Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Northern Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm continuing my remarks, having spoken on these bills a bit before question time.

Just to further outline the opposition's position: I was saying before that Labor absolutely supports the government's desire to provide additional support for farmers and rural communities who are experiencing drought. All of us want to do that. This is about whether what the government is putting forward is the best way to do so. When I was speaking previously, I was particularly focusing on the fact that by setting up this Future Drought Fund, the government is raiding an alternative fund which is still very important in rural and regional communities, and that is the Building Australia Fund.

The Building Australia Fund, which was established by the last federal Labor government, is a $3.9 billion fund that this government has failed to draw down on, failed to access and failed to utilise, even though the fund can support projects in drought-affected communities across transport infrastructure, like roads, rail, urban transport and ports; communications infrastructure such as broadband; energy infrastructure; and water infrastructure. All the kinds of things that rural and regional communities are crying out for! Why is it that the government has failed to spend money from the Building Australia Fund, has left it in tact, has not drawn on it and is not building any of that infrastructure that is needed, whether it be in rural or regional communities or in urban communities? Now it wants to raid it for an alternative purpose. The reason is that the government fundamentally does not like how the Building Australia Fund is set up and the level of probity that is required to make sure that the money is well spent. Since being elected six years ago, the government has tried on four separate occasions to dismantle the Building Australia Fund.

As I've mentioned, the Building Australia Fund was established by Labor in 2008 under the Nation-building Funds Act 2008. Labor established this fund with the explicit purpose of being free of politics. Under the Nation-building Funds Act criteria were developed which must be applied by Infrastructure Australia before projects, other than broadband projects, can be recommended for funding. The fund is built on four key principles. Firstly, projects should address national infrastructure priorities. Secondly, they should demonstrate high benefits and effective use of resources. Thirdly, projects should efficiently address infrastructure needs. Fourthly, they should demonstrate they achieve established standards in their implementation and management.

It is these key principles around independent, transparent decision-making that the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison Liberal National governments so despise. Their problem, when it all boils down to it, is that the Building Australia Fund has four principles around transparency and independent decision-making and making sure that projects are actually needed and will provide value to the country. The Liberals' and Nationals' problem with the Building Australia Fund is that it doesn't have a fifth principle—one that allows for pork barrelling to win seats in marginal Liberal and National areas of the country. If it had that fifth principle, I reckon we'd get the support of the coalition, because we know that that's the way they have always used these types of infrastructure funds and various other regional funds that they have established. It is this inability to pork barrel for their mates that those opposite hate so much about the Building Australia Fund. While these bills set up consultation processes for the new Future Drought Fund, the minister can ignore them—just like the health minister so often ignores expert advice with respect to the Medical Research Future Fund. The member for Ballarat made that point yesterday in the House. We've got this series of funds that have been established by the government, theoretically with expert advice processes to help shape the decisions, only to be ignored by ministers within this government.

To be frank, under the bills as they're being put forward the minister will be able to support his favourite communities, to pork barrel funding into his preferred seats for the benefit of the National Party at the expense of so many drought stricken parts of rural and regional Australia. Having visited Darwin twice now since my appointment as shadow minister for northern Australia, and becoming more familiar with the extent of the drought that exists in the Northern Territory, which is really crippling the cattle industry and many other communities across the Northern Territory, I'll be very interested to see how many projects will be funded out of this Future Drought Fund in the electorate of Lingiari, held by Labor, covering a drought affected area. Let's just wait and see how many projects in that area get funded compared to projects in seats that the National Party have a direct interest in. The seat of Gilmore on the south coast of New South Wales is another area that's badly affected by drought at the moment. It's held by Labor. Let's wait and see how many projects in the electorate of Gilmore get funding out of this fund, or whether, mysteriously, all the funds flow through to electorates held by the National Party.

What we have is the government abolishing a fund that was established to provide a strategic, transparent approach to infrastructure investment, led by the independent Infrastructure Australia. This is particularly important at a time when the Reserve Bank is highlighting the need for infrastructure spending to support Australia's flagging economy. Indeed, the very fund the government is abolishing, the Building Australia Fund, could be used in these current economic conditions to help stimulate and support the very communities that are affected by drought. It does not make sense that they are not drawing down on the Building Australia Fund now for projects that have been recommended by Infrastructure Australia to get investment into the economy now in communities across the country. It is pure politics at the expense of rural and regional communities that are doing it so tough right now. These communities need help from the federal government now, not in three months, not in six months, not in next year—now. Instead, what they're getting from this government is a fund that will only start distributing funds more than 12 months away. It's not going to give rural and regional communities the support that they need right now.

