have seen, I can assure those people that if the Greens had got their hands on the driving levers for this we would have had an absolute basket case out there in the regions. I say that as a senator from regional New South Wales. I have lived in the central west for over 20 years and I understand the impact on these towns of permanently removing this water.

I remember several years ago when the minister at the time, Senator Wong, had responsibility—she would say: 'Farmers just have to get used to doing more with less. They have to deal with drought all the time.' What the government's intention has been all the way along—which the minister at the time, Senator Wong, never realised—was that they were proposing a permanent drought for these communities through government policy. That is what they never got their heads around: farmers are incredibly resilient. People who live in regional communities are incredibly resilient. They can deal with drought. They are extraordinary people. But you tell them they have to have a permanent drought, that you are going to permanently remove water from their communities, and that is a different kettle of fish entirely.

There are so many aspects of this that the government has never understood. I give Minister Tony Burke some credit for turning up in these places and putting himself in front of all these people. There were quite a number of testy meetings. But it still did not ever translate properly for him. He still never really understood what the impact of what the government has been trying to do was going to be on the regional communities. He never really got it.

When we look at the Murray-Darling Basin—what an extraordinary land mass in terms of production, what it does and the people it feeds. The Murray-Darling Basin contributes something like $15 billion to the economy. Within the Murray-Darling Basin itself is around 39 or 40 per cent of agricultural production. It feeds 2.1 million people. What people do not realise is that this legislation in front of us today—this potential extra 450 gigalitres—could potentially feed 600,000 people. If you take that water out of the system for food production and apply that to environmental purposes, where is that food production going to come from? It becomes like a chessboard, not only across Australia but also across the globe. This is a much bigger picture issue that has not had nearly has much attention.

I put the issue of food security and how we are going to feed the growing global population. The global food task is going to exponentially increase. We are looking at a world population of around nine billion people by 2050. It is the bigger picture that we also have to consider, and I do not think this Labor government has considered it properly at all. When we are taking this water out, removing it from food production, where is that food-productive capacity going to be? Where is it going to come from? While acquiring the funding to do what the government wants to do under this legislation may not be directly related to this particular piece of legislation, it is a serious question for this nation and one that we have to talk about, one that we have to debate.

Future food security is absolutely vital. What we are up against at the moment is the fact that when we export around 70 per cent of what we produce, there is not the imperative to discuss it now. I venture that it should be. We should be discussing it now, because while we are not in a situation at the moment where food security is an issue, we may well be in the future. We need to make some decisions now about how our agricultural productive capacity is going to look in the future, not only for our domestic needs but to fulfil our responsibility to feed the growing population and to contribute to the global food task that is going to increase exponentially. While we have a lot of hot-headed debates across this chamber around current legislation in front of us, there are some really big-picture issues that we need to consider. We need to consider how we want Australia as an agricultural nation to look in 20, 30 and 40 years. That vision is sadly lacking from this government. While we have agreed in principle to this piece of legislation, we as the coalition are not happy with the legislation as it currently stands and we will be moving some amendments to it.

The bill requires an additional 450 gigalitres. Interestingly the government initially said 'up to 450 gigalitres' but now we see in the legislation before us a straight 450 gigalitres. That is again the Greens snuggling in under the armpit of their Labor coalition partners, trying to prod and push them in a direction that the Labor government know they should not be going in. Maybe it is time that the Labor government realised that the Australian Greens are a barnacle on their government, because some of the things that the Australian Greens have been able to make the Labor government do I am sure the Labor government know are not in the national interest.

We will be moving an amendment to ensure that in this legislation the bill refers to up to 450 gigalitres. It must come from infrastructure efficiency and investment. The government have indicated that this will not be coming from buybacks in the bigger picture. We know that there is some capacity under this legislation for the on-farm infrastructure efficiency to include a buyback component from the irrigators for the efficiency upgrade, but in no way, shape or form under this piece of legislation should straight buybacks be allowed. If the government are serious when they say their intent is not to do that then they should support our amendment. All it does is make it clear in the legislation that there will be no further buybacks under this piece of legislation which would enable the extra 450 gigalitres. When we saw that today around 1,031 gigalitres has been bought back by this government and only about 280 or so has come back through the infrastructure investment and efficiency, we do not have any confidence that the government mean it when saying that this legislation will not result in any further buyback. I think it is imperative that the government make sure that it is put very clearly in the legislation that that is the intent.

The other amendment we will be moving is that the buybacks must be capped in this process at 1,500 gigalitres. They have to be because our regional communities need some surety. They need some confidence to be able to plan to go forward knowing that after a certain point there will be no further buybacks, so that they can start to plan with some certainty for the future that they have not had to date. That is something that the government have never understood about this. They have never understood that this lack of certainty has created enormous ramifications for these regional communities in terms of the loss of confidence, the drop in the real estate market, the inability to plan and the absolute devastating effects caused by the uncertainty of all of these pieces of legislation surrounding the water debate in this nation. The Labor government have never understood the very dire ramifications that have already occurred simply because of the uncertainty.

We think it is vitally important that the legislation include the cap on the 1,500 gigs of water buyback. What that means—and this is very important—is that, because the Environmental Water Holder has already purchased a significant proportion of that 1,500 gigalitres, there is only around 270 gigalitres of water left that can be bought back through the buyback process. So I say to people out there that, when they hear the cap at 1,500, under the coalition—and this is what you will get if the coalition is in government—no more than about an extra 270 gigs can be purchased through buyback. That is our absolute commitment in government. The coalition in government will make sure that the people of regional communities have that—and there is no way, shape or form that we will go back on that.

