Environment and Water Department

Dr CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (15:39): I rise on grievance today because I am appalled at the treatment of public servants in the Department for Environment and Water by their minister. I was one such public servant, and in fact the minister was a public servant in another department and ought to know better. As we have noted already, thanks to the member for Lee, the minister has form in mocking public servants from within this place and when in opposition. He caused consternation in the department when his staff asked for a list of people who had previously worked as public servants for a Labor minister, and he is slashing the budget of the department.

He has openly disagreed with his chief executive on radio when challenged on the email that was sent out to all staff rebadging the department as being primarily an economic development agency. I quote from 891 and David Bevan:

So Mr Schutz got that wrong?

The minister:

I don't want to criticise that…on public radio but absolutely.

Really? Did the minister really not have a conversation with the chief executive that led that chief executive to make that statement? We will see. The truth has a way of coming out. But, most disturbingly, the minister has implied on public radio that the decision in December he made to comply with the Eastern States over their socio-economic criteria—the decision that has been so devastatingly criticised by the royal commission—was supported by those experts who had previously advised that they were not supportive of those criteria, yet magically in December the department, according to the minister on radio, changed its mind. Again, I am quoting David Bevan:

No, no, no; it's a straightforward question—did your department change its advice?

Minister:

Absolutely; well, I'm not sure they ever told us not to do that, I can't recall that, but they certainly said…this is okay, we can work with this. My department absolutely endorsed us negotiating on—

and I will correct his grammar—

[those] criteria.

Naturally, the question from David Bevan was:

But what made them change their mind between December and the previous June?

That is when we had the submission that the minister signed off on. The answer was:

I've got no idea.

So here we have the minister seemingly unaware of the department's advice that it was to not change the criteria, despite signing the cover letter, and unaware then of any reason they would have changed that advice, but he is certain that they endorsed his negotiations. Well, again, we will see.

The other place will soon consider a select committee looking into exactly what was decided and on what advice. If that select committee is formed, the public servants who the minister has said endorsed the criteria in December will have the chance to speak. All we have on record from the department is the following statement made last week in writing to ABC Riverland radio. This has come from the department:

It has always been the role of the public service to provide expert advice and support to ministers in their role as decision maker. Officers from the Department for Environment and Water worked closely with minister Speirs during the MDB Ministerial Council in December 2018.

That is hardly a statement of endorsement of those socio-economic criteria to which the commissioner objected so strongly and on the advice of experts. What we know is that water experts outside the department who are free to speak, including the former commonwealth environment water holder David Papps, who is now in the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, were very clear that any change to the existing legal framework for the efficiency measures to deliver our water would ensure that that water never came.

I will be surprised if water experts in the department hold any different kind of view, but at present the only person allowed to speak is the minister. I look forward to having the advice and the testimony from the experts in the department about what this minister has done, because what he said is that it was impossible to get water out of those other states under the broad criteria that only required the irrigators to be involved. He is saying that, by making those criteria more complex and more onerous, we will get that water.

That is magical thinking. That is the kind of thinking that a partisan politician trying to please Canberra might come up with, but I cannot believe that a decent water expert in the department would come up with it, and I look forward to hearing from the select committee should it get up in the other place.