If the government were to choose to not utilise the Building Australia Fund, there's absolutely no reason that the government can't make an appropriation for drought funding right now. We have been calling for that to happen. There's no reason that the government couldn't decide today to make an appropriation, to make funding available for drought ridden communities now, not in over 12 months time. I make the point that there's nothing that stopped the government from having made an appropriation at any point over the last six years for drought funding. Of course, they haven't done so. Labor has said time and again we stand ready to support that.

We believe action should be taken now, not in over a year's time, to alleviate the social and economic costs in drought-affected communities and a strategic plan developed for future drought-proofing Australia, including through substantial investment in infrastructure, but these investments must be transparent and made on the best available science and the best available advice to government about what will work in the long term to support our regions. But the hurried introduction of these bills only demonstrates that they have been asleep at the wheel for the past six years—asleep at the wheel on the drought and on water reform, asleep at the wheel on utilising the Building Australia Fund to build infrastructure, leaving regional communities to suffer for far too long.

Rural and regional Australians need support and action now, not more years spent in consultation. Instead, this government is offering $100 million in about a year's time and another $100 million a year after that, not the $5 billion that they go around using as a headline figure of the fund. In fact this fund won't even reach $5 billion in size for another nine years. It's another furphy that's being put around by this government. It is just $200 million, with not a cent to flow for about a year. It is the removal of the $3.9 billion Building Australia Fund for just $200 million in this term of government for drought funding. As the leader of the Labor Party said in the House last night, you don't even have to count all the zeros to know that $3.9 billion out and $200 million in is a pretty bad deal. As Labor has repeated time and again, we support greater investment in our rural and regional communities at this time of drought, but the maths are pretty straightforward and the politics are even clearer. The new Future Fund will be a pork-barrel vehicle for the National Party just as we've seen so many other times from the National Party, and it will be to the detriment of communities right across the country.

The Labor Party will not oppose these bills. We support the additional resources to our rural and regional communities, but, when we return to government, we will restructure Infrastructure Australia and make it a strong body once again. We will ensure that this is a genuinely independent board of experts, making sure that it can do its job in driving microeconomic reform and having proper cost-benefit analysis and rigour in terms of infrastructure. We will establish in the future a fund like the Building Australia Fund because it is essential that there be a funding component to support Infrastructure Australia's rigorous, strategic work.

In conclusion, I repeat that there is absolutely no reason that government cannot make an appropriation for drought funding right now. They could have done so at any time during the last six years. Labor has stood ready to support rural and regional communities right across the country, but, for this government, it's all about the politics. You've even seen it in the run-up to the debate today. All the media has been full of government ministers and government backbenchers out there describing this bill as a test of Labor. It's very clear what this government is about. It's all just about politics. It's all about finding wedges for Labor. It almost feels like they haven't realised that they just won the election. They can actually get on and govern in the best interests of the country rather than trying to run around constantly finding wedges with which to test Labor.

Australians don't want it.

Senator Hume interjecting—

Sorry, Senator Hume?

Sue Lines (WA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Watt, through the chair.

Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Northern Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I heard Senator Hume referring to what sounded like 'a test for Labor', so I wondered if she was the latest frontbencher talking about things being tests for Labor rather than genuine exercises.

The government doesn't want scrutiny of the projects they fund, because, if they did have scrutiny, they'd fall over. They are just deals with their mates at the expense of rural and regional communities. We'll be keeping a close eye on how the government manages this new drought Future Fund, because we want to make sure those communities who need support the most—those councils, businesses and research organisations with the best ideas—are those that get the support they need from the federal government.

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

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I rise to support the Future Drought Fund (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2019 despite substantial reservations. Australia's hardworking farmers are suffering desperately in this drought, an entirely natural phenomenon that is part of our country—but that doesn't make it any less difficult for the farmers. Drought support for the land is not just about infrastructure, because there are many on-farm measures that can be taken. This bill places the attention where it needs to be: on the soil. Droughtproofing Australia is in part about regenerating degraded soil to retain more water and, from that, to use less fertiliser and chemicals. The ultimate goal is profitable, stable and sustainable agriculture. Regenerative agriculture, known as regen ag for short, stores water back in the soil. It captures and stores carbon, a natural element that is essential for all life on earth and that is in every living cell of every living organism. I want to compliment the One Nation member for the state seat of Mirani in Queensland for the work he has been doing with farmers, and will continue to do, on this matter.

After pushing for many years, One Nation is now very pleased to see soil regeneration being included in this bill, and we will hold the government accountable to that clearly stated intent. Yet, this is not a $5 billion drought bill. The bill provides $100 million each year to be put into a special fund for grants to farmers. But here is the problem: that money does not start to flow until 1 July 2020. In fact, the Future Drought Fund has a full 12 months after 1 July 2020 to put all of the money into that account. This scheme may not be in full swing until mid-2021 and, after processing grant applications, it could be 2022 before farmers can get their hands on their money. So, why did Senator Cormann earlier today take to Twitter soon after announcing this bill to declare that the bill would support famers and drought affected communities straight away, when that is not the case?