The shambolic process that we have seen from this government to this point, over the last five or so years, has been nothing short of breathtaking. They just do not understand. They have no idea. Senator Joyce commented earlier about the purchase of Toorale for—I think Senator Joyce said—about $23 million. He also mentioned the purchase of Twynam for $303 million. That $303 million did not belong to the government; that is Australian taxpayers' money—that is, $303 million of hardworking Australian mums' and dads' money went to that purchase. There is no bucket of money under the flagpole in the middle of Parliament House; that money was the money of the Australian people. And what did the government do with it? On 28 May 2009 there was a release and the government were crowing about purchasing the 250 gigs of water for $303 million—equivalent to one-half of all the water used in Sydney each year. That is a story for another day. Perhaps if we actually looked at run-off in some of our capital cities and the waste of water from our city people, they might be able to contribute to saving water in this nation as well.

But what is particularly interesting is that this water was actually bought over four different catchments—Murrumbidgee, Lachlan, Macquarie and Gwydir rivers—and, guess what? The government was offered it as a job lot. The government had absolutely no ability to assess the water and the licences that were on offer across all of those catchments and decide which ones would actually be appropriate. Twynam—and good luck to them; they are very smart people involved in that organisation—offered it up as a job lot and the government had no choice but to spend $303 million worth of taxpayers' money on the 250 gigs of water without actually determining whether any of it would be any good. I wonder if at the time the minister had a look at the Lachlan, because, guess what? It only runs into the Murray about once every hundred years. That is going to be a lot of use, isn't it? But, no, they could not excise that one; they had to take the absolute lot. My understanding is that they paid about $2,800 a gig for this water. Prior to that particular purchase, my understanding was that the average was about $1,900. Where were they plucking these figures from?

But it gets better. At the end of last year—and I am taking this from the Jemalong Irrigation report—the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder:

… announced that it may sell the water onto the temporary water market this year in the Lachlan Valley. As all environmental targets have been met on the Lachlan this year without the use of these entitlements, they are surplus to their requirements.

So the government spent $303 million acquiring water from Twynam—part of which they have now clearly overpurchased, quite possibly distorting the market at the time when they made all these purchases under this $303 million agreement, given that now I think it is around $1,400 a meg for high security—and then we see the Environmental Water Holder going: 'Oh, gosh, we've got a bit too much; actually, we've probably got a lot too much. So we'll just pop it back into the temporary water market in the Lachlan.' And what is that going to do? It will quite possibly distort the market for the temporary trading in the Lachlan as well.

This is how stupid the government are—I am sorry but I cannot think of a more technical term—and shows just one example of how they have not thought things through. They never thought these things through. Everything was just a kneejerk reaction along the way. While there may have been good intent from some quarters, they got it so wrong in so many ways, because they simply did not understand what they were doing.

Through many of our committee processes, when we asked the Environmental Water Holder, 'Where is the benefit of the environmental water? Where is the water going? What is it watering? How much is going there? How are they determining what is the appropriate environmental purpose for any of the releases of that water?' we got virtually nothing. The level of understanding along the way has just been pathetic. And we have seen that again recently. Part of this whole process will obviously be the infrastructure efficiencies, and so much of that is to do with removing the physical constraints in the system. It cannot actually happen. What the government are trying to do will not work if some of those physical constraints are not addressed. And yet the department seems to have absolutely no idea how this is going to work. There is just so little evidence of how they have come up with the costings of actually removing the constraints. The whole thing is an absolute dog's breakfast.

I can only say that, having been involved in this process in one way, shape or form since the beginning, the priority of the Nationals has always been, and will always be, making sure that we get the best possible outcomes for those people living in regional communities. That is our job. That is what we do. That is why we are here. That is why we have fought so hard—and I have to again commend my Senate leader, Senator Joyce, for the work he has done trying to get the right outcomes for these communities. We have worked hard and we have done our best. It is not perfect; it is in no way, shape or form perfect. But I can guarantee to all people in regional communities and right across the nation that the Nationals have not stopped fighting to make sure that we get the best possible outcome we can, because this is about a sustainable future for regional communities and a sustainable future for all of those families, people and businesses who live in those communities into the future.

Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise after the Nationals' deputy leader in the Senate, Senator Nash, who has given an excellent contribution on this particular piece of legislation, the Water Amendment (Water for the Environment Special Account) Bill 2012. Our Constitution puts water squarely in the domain of the states, and without the basin states signing up for these amendments to the Water Act there would be little point in proceeding.

The Murray River is said to be the only river in the world that has its own flag; in fact, it has two. The Upper and Lower Murray flags have been flown since 1853 to represent the Murray River as it flows through Victoria and down into South Australia, with four stripes to represent the four rivers in the system. Murray River communities are proud people with a long history of contribution to our nation and strong industries. So too, the Nationals have a strong tradition of standing up for those communities and the industries within them. In my home state, $1.8 billion of irrigated agricultural produce is grown in the Murray River districts. Forty-two per cent of the value of all of the Murray-Darling Basin's agricultural production actually comes from Victoria, so we have a big stake in what actually happens around concerns with the Murray-Darling Basin.

On water, the environmental credentials of the coalition are clear: the Nationals' leader and Deputy Prime Minister, John Anderson, started water reform in the modern political era through the introduction of the National Water Initiative in 2003—113 years after Federation—and here we are. It is a complex and difficult issue that we have been struggling with as a nation for a long time. But the Nationals and the coalition have continued to work to get the balance right and, as a member of the Senate's Environment and Communications Committee, who conducted an inquiry into this bill in late 2012—and it was an extremely brief inquiry on such an important issue, especially the component concerning this particular bill—I would like to thank those key stakeholders who scrambled to participate in providing essential commentary around this particular bill before us today: industry and community members, who have been forensic in the detail of the impact of any Murray-Darling Basin Plan from the first draft and who know the detail even if the government does not.

The approach outlined in this bill facilitates a potential of 450 gigalitres of water to be hopefully returned to the environment by measures excluding water buybacks, which have been so detrimental to our rural communities—a fact that has been reiterated continually by producers and by communities throughout the Murray-Darling Basin Plan debate over many years. However, the bill before us today does not make it legally binding for the government to recover water in a way that does not adversely impact irrigation communities—even though the EM implies that it should—and I guess our request is that we make our intent clear.

