Murray-Darling Basin Plan

The Hon. T.A. FRANKS (14:54): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before addressing a question to the Minister for Water and the River Murray on the topic of the integrity of the water market in the Murray-Darling Basin Senate committee hearing in Adelaide this morning.

Leave granted.

The Hon. T.A. FRANKS: This morning, I attended the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee's public hearing on the integrity of the water market in the Murray-Darling Basin at the Adelaide Town Hall. I did so as an interested member of this council and as a member of a party, the Greens, that believes that we do need an inquiry—preferably a judicial inquiry—into the water theft that we saw exposed in the Four Corners program back in July.

The minister also attended that inquiry and sought to present, with his department, which was scheduled as the first witness, but the minister was unable to present to that committee this morning. He was refused the ability to represent South Australians, so my question to the minister is: what did the minister intend to share with that committee and will he now inform the council of what he intended to present this morning?

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation, Minister for Water and the River Murray, Minister for Climate Change) (14:55): I rise to thank the honourable member very much for her very important question. I do need to correct her, however: she said in her explanation that the minister was 'unable' to present; I was actually very able—willing and able—but I was prevented. She gives me an opportunity, I suppose, to reflect on some of the things that I might have said to the Senate committee. Depending on how the chamber wants me to do this, I could read my Senate presentation or I might just seek to table it for members' interest, otherwise we will be here for the rest of the day.

The Hon. D.W. Ridgway: Just table it; we can insert it into Hansard.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: Alright. I seek leave to table the document that I sought to read from.

Leave granted.

The Hon. D.W. Ridgway: Can you now table the rest of your answer?

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: No, I am going to make you suffer through that, the Hon. Mr Ridgway. Again, thank you to the honourable member; I hope she wasn't moved out of the Senate inquiry, as I was. But this morning I stood up for South Australia because—

The Hon. D.W. Ridgway: You got kicked out.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: I suppose you have to stand up if you are being moved out. It is interesting to note that the Senate committee was coming to Adelaide to hear concerns from South Australians. My office contacted the secretariat, I think it was last week, saying that I would like to present, and they said, 'No, we don't have any time. We don't have space for you. We've got your agency down.'

It was interesting to look at the witness list that was on for today. They had a witness, I think, from a council in Queensland appearing today. They also had time put aside for a 45-minute phone call from, I think, the cotton industry, which I don't think is domiciled in South Australia, and they only went to 2 o'clock. So, I don't know how it was possible for them to conclude that, in fact, there was no time.

In any case, I decided that it was such an important issue for our state that I would join my officials in the presentation and I would give the Senate the government's views about the River Murray, why it is so incredibly important to our state, and why it is very important that the Murray-Darling Basin Plan is delivered on time and in full for South Australia. The key point I wanted to make to the Senate committee was—there were a couple, but one of the key points—that South Australia has come to the end of its tether in terms of trusting the other states.

The way the Murray-Darling Basin Plan is laid out—and honourable members will be well versed in this, having listened to me talk about it in this place for a period of time—it is a grand compromise. There are 3,200 gigalitres of water to be returned. That is to be returned in parcels. One of those parcels is called downwater, which was up to 650 gigalitres, and one is upwater, which is 450 gigalitres. It is important to understand that the downwater is not real water. This is not water being put back into the river; this is water being kept out of the river for productive purposes.

Of course, the intricacies of the plan provide that that can only be done provided there are equivalent environmental outcomes for an equivalent amount of water, for which the commonwealth government is investing billions of dollars in the Murray to build infrastructure and to do some of the things that would otherwise be dubbed as real water overflowing banks. In a nutshell, that is what the downwater component is.

The agreement was that we would deal with that and that would be in place by 2019 and then we would move on to the 450 gigalitres of upwater, which is real water that has to be found through efficiency measures in a positive or socio-economically beneficial way—a neutral or beneficial way—and that is the 450 gigalitres of real water being put back into the river to sustain it.

What has come to light over many months—indeed more than that, but certainly since the Four Corners program aired on the ABC earlier this year—is that we believe there is a desire by many on the basin, particularly in the Eastern States, not to deliver the full plan. We believe there is an ulterior plan that is, in fact, 'We will duchess this along a little bit, we will keep South Australia on tenterhooks saying yes we are all going to be delivering this plan, and get South Australia to sign up to the downwater, the not real water'—the water that is returned in environmental equivalents—'and then not go and deliver the extra 450 gigalitres of water,' which is what got South Australia over the line.