The bill provides for fund management expenses to be taken from the special account. Let me say that again: the bill provides for fund management expenses to be taken from the special fund account. Many questions remain around how much will be taken out of that $100 million for expenses in managing the fund. The bill lists page after page of expenses, including the cost of the Future Drought Fund as well as the special fund. One Nation is concerned that this is not a $5 billion bill and it's not a $100 million bill; rather, this bill may well turn out to offer funds in a trickle, not the flood that is needed. In many ways, this seems to be yet another Liberal facade that's going to be sold. One Nation will hold this government accountable to the promises it is making with this bill to provide drought relief.

We go further though. Why does the government continue to ignore the need for substantial nation building—for future-building and infrastructure projects that could droughtproof much of our nation, particularly our state of Queensland and our neighbouring state of New South Wales? That is a cost-effective and seemingly affordable project that would prevent forever the cost of recurring flood damage.

We go further, and ask the government to address Liberal and Labor policies and actions that are crippling Australia's productive capacity. In southern and Central Queensland, farmers are not planting fodder because the electricity prices are absurdly and artificially high. In a drought, farmers are not planting fodder. Electricity prices are high due to unfounded and dishonest energy policies complying with the UN's Paris pseudo agreement and various UN policies and advices. There is a drought, yet farmers are not planting fodder.

After listen to the loony and antihuman Greens who falsely claim that droughts are due to hydrocarbon fuels, I must address their falsities. They have never, never provided the hard data for their claim and they contradict the empirical scientific evidence that proves hydrocarbon fuels do not and cannot affect climate. The UN initiated this lie, the Greens push it and the Labour-Liberal duopoly drive it in policy, aiming to get Greens preferences. The Greens, I repeat again, have never provided data as proof for their absurd claim.

Banks are also crucifying farmers. That brings them to the edge, and then you get a drought and they go over the edge. Farmers are crippled by banks that have unfettered oligopoly powers.

Let's take another Labor-Liberal policy. How can farmers survive the Howard Liberal government that colluded first in 1996 with the then Borbidge National Party government, and then in 1998 with the Beattie Labor Queensland government and the Carr Labor New South Wales government to steal farmers' properties rights as a way of complying with the UN's Kyoto Protocol? That was repeatedly stated by the then Prime Minister, Mr John Howard, on behalf of his government and echoed and confirmed by Bob Carr and Mr Peter Beattie. I have been calling on the federal government to comply with section 51(xxxi) of the national Constitution and either restore farmers' stolen property rights or compensate them in just terms for the theft—restoration or compensation.

I want to single out Mr Dan McDonald; his lovely wife, Katrina; and their children, James, Ebony and Reece. They are taking on the whole of the Queensland government by standing up for their right to clear their land to provide mulga for their cattle that are starving. They bought that property near Charleville in south-western Queensland particularly because it had mulga and could be cleared, because that then provides natural drought proofing, and yet he's not allowed to clear the land now. He has lost his property rights as a result of Liberal and Labor governments at federal and state levels.

Finally, the support from farmers has been slow to come. While wanting faster delivery, we are nonetheless pleased that farmers will be getting support sometime in the next three years. We urge the government to get out and really listen across our wonderful nation and then change its energy and water policies while building vital drought-proofing infrastructure to restore Australia's productive capacity. That is what we in Pauline Hanson's One Nation advocate for: restoring our country's productive capacity.

Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to make, for the sake of future speakers, a fairly brief contribution today. I just need to address some of the falsehoods put out there by Senator Watt as to what the government is doing. Senator Watt, and to a degree Senator Roberts, talked as if the Future Drought Fund Bill before us here today is the only thing this government is doing for drought-affected farmers. As my colleague sitting here near me Senator McGrath would know very well, in Queensland and New South Wales this government has put a lot of support towards drought-affected communities in a variety of ways—grants to local governments, farm household allowance, grants for fodder et cetera. The idea that we are waiting for a future date to assist farmers is just an absolute falsehood. It's a nonsense, and it's something that should be condemned in the strongest terms possible.

What this bill does is it sets a path for the future. It sets a path to build the resilience of our farming communities. I grew up on a family farm, a family farm that's been in our family for quite a number of generations now; worked for rural bodies, in particular the Pastoralists and Graziers Association of Western Australia; and have looked into the eyes of drought-affected farming families—very, very good farmers who have been on the land for generations and who are facing the loss of their property and the loss of their ability to pass that farm on to the next generation thanks to, in this case, the 2006 drought in the eastern Wheatbelt of Western Australia. What this bill will do over time is it will continue to build the resilience of our farming communities. Its initial investment of $3.9 billion grows to $5 billion over the decade. Over time, obviously, this will provide a source of funding to enable on-farm drought-resilience projects to be undertaken.