Since the Water Act was passed in 2007, most of Labor's activities have been lazily centred on the buyback of irrigation water. Mark McKenzie from the Murray Valley Winegrowers association gave us evidence through the inquiry into this particular bill around the impact and the amount of water that has been taken out of irrigation communities. Merbein pumped district in Sunraysia is 42 per cent de-watered, and 36 per cent of Red Cliffs pumped district is de-watered. Not all of this de-watering can be attributed to buyback, but a fair majority can. Fourteen years of drought and the entry of urban populations into the water market—such as Adelaide, Bendigo and Ballarat—have had an impact. In this part of the world, the high price of temporary water, drought and low commodity prices have all contributed to the creation of willing sellers for Labor's devastating buyback program.

If we look elsewhere in Victoria, the impacts have been even worse. The Pyramid Hill district lost over 50 per cent of its original high-security entitlement in less than a decade. Goulburn-Murray Water, in its submission to the previous version of the Basin Plan, predicted its original 1,600 gigalitres of high-security water would fall to less than 800 under a path of unrelenting buybacks that Labor was on.

The government is well aware—and has itself acknowledged—that water buybacks are not the solution. A healthy river with healthy river communities is not created through the expenditure of vast sums of government money on purchasing water from struggling farmers and ripping it out of local communities. Numerous submitters to the inquiry, such as the NFF and the Murray Valley Winegrowers, expressed concern that this bill—particularly in proposed section 86AD(2)(b)—still appears to allow for further buybacks, in contrast to the minister's assurance. This is a concern that the Nationals share.

The socioeconomic issues go to the heart of my concerns with the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and the particular piece of legislation before us today. During the recent inquiry we heard a lot about socioeconomic issues that concern the communities of the Murray-Darling Basin. The National Irrigators Council said:

… there is nothing in the Bill which specifically guarantees the 'upward movement'—

of an amount of water to be removed from communities—

will not cause social and economic downsides …

The Victorian Farmers Federation further said:

… government is of the belief that simply providing money towards socio-economic issues which arise will solve them. This is simply not the case.

I would argue that throwing money at a problem once you have created it is the wrong way to govern. Let's plan appropriately so as not to cause detrimental effects when we are legislating in the first place. The coalition has foreshadowed amendments that will enshrine a no-detriments test for socioeconomic impacts of water removal from rural communities.

In the last several years, I have seen the Commonwealth active in the water market firsthand. I have seen the evidence of what less water means for rural communities and I do not need contentious macro-socioeconomic modelling to incorrectly remove water from our communities and to not understand that it does not have a detrimental effect. The reality is that , as I visit Shepparton, I see empty shops. When I read the newspaper, I read how water-based industry factories are closing, and the Heinz Girgarre tomato plant and Leitchville cheese are but a few. These involve real people with families and people that are part of communities, who go to schools, who are volunteer firemen and women, who are artists and netballers—all of whom add social capital to the country. These people exist because their jobs are linked directly or indirectly to the use of water to produce primary product. Victoria has contributed the greatest share of high-security water to the buyback. There is also greater exposure to public and private flood than in any other state.

Lastly, the non-strategic buyback of water has produced deep waterholes in our irrigation districts, such as the Swiss cheese effect, and we heard that continually from the first iteration of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. I was at the public consultation in Swan Hill when Craig Knowles, Chair of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, acknowledged that of water buybacks when he said:

I agree with the statement made that 'If we take 30% of your water out of this community it will have damaging, severe devastating effects.' I agree with that and I want to put that on the record right now.

So Craig Knowles recognises it, feels our pain, understands, and then proceeds the legislation before us today to not make it quite clear that that is not going to be part of the final solution.

The very next day northern Victoria's communities read in the paper, after he made those statements, that the MDBA had again entered the water market in the southern basin. The anger at the news that the MDBA was in the water market again was palpable amongst our irrigation communities. Trust is the issue here. A lack of understanding and compassion is also of concern, but trust is the issue. With some parts of the basin having lost near or over 30 per cent of their water already, isn't it time that we say enough to mitigate those damaging, severe, devastating effects as described by Craig Knowles?

The government have the opportunity to reflect that understanding today in legislation, to put that into words. Once again they have failed to heed regional Australia's concern, bowing to the Greens, as evidenced by deleting 'up to' from the bill, making that a minimum rather than a maximum, getting rid of that flexibility. There is a lack of detail within this debate not only of the impact of removing the water but also of how much water is being purchased and from where. We do not know that local detail and yet we are very happy to prescribe an amount of money and we are very happy to prescribe a minimum volume required for the environment. Again, it goes to trust.

In October 2012 the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder was asked to identify how much water was purchased from individual irrigation districts rather than just from catchments, which may contain many irrigation districts. They responded, stating that they could not provide the information because they did not know. They said:

The Government does not know in which community it has purchased $2 billion of water buybacks.

I will repeat that: this government does not know from what communities it has purchased the water and, more specifically, this government cannot tell us how much water has been purchased from towns like Shepparton, Victoria's fruit bowl, or Tatura, the centre of Victoria's and the nation's milk-exporting industry.

How can they assess the impact if they do not know how much water they have purchased? How can we believe the government have strategically purchased water if they do not know where they have purchased it from, leaving irrigation districts like a piece of Swiss cheese struggling for viability? That is why we have been so adamant in wanting to ensure that buybacks are not part of the permanent solution in addressing the concerns of the environment and the Murray-Darling Basin's sustainability going forward. The government has done an atrocious job at implementing water buybacks. I hate to think that there is anybody here who can be under any illusions about the devastating effects of the government's buybacks program after hearing the evidence from the inquiry and over time and from the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee, chaired by Senator Heffernan.