We don't like taking water out of the river when the river needs that water to sustain itself for the long-term future. The reason we agreed to the downwater was only because of the 450 gigalitres of upwater that therefore would provide real water to be put back into the river for the benefits of the river's environment and sustainability. Our very real concern, coming out of the Four Corners program and the almost weekly and monthly exposure in the national media of other allegations about wrongdoing and malfeasance, theft, potential corruption in the Public Service at a very high level—and we do not know how far that extends, whether it extends into government, or not, in New South Wales.

That was the message I was taking to the Senate committee, which was not heard today. They accepted to take my statement in confidence. I am not sure it will ever see the light of day, through the Senate process, although a number of senators, I must say, were very keen to hear from me but they were overruled. My message to the Senate is: please do not support and allow the downwater component, the 605 gigalitres as it is at the moment, to be endorsed through the Senate process. Hold it up until we can see the colour of the money from the Eastern States in terms of their dealing with constraints measures; that is, the amount of water that comes down the river, particularly through areas such as the Barmah Choke, which regulates the total amount of water that can come into the system. Hold it up until we can see them working, really working, on addressing the constraints issues, which they promised to do as part of their agreement.

We want to see a genuine attempt to find that 450 gigalitres of downwater. Don't forget, I have reminded this place before: South Australia is the only state to have embarked on a trial project, a pilot project, to find some of that 450 gigalitres of water for the upwater. We have: the other states have not. It was vitally important that that message was taken to the Senate. But the lack of trust now in the basin states is such that we believe that the commonwealth government needs to step in and take control again.

Unfortunately for us, unfortunately for the whole country in many respects, the national government abolished the National Water Commission, whose job I believe it would have been to oversight the states and the implementation of the plan, to be the cop on the beat, if you like, to make sure that we were doing the right things—

An honourable member interjecting:

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: Yes indeed, a very tough cop on the beat—but that was abolished and its functions were carved up and scattered to the four winds of the bureaucracy in the commonwealth, and that is part of the reason, I believe, why we are in the state we are at the moment. So, that was my first message.

My second message was essentially this: there is a fundamental flaw in policy at the commonwealth level and also in New South Wales in having the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Water answering to the same minister. When you have these two important policy groups in a bureaucracy, not having the independence to give ministers separate advice, you run the very real risk of the bigger, the uglier, the richer, the more powerful agency overriding the agency that is standing up for the river.

So, when you have agriculture in this country, which is a multibillion-dollar enterprise, with all the power that comes with that—bureaucratic power, financial power, political power—and when you have that pushing up against the water policy unit, which is saying, 'But we have to do something to restrict the amount of water that is being taken out of the river in consumptive use because there is not enough water in the river to sustain it, particularly in times of drought,' then you have a real problem.

In New South Wales we have the situation where we have a National Party MP in charge of agriculture and water policy. I tender to the chamber my view that some of the problems that New South Wales is in are precisely because of that policy distribution of both those agencies reporting to one minister. We can see from the evidence that is on the public record already, when that one minister had to get something approved by the environment minister in relation to a decision he was making, she said no.

The environment minister had separate advice, where she was involved in a small part of the project, and she considered the advice and said, 'No, I'm not agreeing to this.' That's what should happen. At the same time, at the commonwealth level, we had—until New Zealand claimed him—a National Party MP in charge of agriculture and water policy. I will contend that is the reason why we have seen no progress on the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, led by the national government under Barnaby Joyce.

Fortunately, we have a little period of time when water policy is now back in the hands of Malcolm Turnbull, where it once was. As Prime Minister, he has taken on these portfolios. So, my plea to the federal government, my plea to the Prime Minister, is take this opportunity to whack a few heads together to get this Murray-Darling Basin Plan back on track and deliver what was promised to South Australia. The 450 gigs of upwater is a crucial part of the plan and, quite frankly, I have instructed my agency officials not to sign-off on the SDL component until such time as we can feel satisfied that the plan will be delivered on time and in full.

I am very pleased that the honourable member asked me this question. It won't surprise her to know that I had a prepared question in place for my colleagues, who might have been contemplating asking a similar question. I will now ask them to go to question number two for me.