Farmers are resilient. Farmers have got through droughts in Australia for more than 100 years. Even though I saw droughts make it impossible for some farmers to continue, others kept going and they battled their way through the hard times. Families that have been on the land for generations found a way to fight their way through. What this fund will do is provide an opportunity, an option, to continue that process of continually building the resilience of our farming communities, allowing them to proactively adopt new technologies and new opportunities to drought-proof properties and drought-proof agricultural in their particular region.

It's vitally important that we provide communities with hope for the future. It's certainly not the only thing we are doing in this space, but this is a very important component. It's a vehicle that will be there over the long term. It's a vehicle that will provide to rural and regional Australia over a long period of time a consistent, stable and growing source of funding that will allow regions to undertake significant projects to protect them against future drought events. It will provide farming communities and farming families with a degree of certainty and stability that they perhaps currently don't have. So I do commend the bill. I commend the work that's been done in this space by a number of ministers. This is not all that we are doing to assist drought-affected farmers and drought-affected communities, but it is an important part of that jigsaw.

Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Future Drought Fund Bill 2019. At the outset, I will just foreshadow that I will be moving my second reading amendment—which is on sheet 5817—to this bill. I want to start by saying that it is kind of insulting, really, to have a bill that sets up a fund to try to help desperately afflicted farmers in drought—and in my state of Queensland almost two-thirds of our entire state is now drought declared; so there are many, many people who are now facing desperate situations—while you continue to ignore the impacts of climate change that are of course driving, worsening and deepening that drought now and will continue to do so in the future.

My colleagues will make a range of contributions—and, indeed, we have a range of amendments that we will be moving to this bill—but our fundamental point is: what is the point if you are not going tackle what is causing the deepness, harshness and the cruelty of these droughts? If you continue to have your head in the sand on climate change, you are not faithfully representing or helping those people. Of course, we want to see farmers in drought receive the financial support to try to tackle this, but we also think that they deserve a decent climate policy. This government, sadly, is not going to give them that reality check.

I might also bring to mind the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility, which was a similar sort of National Party-led slush fund that was meant to have great promise, and barely has had any dollars get out the door. It sounds to me that this fund is going to be pretty similar. It's not starting for ages—it is being rushed through today even though it doesn't kick in for a good 18 months or so—and then it is going to dribble out a little bit of funding each year. Surely you can do a bit better than that. People actually need assistance now. They need a genuine climate policy now, and they shouldn't have the whims of the likes of Minister Littleproud—or perhaps Barnaby Joyce will be minister again by then—dictating what little pet project gets funding. That's why I'm pleased that there have been some amendments that establish some level of accountability, transparency and oversight—though not quite enough, in our view. My colleague Senator Rice has run through the amendments that we will move to try to further tighten that process. This parliament shouldn't set up another slush fund for the National Party to administer while that party continues to abrogate its duty to tackle climate change and genuinely represent its members. That's the first point.

We are also concerned, as I believe my colleagues on the Labor benches are concerned, that this money would strip needed funds from an infrastructure fund. Yes, the government haven't spent anything from that infrastructure fund in recent years, but it was set up for good reason and has meritorious projects that could have funding allocated. But of course the government just want to score yet another political point and have decided to grab that money and try to spend it elsewhere. If they were genuine about wanting to alleviate the drought, not only would they have a better climate policy but they would decide that this was worthy of some funds that were not stolen from some other decent project but instead came from consolidated revenue or, as my colleague has proposed, from a levy on the fossil fuel resources industries. As you've probably heard us say before in this place, we know that coal and coal seam gas are driving climate change, which is furthering, worsening and deepening the drought, and yet all of our policies under this government are yet more subsidies for the mining industry, yet more free rides. They don't pay the appropriate amount of corporate taxes and they get many thousands of public subsidies for the privilege of taking out what are meant to be publicly owned resources. This is why we want to make it crystal clear that none of the investments made by the Future Drought Fund should further fossil fuels, and nor should the money come at the expense of an infrastructure fund when it could come from the fossil fuel industry.

That brings me to the substance of the second reading amendment that I will be moving, which is:

At the end of the motion, add:

", but the Senate notes that free or unlimited water entitlements given to fossil fuel companies by State and Territory governments, while farmers struggle with drought conditions, significantly undermines the effectiveness of any drought response by:

(a) depriving farmers of water;

(b) exacerbating droughts; and

(c) worsening climate change which further exacerbates droughts."