I note the unusual step taken in this bill to appropriate funds so far in advance—however, given the government's track record in this regard, I probably should not be surprised. I am particularly concerned with what appears to be a lack of work done to justify the amounts being appropriated and their adequacy to meet the stated objectives of this bill. I am glad Senator Hanson-Young is in the chamber because I am particularly interested in her faux outrage in her contribution to this bill before us today. She is very concerned that Australian taxpayers are not having their precious money frittered away—if only the Greens were as dedicated to austerity right across their portfolios and in negotiations with their coalition partners, Labor. However, I am concerned that that is probably less about Senator Hanson-Young's concern about the precious money of taxpayers being frittered away and more about suburban Adelaide votes.

The bill is promoted as seeking to generate an additional 450 gigalitres of water with minimal socioeconomic impact by heavily investing in on-farm efficiency grants. The reality is somewhat different, however. The cynical amongst us would say this was an on-the-fly constructed pot of $1.77 billion worth of gold designed to appease a recalcitrant South Australian Labor premier. What did the South Australian Premier do after he received this? He removed half of South Australia's share of the funding contributions for river operations, maintenance and natural resource programs in the basin.

Again, there is no prescription in the bill before us for a specified amount of money to be spent on system constraint relaxation. What needs to be changed? How much? What will be the effect of this amount of water going through the system? I am concerned about the costs associated with addressing the constraints within the system that would require the removal under a 3,200-gigalitre scenario which is favoured by the Greens. I am sure we will be hearing all about it later as those amendments come forward. I hope Senator Hanson-Young's newly found austerity will share my concerns in terms of getting the detail around how that money was constructed.

I want to know how a figure of $200 million for constraint removal was identified, and the ramifications. Is this funding pool sufficient to remove all constraints necessary? What compensation may be forthcoming to those potentially affected by constraint removal? This is a particular concern for those in the upper catchment in Victoria and was expressed very clearly by Jan Beer and Ken Pattison in their contribution to the Senate inquiry into the bill. Similarly, Mr Anderson from the Victorian Farmers Federation said during the inquiry:

If you go to the Goulburn Broken Catchment Management Authority and look at their Lower Goulburn floodplain risk assessment, it is a nonsense to say that you can put 40,000 megalitres a day past McCoys Bridge without causing serious flooding of not only public property but also private property.

The Goulburn Broken Catchment Management Authority's environmental flow hydraulics study says that if you had that much water at McCoys Bridge you would flood, and it has been quoted by so many people—the Minister for Water in Victoria, Mr Walsh, and Dr Stone in the other place—you would flood 100 buildings, 250 kilometres of road, 8,000 hectares of dryland agriculture and 1,000 hectares of irrigated agriculture. That is what would happen in real life to real people.

During the inquiry, the National Farmers' Federation and the Murray-Darling Basin Authority also acknowledged the difficulties in addressing this particular problem. There still exists ambiguity around the legal liability for those said flooding events and the effect that they could have on public-private environmental assets, the caravan parks, the river red gums and the national assets.

In Victoria, $30 million was spent on the Basin Plan's consultation roadshow. Incredibly, there was no public meeting in the upper catchment towns where these issues could occur. The Eildon, Hume and Dartmouth dams are also located amongst these communities. The people most at risk from increasing river flows have been forgotten by this Labor government. This issue is why the shadow minister for water and Nationals Leader in the Senate, Barnaby Joyce, has foreshadowed amendments to the bill in order to make clear that the additional water will be sought through investment in infrastructure upgrades and ensuring any buybacks do not cause detriment to regional communities. This means we have explicitly written into the bill assurances that buybacks will not ultimately be the main feature of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan's implementation in Victoria or elsewhere. Our amendments to the bill will go some way towards basin communities in restoring and enhancing trust with the process, politicians and bureaucracies. As Mark McKenzie from the Murray Valley Winegrowers' association said:

We are being asked to take a lot of this on trust. Although we believe that, ultimately, we are getting there, I have to say that my community members are a bit light on for trust at the moment.

I am pretty sure it is not just this particular issue that regional communities are light on trust with in this particular government. I will not go into discussing that more at this point.

Trust in the basin communities has been lost through Labor's heavy-handed treatment of basin communities and there is still a lot of anxiety and uncertainty out there, as Senator Nash referred to. These are people with businesses and families and you cannot plan ahead for the future. Farming is not a short-term prospect—it is a long-term project. It is generations investing and growing the productivity of their land.

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

It is a great place to raise a family but a bugger of a place to make a quid.

Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There we go. Great contribution, Senator Heffernan, it is a great place to raise a family and difficult to make a quid, and in making sure that regional communities can still make a quid they will be making more of it as long as they have water within them.

The Nationals and the coalition seek to ensure that our amendment legislates our commitments and the very real concerns that we hear on a daily basis and that the minister and Craig Knowles, if they had been serious, would admit they heard every day in every consultation that they went to. They stood up in front of those communities, they went to the public consultations, they went to the private little chitchats and they absorbed the pain; they heard the detail. The amount of man- and woman-hours that have gone into trying to get this right, trying to get the balance right between the environment and the healthy river system and viable and productive regional communities is enormous. I look forward to the research project that quantifies it. That is why our amendments will go towards making a bad situation a little better, because they need to plan for the future, to grow the food and their families in a healthy environment. The coalition is interested in not only protecting our food bowl but also in starting to build trust which has been consumed by political process in the development of the Basin Plan.

I urge the Senate, and especially the Greens, to take a similar approach. I hope the debate and final vote will reflect the statements and expressions of concern, the hours of meetings and consultations that have gone into this legislation and the plan around it, that our action will stop devastating, market-distorting water buybacks that not only waste taxpayers' money but also devastate the productive capacity of regional communities. It is not perfect, and I recognise that, but we are 113 years down the track and we have to have a sustainable environment, but more importantly what we on this side of the chamber recognise is that we also have to have sustainable communities.

I hope that our debate will ensure investment in our regions with infrastructure projects that will ensure a vibrant and vigorous future for our regional communities and the environment.

