Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to Senator McKenzie, representing the Minister for Water Resources, Drought, Rural Finance, Natural Disaster and Emergency Management. As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I know that farmers are doing it tough, yet in recent weeks they have been watching but not accessing high water flows in the Murray rushing past their farms. Where is all that water going? It's on its way to South Australia, to evaporate in a naturally marine estuary artificially made into a freshwater lake. Meanwhile, One Nation has long and vigorously advocated bringing waters into the Murray-Darling Basin from areas of consistently and reliably high rainfall outside the basin to droughtproof the basin and ensure water security for Melbourne and Adelaide. Minister, how can water be allocated objectively, honestly and fairly when so few creek and river flows are measured? Without accurate data on water flows, how do we know the allocations are fair and honest?

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

Thank you very much, Senator Roberts, for your question. The government is also very, very concerned about our primary producers and wants to ensure that they are able to fulfil their productive capacity, particularly at this time, when we are facing one of the worst droughts in our nation's history. I know, having travelled through the basin communities of New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and South Australia, that it is very tough for those farmers, who are facing unprecedented dry conditions, to watch environmental flows destined for other states and other places flow past their communities. But that is what the Murray-Darling Basin Plan was actually set up to do—to ensure that water was secured for environmental purposes and was able to be delivered to certain identified environmental assets along and throughout the basin communities. It was also set up to underpin the economic security of our farmers and their productive capacity going forward and to ensure that those communities, those millions of Australians that live and raise families and businesses in basin communities, can actually look forward to a sustainable and prosperous future.

Getting that balance between four different basin states right has, as we all know in this chamber, been a very, very difficult process. It is not one that we here in the National Party and the Liberal Party have resiled away from. We've fought very hard to make sure that that is a fair plan and that the mechanisms we use to deliver it are actually fair. We're the ones that actually fought to make sure a socioeconomic detriment test was part of the ongoing measurement of the success of the plan, and that means making sure our farmers and their communities are still going to be able to raise a family and have a successful business in these communities going forward when we're looking at taking out— (Time expired)

Scott Ryan (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Roberts, a supplementary question.

Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In my experience, Mr President, I have never seen a plan that works fairly or honestly without accurate data. Senator McKenzie, why then are New South Wales farmers paying $60,000 in water licences every year and not getting water allocation while precious water is released to become man-made floods and to evaporate in South Australia for no environmental benefit and much human and community suffering?

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

I also, as one of the few people in this place with a science degree, like to base my policy decisions on science and data. It is very difficult to make key decisions on policy without accessing stringent data, and that's why our government has initiated a range of measures to strengthen compliance and enforcement, including $35 million to expand metering and satellite remote-sensing technology in the northern basin, $25 million to encourage the installation of meters by irrigators in the northern basin as part of a comprehensive package of measures regarding the fish death reports and $5 million for cameras to capture livestream river flows to provide transparency to the public. We're taking our role very seriously. It is also up to state governments—New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia—to support their farmers to measure the flows accurately.

Scott Ryan (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Roberts, a final supplementary question.

Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

So it looks like we will get measurements some time which may give us some fairness in the future. Through you, Mr President: Senator McKenzie, if your rosy picture is so accurate, why are 500 desperate farmers suing the Murray-Darling Basin Authority for $750 million in compensation for alleged water mismanagement which has left them with zero water allocation while South Australian farmers are getting 97 to 100 per cent of their full allocation?

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

Senator Roberts, as you know—you're a great fan of the Constitution; you often want to quote it to us all ad nauseam—the water entitlements, the allocation of licences and the management of water to particular irrigators is a responsibility, constitutionally, of the states, and so it is the New South Wales government who is responsible for issuing licences to New South Wales irrigators—sorry, through you, Mr President. It is, similarly, the purview of the Victorian and the South Australian governments to do likewise. So I would suggest that, rather than come here with questions that are not related to the Commonwealth's work, you actually pursue those in state parliaments throughout the Murray-Darling Basin.