It makes a bit of a mockery of this plan for a drought fund and alleviation of drought through financial contributions when you've got state and territory governments giving free water to big mining companies and to coal seam gas companies. I want to go into a bit more detail about that. There's a little project that you might have heard mentioned sometimes—certainly it exercises the mind of Senator Canavan, who earlier told the chamber he'd been trying to get this mine up for years. It is of course the Adani mine. They're on a pretty good wicket when it comes to their water entitlements. In fact, the farmers in the region that they share are pretty cross about it. For the record, Adani have an associated water licence granted to them by the Queensland state Labor government which is for 60 years. It's got no volumetric cap, so they can take an unlimited amount of groundwater.

Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party, Minister for Resources and Northern Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is wrong.

Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, it's not wrong, Minister. You know the difference between groundwater and surface water, and I'm about to come to their surface water entitlements.

Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party, Minister for Resources and Northern Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You know it's not unlimited.

Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do know, Minister. I remind you that I am in fact an environmental lawyer, so I am quite confident in my familiarity with this arrangement. It is 9½ billion litres of groundwater, which is almost as much as all of the other local users—most of them agricultural and farming—combined. They don't have to pay. It's free. It's unlimited. That is precisely why we are in the predicament that we are in. You cannot say that giving free water to a big coalmining multinational company, while the region is drought declared—and the minister wasn't here; I remind him that 65 per cent of our state is drought declared—is a good decision. That is exactly why we are moving an amendment to point out that the decisions to give a free ride to the fossil fuel industry—not just on their taxes, on subsidies for cheap diesel and on accelerated depreciation but on free, unlimited water, which nobody else gets—fundamentally undermine the utility of this so-called Future Drought Fund. I hope that, on that basis, we will receive support for our second reading amendment when I move it. And I'm sure the minister also knows this, although it predates his time in parliament: in 2011 an irrigator had their licence application rejected in the very same region that Adani have now had a 60-year unlimited groundwater entitlement given to them.

I want to move onto the surface water that Adani has also gotten a very nice, cushy deal on from our state Labor government. They've got a surface water licence of 12½ billion litres per year to extract water from the Suttor River. That licence was actually granted without public consultation, because again our state government gave Adani a free ride. Even though it was tightening up the water laws for everyone else at the time, it made an exception for Adani. So, 12½ billion litres of surface water from the Suttor River—again, that region is suffering from crippling drought. How can you stand here and say that you are trying to tackle the drought when you have no climate policy, when you're giving subsidies to fossil fuel companies and when other government regimes—I acknowledge this is the state government—are giving free water to those same fossil fuel companies that are not only depriving the farmers of that water but are also, when their product is burnt, exacerbating the conditions that will worsen the drought, not to mention all of the other climate impacts. These are impacts that not only our land managers have to face, but we all have to face. The sheer hypocrisy of this situation is really getting a bit boring.

The other thing that we found quite concerning was the approach that was taken with this bill. I accept that an earlier version of this bill was tabled—when was it?—in November last year, but it has been significantly changed since then. Of course, it has been expunged from the Notice Paperand reintroduced—we're in a new parliament; we've had an election since it was introduced—and yet this bill in its current form, with those changes that have been made, was only introduced to the House yesterday morning. It was rammed through the House yesterday—I understand Labor were a bit cross about that yesterday, but apparently they've changed their position on that today—and it's been brought to us today. And here we are now; we're talking about it. It has been just over 24 hours, and yet this government expects this bill to be passed without proper scrutiny. I'm sure they won't even consider any of the amendments that we'll be moving, even though our amendments go to actually tackling climate change, which could help us to reduce the severity and devastation of future droughts.

It just feels to me like this government is trying to be very performative—it's desperately trying to wedge the opposition—and it seems to have forgotten that it's actually here to govern the country. Now, we have very different views about how it should be doing that, and that's fine, but you've actually got a job to do. It would be useful if you started to pay attention to that, rather than just scoring political points off your opponents: making them squirm, ramming stuff through, making them backflip. They're always going to backflip; we see that time and time again. We kind of expect that now. We get that. It's very damaging when you treat this institution with such little regard. The cut-off order exists for a purpose. The rule that you can't ram a bill through in a sitting chunk exists for a purpose, and yet you've just thrown it out of the window. This bill was rammed through the House yesterday, and now you want to ram it through the Senate. We think that's not good process.

We've put up amendments that we think would strengthen this bill. They go to having a proper climate policy. They go to not giving a free ride to those water-guzzling fossil fuel companies. They go to the greater transparency measures that my colleague outlined, which would actually give this chamber more oversight over the particular projects that were to be funded from this fund, but we don't have a terribly good track record of getting support for our sensible, measured, well-thought-through amendments. I don't expect we'll get a lot of support for them this time around either, so all the more reason to have a proper process for this bill, so it could be scrutinised, so the opposition party could at least have a proper chance to send it through their caucus. They were rightfully concerned yesterday that they didn't have a chance to do that. I'm not quite sure why they've changed their mind and why they didn't object to exempting this bill from the cut-off order this morning and ramming it through. I think there was an abrogation of process there.