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

I endorse those final remarks from Senator McKenzie. I think we all want that—we all want to have vibrant regional communities. We want the Murray-Darling Basin to continue to be the major food bowl of this nation and we do not want in any way to detract from that, but we also need a healthy river system, and I think we all agree that we need to have that healthy river system to get the balance between the two. I also agree with Senator McKenzie that the South Australian government did the wrong thing when in December last year they announced that they were slashing the funding to the Murray-Darling Basin Authority from $26.4 million to $12.1 million. I think that was the wrong move. It sent the wrong signals. It was a wrong move and, unambiguously, the South Australian government made a mistake in relation to that.

I want to make it clear that I cautiously welcome the government's proposal outlined in the Water Amendment (Water for the Environment Special Account) Bill 2012. It is a vital measure in addition to the Basin Plan from the point of view of South Australia. From the point of view of the health of the basin it will lead to a better outcome. I acknowledge that the government has made meaningful amendments in the House of Representatives to ensure that the bill is true to its policy intent, because previously it was simply an aspirational goal. The Dean of the Adelaide University Law School, Professor John Williams, whom I have enormous regard for, for his intellect and for his analysis, wrote an opinion piece in the Adelaide Advertiser on 12 November 2012, where he basically said that the bill in its previous form, as it was then when he was commenting on it, was largely aspirational—it did not carry much weight, and did not have any real teeth to it. I do share the concerns of my colleagues from the opposition on this side of the chamber who want to make sure that the $1.775 billion over 10 years is spent wisely. I think we all want that. I welcome the amendments relating to the independent reviews of the fund, but I am concerned that when it comes to the implementation of this bill we will see more of what has happened before and I am concerned that South Australia, at the tail end of the river system, will be particularly vulnerable. There have been significant concerns raised about misallocation or even misappropriation of funds from previous infrastructure programs. In particular, the Commonwealth Auditor-General's audit of the $650 million Private Irrigation Infrastructure Operators Program in New South Wales was scathing in its assessment of how the fund was managed. The Australian National Audit Office report reads that, whilst the department has implemented the program and allocated available funding:

… weaknesses in program governance and in the management of a number of implementation issues had an adverse impact on the overall effectiveness of the program's administration. In this regard, shortcomings were evident in DSEWPaC's design of the program, the assessment of applications and the development of measures to inform an assessment of whether the program is achieving its objectives.

If the intention of this bill is to deliver an additional 450 gigalitres to the environment then we need to make sure that that is what it does. To that end I will be introducing amendments to ensure that priority goes to projects where the greatest amount of returned water can be guaranteed in the shortest amount of time. I will also be introducing amendments to allow funding to be allocated to projects relating to research and development of water-saving technologies. I acknowledge the work of Senator Bill Heffernan as Chair of the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee. We need to be smarter in how we farm. We need to be innovative. We need to use the best technology and spend money on research and development so we can get those best outcomes.

My amendment is based on concerns raised with me by irrigators in the Riverland who have missed out on earlier rounds of government grants because they were already too water efficient to qualify. These early adopters have spent the last 40-plus years spending their own money to become as water efficient as they can because they had no other choice. Living at the end of the river makes you appreciate the need for water-saving measures. As they say, necessity is the mother of invention. Many of these irrigators as well as those in other areas are incredibly experienced in working with the smallest amount of water possible. They are always looking for ways to improve their efficiency even further because they know from bitter experience that the Murray is not a bottomless well.

These people who have done the right thing and now keep trying to improve deserve to be recognised. For instance, Dave Reilly and his wife, Anita, are just two individuals in the Riverland in South Australia who deserve this recognition. Dave and Anita are on Gurra Downs, a property near Loxton in the Riverland. They grow dates. It is a groundbreaking development for South Australia. Unlike the usual citrus crops in the area, once the palms are established they require very little water to stay alive and can cope with much higher levels of salinity and, in fact, once they are established they are pretty well drought proof. In years where there is enough water you can harvest the fruit and in years where there is not you might not get fruit but your trees will survive and your investment is protected.

Dave and Anita are also working on developing stock specifically for Australian conditions. They have won multiple awards, including the Khalifa International Date Palm Award for best new development project at the Fourth International Date Palm Conference held in Abu Dhabi in 2010. Last year Dave was awarded a Nuffield farming scholarship, which will allow him to continue studying date palms and how to build a viable industry here in the Southern Hemisphere.

Gurra Downs has also been held up as an example of best practice by state and Commonwealth governments, but the Reillys could not get $1 million from the federal government's Private Irrigation Infrastructure Program for SA to relocate their water pump despite the fact that by July 2011 only $14.4 million of the $5.8 billion scheme had been allocated to South Australia. Apparently their project did not fit the criteria. There is incredible irony that Dave has been showered with awards overseas but has difficulty getting the support he needs back home. No wonder farmers want to give up and walk off the land. I am pleased to say that the Reillys are doing well. I hope we will have a thriving date palm industry as a result of their innovation and courage in pursuing this project. Gurra Downs represents the best combination of ingenuity, scientific knowledge and rock hard determination. The work that people such as the Reillys are doing and the technologies and techniques that they are developing will end up benefiting the basin as a whole if they can get the support to keep going.

I note it is unlikely that the government and the opposition will be supporting these amendments, but even if they cannot do so in relation to this bill I ask them both to acknowledge that we need to put more funding towards early adopters who are creating the next wave of developments for the basin. Those who have done the right thing for many years deserve to be recognised and rewarded. It is abundantly clear that we need new ways of doing things.

Further north in New South Wales we are seeing more public policy failure as the issue of evaporation in the Menindee Lakes still remains unresolved. I went there a number of years ago. The local action group there has been talking about this for over a decade. Successive governments have been trying to tackle the whole issue of the massive evaporation from the Menindee Lakes. I acknowledge that the people of Broken Hill absolutely deserve a guaranteed reliable water supply, but there are other alternative projects, such as aquifers. There are the issues of water sports for those who are in the Menindee Lakes area—I get that—but there are issues of significant evaporation and some engineering works can make a significant difference in that respect.