But here we are. We have a bill that will hopefully provide some support to farmers, but it won't start flowing for 18 months, it won't tackle climate change and it won't tackle the deep unfairness of mining companies getting free water while farmers in that very same region are struggling. Farmers are having to tighten their belts and are wondering where their water is going to come from while Adani gets a 60-year groundwater licence and a 12½-billion-litre licence for surface water. Seriously, what more can we give to this company? What on earth are you saying to those farmers when they are desperate for an explanation as to why they are not getting the water? I don't know what it is that you're saying, because I know that Bruce Currie, one of the farmers, was very distressed about the inequity, as quoted in an article that I have just here:

It's bloody-minded and barbaric.

He's a grazier who lives in the region, whom I have met over the years in my role as senator for this state. He said:

This is going to definitely impact on the integrity of [the Great Artesian Basin].

I don't see legislation here to address the threats to the Great Artesian Basin or the drawdown from the overallocation of free water to mining companies. I remember one of your former colleagues, who has left us now—in fact in the first inquiry I was involved in when I started in this chamber in 2011—called for protection for the Great Artesian Basin.

Senator Sterle interjecting—

I'm not too sure that you should be proud to be opposing protection for the Great Artesian Basin, because that is what that Senate committee inquiry recommended. We have seen zero action on that. It has been eight years and there has been nothing to protect the Great Artesian Basin. I do think that these farmers and land managers are a bit cluier than you give them credit for. They are pretty cross that their entitlements are getting restricted when mining companies have free reign.

By all means rush the bill through—we thought it should follow the proper processes but it seems that no-one actually minds so much about what the proper processes are any more—but please consider supporting these very sensible amendments which would make sure this parliament can have proper scrutiny over not just the broad plans but the actual projects that are sought to be funded. That builds on the amendments of the former member for Indi, Cathy McGowan, in her time in the other place. This amendment notes that you are just going to undermine any sort of genuine drought response by continuing to turn a blind eye to the free ride that the big fossil fuel companies are getting when it comes to water.

I thought the National Party were meant to represent farmers. They keep taking a whole lot of donations from fossil fuel companies in recent years and they're nowhere on this issue. People deserve representation. Everyone, no matter what political background they come from, deserves to feel like they have a voice in this place. I'm very saddened because the bush are feeling abandoned. I hope that the National Party do some soul-searching and try to remember whom they initially said they were going to represent, because the farmers that I meet with are deeply concerned about climate change. They can see the impacts of it not just on their water supply but on the fragility of their land and the severity of the bushfires.

Minister Canavan knows this—his own backyard was affected—yet we still have no decent climate policy. I don't know how often members of the government meet with climate scientists—and I don't expect that particular members of the crossbench who don't accept the climate science have any meetings—but I urge the government to genuinely consult with the expert climate scientists and get a real handle on what we can expect is going to be wreaked on our lands, our precious environment and our communities if you continue to do very little, an inadequate amount, on climate change and if you continue to subsidise hand over fist the very industries that are fuelling this problem and are worsening and deepening the droughts. You've backed the wrong horse. You really have. It is not fair that we have billions of dollars in subsidies going to coalmining and coal-seam gas companies when farmers are struggling, when species are being sent to the wall with the extinction crisis that is already under way, when half of the reef has been bleached.

These are not just social and environmental impacts; these are also economic impacts. I would have thought that the government, though they clearly don't care much for the social or environmental impacts, might be moved by the economic impacts. So, please, I urge you to do some genuine consultation with climate scientists, in particular those who know about the impact on water. Sadly, in that 60-year unlimited groundwater licence that Adani was handed by the Queensland state Labor government, the modelling did not take into account the climate impacts on groundwater and water generally. It was not required to because, evidently, our laws are so incredibly weak. That is a gross oversight. We don't lack scientific advisors, but it seems the government and our state government lack the will to actually listen to them. I urge support for the second reading amendment, and I formally move that at this point.

Wendy Askew (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you very much, Senator Waters, but you can't actually move it until we go into the committee stage. At this point we'll just note it.

Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I did foreshadow it at the beginning of my speech. Thanks very much.

Susan McDonald (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There are some here on both sides who know about Australia's incredible, fertile and abundant land. But drought is a horrible cycle, and people on the land know it well. Those of us who are actually from regional Australia do talk about the millennium drought and the droughts of 1900, 1930 and the 1960s. This is not the first drought that we've been through, and drought doesn't just affect people in the regions. It not only dries up creeks, rivers, crops and paddocks; it dries up hope. Regional and rural towns suffer. The shops struggle and people move away, leaving local councils battling to pay for essential services. In the cities, food and fibre don't make it to the processing plants and the shops, which costs jobs. Thankfully, good times do return. Drought doesn't just affect specific regions; it affects us all, which is why this Morrison government is rolling up its sleeves and doing what needs to be done to improve drought resilience.

The Future Drought Fund is designed to draw down $100 million a year, in good times and bad times, to invest in important resilience projects that will keep food not only on farmers' tables but on everyone's tables and will keep money pumping through small rural communities and regional cities. Establishing this fund is more proof that the Liberal Nationals are the only people looking out for regional and rural Australia. The money will be used to support investment in research and innovation, research extension, the adoption of new technology, improved environmental and natural resource management, infrastructure and community initiatives. These objectives are all crucial to bolstering the future of our regions. This kind of resilience must also be supported by the state and local governments and by private enterprise. I implore them to support what we're trying to do with this fund, because helping regional and rural communities better withstand tough times benefits us all.

I want to give assurance to those on the other side that this program is important. It's important because it gives certainty. It gives certainty to people who are most affected by drought to start planning projects, to improve water efficiency and to be more resilient for when the good times return. It is important for them to know that there is ongoing funding and that this is not just one round that will disappear if they've missed out.

The other thing that's important is that, if we pass this bill tonight, government must be seen to move quickly and provide certainty to people. Previous speakers have spoken about what bush people want and about them feeling abandoned. They're not feeling abandoned by this government; they're feeling abandoned by naysayers and people who think they shouldn't be out growing food and fibre on our land. This program will tackle the climate change issues that have been raised by previous speakers.

In Queensland we know how to manage mining. We have very strong regulations and we've been doing it for nearly 200 years. In my experience working in the Queensland government a few years ago, there were some great advances, particularly around the globe, which provided great scientific measurement and transparency of water table measurements. It is now a requirement—and this was introduced under Andrew Cripps, when he was the Minister for Natural Resources and Mines—for mining companies to provide watertable measurements from bores around their property. So it is just not true that people are taking unlimited water with no consequence. There is great transparency in water measurement in Queensland.

The Great Artesian Basin is an important asset and is one that, as graziers and farmers, we all rely upon. But, again, this program will allow us to introduce more measures to have transparency and good water use. The delay in passing this legislation has already cost $76 million, and I think that there is not a moment to be lost. I would close by urging us to pass this as soon as we possibly can.

(Quorum formed)

Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Future Drought Fund Bill 2019. I want to start with the very simple point that we know, from all available science, that drought, the increased incidence of drought and the increased severity of droughts are linked to our changing climate. I totally understand that Australia has long been known as the sunburnt country. Droughts are part of our history. This country, clearly, is amenable to drought and all the consequences that go with it. We know the hardship that droughts cause and are increasingly likely to cause into the future, especially when we see record weather events and record droughts such as we have now in parts of our country, and droughts such as the millennium drought that we saw nearly a decade ago and, prior to that, the record drought in this country in 1982, 1983. We see the hardship it causes local communities and the government funds that are required to help bail out hardworking, struggling farmers.

I'm very shortly going to go through in a bit more detail some of the sad direct effects of droughts. It kind of beggars belief that we, a country so familiar with drought and its consequences, wouldn't be talking at this time in history about the link of drought to climate change and taking the strongest possible action on climate change. I don't think I've heard the words climate change or climate catastrophe or whatever you want to call it mentioned once in this bill by those on the other side of the chamber, yet surely it's the most important thing we should be discussing. There are scientifically established links between our record drought now, which no-one is denying is linked to climate, and the expected severity of extreme weather events in the future, which include drought.

It's fine to be taking taxpayers' money and giving it to this Liberal National government to dole out where they see it needs to be spent on regional communities—adaption measures have their place—but where is the imperative for mitigation of the underlying cause of these record droughts and all the misery that they bring our regional and rural areas? Where is the imperative for those mitigation measures? Like we've seen with the Great Barrier Reef, a so-called record investment of half a billion dollars given to a private foundation to help manage avoiding a World Heritage in danger listing for the world's largest living organism, we are just throwing good money after bad if we don't actually do everything we can to address and fix the underlying problem.

I'd also like to raise in my speech today—and I will be foreshadowing a second reading amendment—is how we fund any drought assistance packages. The Labor Party have given their speeches and talked about their concerns about the funds coming from infrastructure funding that had been allocated for projects. Not only am I concerned about that; I'd even be concerned that the funding for this drought relief package through this bill would be coming from general revenue. I've got a suggestion that I'd like senators to consider—and the Greens will be putting up an amendment around this. Why don't we take funds from the companies and the activities of those companies that are actually causing rising emissions, which we know are directly linked to the changes we're seeing in our climate, and actually have them pay for struggling farmers to help adapt to a future of drought?