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

When they are 85 per cent full the lakes evaporate more water than every pump up the river uses.

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

There we go. I accept what Senator Heffernan said—that when the lakes are 85 per cent full they evaporate more water than all the pumps up the river use. I do not doubt Senator Heffernan's expertise in relation to that. That is something we need to tackle. There has been an enormous level of policy lethargy, a lack of momentum and inertia in relation to this. The government, the ALP, promised this would be a priority program for the 2007 election. I am not blaming the government as such because there have been a whole lot of roadblocks in relation to this at a state government level.

We must explore these options and invest in innovative new technologies to make sure that we maximise returns to the basin. At the hearing chaired by Senator Heffernan into the Murray-Darling Basin in Mildura on 3 April 2012 we heard I think Mark McKenzie talk about projects that with a little bit of money could save enormous amounts of water. We need to be smart about how we save water and the way that we engage communities. We cannot just cut water allocations without consequence. We need to make sure that we can still grow crops and that the food bowl of the nation can be environmentally and economically sound. But we need to have investment in research and development, because unless we do it just will not happen. I acknowledge that the government have now removed the words 'up to' in relation to their bill, but I think it should be strengthened so that it is at least 450 gigalitres. I know that some of my colleagues will disagree with me on that, but if it is meant to do what is meant to be then it should be clear in its wording. Ultimately, this legislation is only one part of the massive reforms we need to rescue the basin.

I support this legislation—cautiously support it—but I am worried that come the next drought, the state that will be hit the hardest will be the state of South Australia, because we are at the tail end of the river system. I want to finish off with the words of Professor John Williams, who says that:

Future proofing the South Australian agreement against intransigence, backsliding and an evaporation of political will is now a matter of urgency.

He finishes off by saying that:

The certainty promised to the river Murray and the people of South Australia must be reflected in the language of the bill now before the federal parliament.

I agree with Professor Williams entirely and that is what we should be aiming to do.

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

I would like to recognise in the chamber the hardworking Mary Hardwood who has had to put up with me for years. How are you, Mary? I apologise to all the hardworking government officials who have had to put up with the lack of science in water planning and the overindulgence of politics. This bill is part of a political fix which is convenient to most politicians in this parliament to get them past the next election. I am going to be seriously off the page in my contribution.

As Craig Knowles said during the hearings to which Senator Xenophon referred, 'Bill, this is the best political deal we could get'—nothing to do with the best scientific deal that we should have. Just to remind the chamber—and I am sure that my committee, Senator Nash and my good buddy on my left are sick of hearing about it—but if the science is 40 per cent right by 2050, this is all a waste of time. The Murray-Darling Basin is 6.2 per cent of Australia's run-off—23,400 gigalitres—and 38 per cent of that run-off comes from two per cent of the landscape in the Snowy Mountains of north-east Victoria. If the science is 40 per cent right—and the science is telling us that in the southern Murray-Darling Basin there could be a two degree increase in temperature over the next 50 years, which could result in a 15 per cent decline in rainfall and we are already planning for that at Junee, and I am sure they are over at Young, Senator Nash—that will result in up to a 35 per cent decline in run-off, and that also means that we could be down to eight or nine days snow a year. That science could be 100 per cent right or 100 per cent wrong, but if it is 40 per cent right then there will be zero allocations in most river systems in the southern Murray-Darling Basin in most years. Putting that in figures, that is a prediction of a loss of run-off of between 3,500 and 11,000 gigalitres, so we do have a bit of a problem.

I absolutely agree with the proposition that we have got to become more efficient with our water use. I have just discussed with some people, including Mary, that this bill is really to encourage people to become more efficient. Australia's most efficient irrigation is in Carnarvon. In 2006-07, the year I was chairman of the Northern Development Taskforce—which sadly has been gotten rid of—Carnarvon produced $69 million of income with 8,500 megalitres water. In the same year, the Ord produced the same income—plus a couple of million dollars—with 40 times that amount of water. So, they were 40 times less efficient than the science, which is Israeli-Spanish technology and I will not burden the gallery or chamber with the detail. The water in the Ord—and we will get to that eventually because it is a disgrace that there are no incentives, there is no market for water and there is no encouragement to be more efficient—is 40 times less efficient than Carnarvon, and Carnarvon is 20 times more efficient than the average across the Murray-Darling Basin, even though there are pockets—and some of those in South Australia—which are just as efficient. If you had used the 8½ thousand megalitres that year that produced $69 million worth of income in Carnarvon from things like lunch pack bananas, tomatoes, table grapes and capsicums—all counter-cyclical seasonally—in the Murray-Darling Basin to produce cotton, instead of getting $69 million you would have got yourself about $3 million. Here we are saying we are going to give money for more efficiency.

The buybacks so far in the Murray-Darling Basin have been haphazard at best, politically convenient at worst. I would instance the sale of the Toorale water which was an afterthought by the New South Wales government to try and fund the sale of the proposition that they were going to buy a national park and sell off the water. In that sale there were area licences, because the river was not on the page and they should have been cancelled, not acquired. Anyhow, they bought water in the Darling River system which has provided no real outcomes because, as soon as they bought those licences—allegedly to put more water back into the low-end of the system—they woke up more equivalent sleeper licences up the river than they bought down the river. Tandall water, which was supplementary water—supplementary water should never have been allowed to be tradable—was off allocation water originally. The Victorian government started the rot by allowing it to be come a tradable instrument and, sure enough, in their desperation to fix the water buyback book, the various politicians—dumb and wooden headed—agreed to buyback Tandall supplementary water licences of 236 gigalitres, which was 11 gigalitres net where the Darling meets the Murray. As chief executive of Tandall said at the time, 'We've won the lottery, Bill.' He is a South African, a good bloke. 'We have sold the water and we will buy it back on the spot market because the supplementary water is only available when there is too much water in the system anyhow.'