We have clocked up in this country, in just one tax regime alone—the petroleum resource rent tax, which I have continually called in this place the petroleum rort rent tax—nearly $360 billion in tax credits for some of the biggest, wealthiest corporations on the planet, who have paid no petroleum resource rent tax. We have had a Senate inquiry into this. Everybody agreed it needed to be changed. We've seen some tweaks around the edges. But, if we put a 10 per cent floor in the petroleum resource rent tax—which funnily enough actually benefits those companies in the long term; it's actually less money they have to pay if they ever do pay a cent—then we can actually raise $2½ billion each year or $5 billion over the next two years to pay for this fund directly from the companies that are causing the problem in the first place.

I'm not even proposing, as Senator Cormann might like to use the turn of phrase, 'a new tax'. It's an existing tax that doesn't work that needs to be fixed. If we're going to find money to give to rural and regional communities that desperately need funds to help them adapt to a sad future and a dangerous future of increased severity of drought and extreme weather, let's take it from the companies that are actually causing this.

Of course, I would very much like to propose that we do that through a carbon pricing mechanism, which is being called for by not just the Greens. We had one in this country, but it got ripped up. It's actually the business community—the big end of the business community—that's calling for carbon pricing. Even companies like BHP, the big mining companies that are part of the brigade of big polluters on this planet, are calling for carbon pricing. They're calling for the certainty of a mechanism that prices their pollution. They acknowledge it's pollution. A carbon price could raise tens of billions of dollars and pay for the damage that's been done to our economy and our communities by climate change, not just drought. Instead, we're taking money from an infrastructure fund or we're taking it from general revenue rather than hypothecating it directly from sources that we know would link the causes of the problems we're seeing in rural and regional communities. Call it a polluter-pays principle.

We know from the science that climate change is making drought conditions in south-west and south-east Australia worse. I'm very proud to say that a lot of the scientists who do this work are in my home state of Tasmania. They're a very important part of the community, especially in Hobart. The Greens senator Rice and I and a number of other senators, including Senator Carr, chaired a select committee to stop cuts to CSIRO climate scientists. The jobs of 300 of them were on the line, and they're the ones who do the modelling and the observations—all the measurements that we need if we are to better understand how to mitigate and adapt to climate change. Nevertheless, their great work tells us that fronts from the Southern Ocean, which typically in the past have brought rain across southern Australia during winter and spring have shifted southwards with the warming climate, leading to declines in rainfall in south-west and south-east Australia. That increases directly the risk of drought in these regions, even in my home state of Tasmania. Believe it or not, I was working on my vineyard the year that the north-east of Tasmania was officially drought declared.

Senator Dean Smith interjecting—

It shocked a lot of people that a place in Tasmania was eligible for drought funding. It hasn't got any better.

Since the mid-1990s, south-east Australia has experienced a 15 per cent decline in the late-autumn and early-winter rainfall and a 25 per cent decline in average rainfall in both April and May. The average annual streamflow into Perth's dams, in Western Australia—sorry, I missed your interjection, Senator Smith. In your home state of Western Australia the streamflow into the dams has already decreased by nearly 80 per cent since the mid-1970s. Climate change is driving and increasing the intensity and frequency of hot days and heatwaves in Australia, and this in turn is increasing the severity of droughts. Once again, the sad reality in my home state of Tasmania is that it is getting drier. We have seen wildfires in three out of the last five years in wilderness areas, some of which haven't seen fire for thousands of years. We know that because we know that the species of plants there aren't fire resistant. They won't come back if they're burnt; they're there because they have not seen fire. These areas are being ignited by dry lightning, which itself is very rare, but the root cause of it is a very, very dry state of Tasmania. The impact of these fires is not just felt by the environment community, the ecosystems and the biodiversity of these places, it is very much felt by communities around Tasmania who have to volunteer, with the disruption that causes to the volunteers who have to go and fight these fires. No-one has estimated the economic damage it did this summer, but I can tell you it would have been significant.

People come to Tasmania. We heard a speech today which did have some positive things in it. It talked about tourism in Tasmania and why it's a very important industry, but if every summer we're going to experience these kinds of wildfires it won't be high on the visitation list for much longer. A lot of businesses this year had bookings cancelled. We had entire areas, which were some of the most visited parts of the state, shut because of these wildfires. The smoke in Tasmania went on for weeks and weeks in key areas. This is a very serious matter. While it may not officially be drought, it has the same weather patterns and the same changes that we're seeing.

Wendy Askew (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Whish-Wilson, as it is 7.20 pm, the time for the debate has expired. You'll be in continuation.