I will not go through the Cubbie thing. I understand now that there is a proposition that has not hit the headlines yet for the new owners of Cubbie to sell some of the water. I am unaware whether it is going to be out of their 50-odd gig extraction licence or whether they are going to try and con people by trying to sell some of the extraction licence, which I think should not be tradable because it is specific to the overland flow in that particular region and how you transfer it and shepherd it through would cost more money than buying the water back. So that is what you call cooking the book politically. But that does not get away from the fact that we should encourage our farmers to be more efficient with their water use. I suppose it is fair to say that someone with this bill behind them could give a guarantee to Australia's taxpayers that they would not, shall I say, camouflage the buybacks.

I realise that this bill does not refer to the earlier money but I cannot let this go by without mentioning the serious fraud that is about to be perpetrated on Australia's taxpayers by the Nimmie-Caira buyback, which is something like 380 gigs, 380,000 megs gross, 160,000 or 170,000 net, from a flood plain on which there has never been an environmental plan, exactly the same as the largest flood plain in the Murray-Darling Basin, the lower Culgoa, Condamine-Balonne. I wish these guys well if they get away with it because it would be better than winning Lotto. I suspect they are going to get away with it because all the politicians involved, some of whom have got no idea what they are doing, can see the opportunity to cook the buyback book for New South Wales where they can buy back water without affecting production other than in this region. This water is allegedly supplementary flow mixed with floodwater at times and the outer reaches of the Nimmie-Caira only get it in an occasional year, but they are going to get two and a quarter times the value of the water by agreement, an agreement that was set before the water licences were issued. The reason it is two and a quarter times the value is because they have also got to buy the land and they have got to buy the windmills and fences in the water buyback. That is what I call camouflaging what you are doing. I hope we do better than that. I can only say that I think it is a fraud and I wish them all well. The local shires are up in arms about it.

When the river floods it is supplementary water allegedly. Sure, the Maude Weir et cetera are involved because the river system will not handle it between Maude and Balranald. When you get four inches of rain in the Goulburn River or somewhere, in Victoria originally that became a supplementary flow off allocation. You got a phone call to say, 'Go for your life'. That has now become licensed water. Under what we are proposing now, if you get four inches of rain above Gundagai somewhere there will be supplementary flow and eventually that gets down the system. If you get another four inches the next night it becomes a flood flow. Try and distinguish the floodwater from supplementary water when it gets to the Maude Weir—you are better than me if you can. Anyhow, when the river does flood I can guarantee you one thing: the water you have bought back to save the environment somewhere else in the system is going to go down the Nimmie-Caira flood plain. When Robert Hill was the minister and tried to buy back the wetlands of the lower Lachlan, he quickly discovered, as I warned him he would, that it would cost more to remediate the land than the land was worth. If you take the water off the Nimmie-Caira flood plain somehow artificially, what you will end up with is a poverty bush desert. If you are going to shepherd the water through there somehow, it will cost a bloody fortune and what you will be left with, because there is no environmental planning around this decision, is a lignum flood plain that is a desert.

But because everyone wants to get past the next election they impose these propositions on the hardworking people in the department to give them a reason that makes sense for them publicly to do it. Given that we never really think about what the future holds and whether we should have a plan to make sure that, whatever the actuarial assumption in the science is, at 10 per cent we have got a plan, at 20 per cent we have got a plan and at 50 per cent and 100 per cent we have got a plan, I rather suspect that we do not have that sort of a plan. This is living day to day decision-making. If you go back to 1920 you will see there was a serious argument in the South Australian parliament about the Lower Lakes. Before we tried to regulate the system and think we are smarter than Mother Nature, the Murray system used to go dry; the Murray-Darling used to stop and the lakes would fill up with sea water. And there would be a hell of a bust and they would get flushed out. But somehow we think we are smarter than Mother Nature and we think that we can outdo her, but I do not think we can. I think that this, sadly, is an attempt to outdo Mother Nature. All the river systems in the Murray-Darling are completely overallocated. Don't ask me what brain-dead person decided to make supplementary water tradable, which started the rot, and the compensation behind undoing the rot no government could afford. We have even got the problem now in the likes of the Goulburn River where you have got mercury levels coming out of the tailings of the mines five or six times the safety level for mercury presence in water, but no-one is doing anything about that either, I do not think.

I am afraid that I am in no-man's-land on this. I am concerned that Mother Nature, who is the referee, is more powerful than any political party or parliament. Rather than accept that fact, politicians are trying to find a political solution. I do not blame, them because the people in the various towns—whether it is down in Griffith, Coleambally or somewhere else—deserve a fair go.

As I said before, farming is a great place to raise a family, but it is a bugger of a place to make a quid because it is a journey into the unknown. It is the highest risk business. You do not know whether it is going to rain or not et cetera, but we have come a long way, and there has been a lot of hard work put in. When Coleambally was first pegged out, they were trying to grow rice on sand country—at least we have gotten rid of the sand country. There has been a lot of good work going on at Coleambally for efficiency. But the thing that we forget is that the more efficient we make the water—this is about efficiency in irrigation; this alleged money is an encouragement for farmers to be more efficient like Carnarvon, and I applaud that—the more pressure you put on the aquifer, because part of the inefficiency is recharging the aquifer. As we are probably aware, every pump between Wagga and Narrandera that is a pivot pump in ground water is actually pumping river water. The town water supply for Junee, West Wyalong and Temora is 86 per cent river water, but we do not consider it river water; we say it is bore water. So it is politically convenient not to recognise that.

The more efficient we become above ground with overland water, the more pressure you put on the aquifer. We have not completed the science in the connectivity between the aquifers and the rivers, yet in the earlier plan we took a certain amount of water and allocated extra ground water, not knowing the connection. No one has been able to explain to me the connection—which there is—between the Namoi aquifer and the Great Artesian Basin. We do not really even understand the recharge of the Great Artesian Basin. I am not too sure where this bill is going to end up, but I have to say that it is time that politicians of all persuasions thought about where Australia is going to be in 50 years time and not at the next election or the one after.

As my poor, long-suffering colleagues in the rural committee in the Senate have heard many times, we have an outlook in which, after we drive all of the efficiency, we can say to the next generation of farmers, 'Well, you'd better find something else to do.' Why haven't we had the courage to do what we did after World War II: set up the thinking of a soldiers' settlement, as it were, in northern Australia? Why didn't we find it necessary—it was gutless—to allow hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of infrastructure at the Ord, which has 80,000 hectares of capacity if you get rid of the bloody lead mine and 10,000 gigs in the dam and give it away to someone else? Joe? Why didn't we say to the next generation of farmers, 'We'll put in some money and we'll send you up there'? The Western Australian government has gotten rid of the GM ban. GM crops in Western Australia until the dying days of the last government and the beginning of this government was the same as growing marijuana: it was illegal. So why don't we say, instead of, 'You've all got to jump off the gap in the south,' 'Here's a great opportunity to fit somewhere else'? Sixty-five per cent of Australia's runoff is in three catchments in the north; what we are talking about here is 6.2 per cent of Australia's runoff, which is estimated at a minimum to decline by 3,500 megs by 2050. This is stopgap stuff, and it is about time we had some politicians with vision. People say in the north: 'It's too hot, Bill; it's too far away from the market. The best place to be on a hot bloody day is in the tractor—the air-conditioning in the tractor is better than the house.' Too far away? That is because you are facing in the wrong direction. Two thirds of the world's population is closer to Darwin—in Asia—than Sydney. The prediction is that by 2050 50 per cent of the world's population will be poor for water, a billion people unable to feed themselves, two-thirds of the world's population living in Asia, Asia losing 30 per cent of its agricultural productive capacity, the food task doubling, 1.6 billion people on the planet possibly displaced. Why don't we get off our backsides and develop what Mother Nature has given us instead of fighting over what she is taking away? It is time we woke up, time we had a bit of courage. If we can do it after World War bloody One and Two, why can't we do it now? What's wrong with this mob? You are locking up Cape York Peninsula for god's sake.

Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Heffernan, please be temperate in your remarks.

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

Yeah, righto. Fourteen thousand people live off the coast in Cape York Peninsula. Bangladesh is half the size of Cape York Peninsula and it has 160 million people who will be displaced by 2050. Thank you very much. (Time expired)

John Madigan (Victoria, Democratic Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you Madam Acting Deputy President. I rise today to speak about the Water Amendment (Water for the Environment Special Account) Bill 2012. Over the Christmas-New Year's period, knowing the bill was coming up, I actually happened to go and visit people in the Murray Darling Basin affected by this bill. Instead of reading a report, I actually went out and spoke to some of these people and visited places like Rochester, Echuca, Mathoura, Deniliquin, Thyra, Finley, Jerilderie, Stanhope, Tongala and Benjeroop. There are a hell of a lot of people out there who feel anxiety and apprehension. They acknowledge that there has been an overallocation of water, but they say that the greater concern that they believe we should be addressing is, amongst other things, Cubbie Station and the enormous amount of water that went with that and the foreign ownership of our land and our water resources. Also, people have mentioned to me the effect of managed investment schemes in past years and the effect that had on the sell-off of water resources connected with managed investment scheme tree farms, for example, and then seeing those farms fall into foreign hands. These are some of the things that we should be looking at if we are talking about water. Some of the people had pubs up in these areas, or tyre businesses, fuel businesses or engineering works, or they were diesel mechanics. People in these communities wonder what is going on when we have the Victorian government buying up land, for instance, around Benjeroop and Tongala in Victoria. They are buying the land and then taking the water and returning the water. Then we have got the federal government doing it and we have got other state governments involved in this process. What is the overall plan and the overall coordination, and is it going to deliver the benefits for the environment that we are told it will?

Ultimately, when farmers and communities in the Murray-Darling Basin, our river communities, and in rural and urban communities around Australia make decisions, there are consequences for those decisions, and they fear that decisions are being made for them, their families, their livelihoods and their communities by people who, they feel, have conducted a so-called consultation process but with a preconceived outcome and that they are just pawns in this process. People have read that the water to these towns and communities is assured under the plan, but when we remove water from our farmers we remove a great part of their income.

Let us say, for example, that we have got two tyre services in a town and our farmers' income is reduced and we have got fewer farmers on the land. As a result, there is less need for tyre services. The critical mass to keep these businesses going and be able to offer the people in these towns competitive prices is diminished because there is not enough cake there for both of them to eat. This is the problem facing these communities. The overwhelming feeling of these people is that they are not being listened to, they are not being considered. I have serious reservations about this bill, as do these communities and, as such, I will be voting against it. Thank you.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wanted to use the opportunity of the discussion which has been taking place on this bill to highlight more broadly some of the things we have not done and some of the things that we should be doing in relation to our rivers and streams and our water storage in Australia. The significance of this particular bill has been well argued by my colleagues, particularly those on this side of the chamber. I think that the Senate has been well served by discussion and the points put forward by my colleagues on the Water Amendment (Water for the Environment Special Account) Bill which, as has been indicated, establishes a special account to acquire additional environmental water for the Murray-Darling.

What this bill shows is that there is a need for a bill like this. In the past, governments and those who have been responsible for managing our water supply within Australia have not been good at what they have done. Perhaps even over centuries—certainly over many decades—they have overallocated water and made decisions which have led to the types of difficulties we have seen in the Murray-Darling Basin now for some 20 or 30 years. It has been a problem in the Murray-Darling that governments of all persuasions have tried to address and there is not any simple answer. My colleagues talking in this debate have pointed out some real problems with the bill and the management by the current government.

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

Order! The time allotted for this debate has expired. Senator Macdonald, you will be in continuation when the bill is next debated.