"We know the next drought is just around the corner. The threats to the health of our iconic rivers and the people, plants and animals that rely on them are increasing. It's more critical than ever that our rivers are managed in the interests of nature as well as in the interests of communities and industries."

Address to the House of Representatives, Bills - Water Amendment (Restoring Our Rivers) Bill 2023

Wednesday 13 September 2023

I rise to speak in favour of the Water Amendment (Restoring Our Rivers) Bill 2023. I do wonder if the member for Sturt was as outraged at the failings of the previous government as he is at this government for fixing the size of those failings. As a member of parliament whose electorate falls directly into the Murray-Darling Basin, it's important for me to see a plan that allows the state and territory governments more time, options and funding to deliver water back into the basin to ensure a healthy and sustainable basin for the future.

This government is working to ensure that we pass on Australia's environment, land, sea and rivers to future generations in better health. That's our commitment. We're acting to protect, repair and manage nature so it grows stronger. This includes managing the water resources of our most productive region, the Murray-Darling Basin to withstand longer, deeper droughts, more frequent floods and bushfires and everything else climate change will throw our way. Irrigated agriculture in the basin produces about 15 per cent of Australia's food and fibre, contributing $8.6 billion to our economy every year. The basin is valued for its productivity and also for its beauty. Tourism is worth $11 billion per year. It's home to 2.3 million Australians, and more than three million people drink its water each and every day. It's home to 16 internationally significant wetlands, 35 endangered species and 120 different species of water birds. The Murrumbidgee River, which runs through my electorate of Bean and effectively drains most of the Australian Capital Territory, is the third-longest river in Australia. Canberra is the largest population catchment that resides in the Murray-Darling Basin.

The Murrumbidgee River starts in the Australian Alps and completes its journey on the semi-arid riverine plains. The river catchment, located in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory, is diverse and complex. Not only is a large population supported by water from this system but the Murrumbidgee's largest distributary, the Tumut River, houses part of the Snowy Mountains hydroelectric scheme. The Murrumbidgee River is an important water source for many wetlands, including the Tuckerbil swamp near Leeton and 16 wetlands listed as nationally significant in the Directory of Important Wetlands. The mountains at the eastern end of the Murrumbidgee catchment are the country of the Ngunnawal and Ngarigo nations. The Kambah Pool on the Murrumbidgee is frequented by Canberrans, offering a reprieve from the heat and an opportunity for Canberrans to enjoy the tranquillity of the Murrumbidgee River and surrounding Red Rocks Gorge. I welcome any members of this House who might like to go for a hike along the Murrumbidgee corridor with me on any weekends that they might spend in this state, which would be time well spent. There would be genuine appreciation for the beauty and significance of the Murrumbidgee.

It's therefore important for me and my constituents that the long-term management of the basin is secured and sustainable. The basin plan in 2012 was built on cooperative work to save rivers pushed to the brink in the Millennium Drought. It came from a period of environmental catastrophe, and it's designed to avoid another environmental catastrophe. Basin governments, including the Australian government, signed on to the plan—promise to the Australian people that we would work as one to protect what was valuable. The plan was developed to manage the basin as a whole connected system, including setting sustainable water extraction limits.

It should be fully implemented by June next year, but that's not going to happen. Sir Angus Houston, Chair of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, has provided advice that unequivocally finds that full implementation of the basin plan will not be possible by 30 June 2024. Sir Angus's assessment was:

While much has been achieved in the decade of Basin Plan implementation, the Authority remains deeply concerned about key aspects of the Plans delivery.

I have great respect for the scientists, the engineers and the program officers of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, having represented them for the best part of a decade before coming to this place. But the implementation of the plan is at a critical juncture. It's important that governments act to overcome challenges inhibiting the full delivery of the plan as quickly as possible.

That's why this government ran a series of consultations in May and June this year to ask people for their ideas about how to best reach the plan's water recovery targets. We received 131 submissions from groups and individuals right across the basin. Overwhelmingly, those submissions supported the plan. In these submissions, we heard calls for greater flexibility in achieving water recovery targets, calls to extend time frames and calls for investment in measures that deliver tangible environmental outcomes. These insights informed the agreement struck between basin jurisdictions last month to get the plan back on track.

Basin water ministers worked hard and in good faith in recent months on the package of measures. We agreed the need for more time, more money, more options and more accountability. We know the next drought is just around the corner. The threats to the health of our iconic rivers and the people, plants and animals that rely on them are increasing. It's more critical than ever that our rivers are managed in the interests of nature as well as in the interests of communities and industries.

If we are to pass the Murray-Darling on to future generations in better health, we must finish what we started. The Water Amendment (Restoring Our Rivers) Bill 2023 makes sensible and practical amendments to the Water Act 2007 and consequential amendments to the Basin Plan 2012 so we can get on with the job and finish what we started. We're extending Basin Plan time lines to achieve water recovery targets and time lines for the states to deliver water infrastructure projects that keep more water in productive use. We're removing overly restrictive rules so we can recover the 450 gigalitres of water for enhanced environmental outcomes, and we're getting rid of the cap on voluntary water purchases. These changes are necessary to deliver on the agreement struck between Murray-Darling Basin water ministers to provide long asked-for certainty to basin stakeholders.

We are also introducing a suite of water market reforms that will bring integrity and transparency into the system. Basin water markets have grown in value and complexity, outstripping the current rules in place to manage them. These reforms mean those buying and selling water can have confidence that the market is operating fairly, everyone is subject to the same rules and everyone has access to the same information at the same time.

The third part of this bill involves substantial and overdue reform to Australia's water market. Water markets are an important part of our agricultural system, but as things currently stand they lack integrity and transparency. There are no laws against market manipulation. The insider trading prohibition is too narrow, and the legal requirement to maintain proper records is too weak. As a result, there has been widespread mistrust in the system across regional Australia. Two years ago, the ACCC examined this market in some depth and found that its rules were inadequate and needed to be reformed. There's widespread consensus across government, across the farming sector and across most of this parliament, I believe, that we need to improve this regulation, and that's what this legislation will do.

The bill introduces a framework to create an enforceable mandatory code for water market intermediaries. It introduces civil penalties for market manipulation and doubles the penalty for insider trading. It will allow the ACCC, as the code and conduct regulator, to monitor water prices and investigate misconduct allegations. This will bring water markets in line with the standards in other markets. These changes will penalise bad behaviour, and they will also increase public transparency. There will be new obligations on basin states and territory governments, irrigation infrastructure operators, and water exchanges to generate, record, collect and report water market information. The Bureau of Meteorology would collate this information from across the basin and make it publicly available via a water data hub, with live market updates on a new water markets website. The Inspector-General of Water Compliance will have new powers to monitor and enforce the new data reporting obligations. These changes will help secure Australia's water future through the next dry stretch and beyond.

The original deadlines were set for June 2024, and in the early years we were well on track to meet those deadlines. But the last government spent a decade sabotaging that plan. They tied up projects in impossible rules so they couldn't deliver water savings. They blocked water recovery programs. They tried to cut the final recovery targets to keep them below scientific recommendations. As a result, progress slowed to a dribble under the previous government. Because of this, it is now impossible to deliver on the original time line. In nine years, those opposite delivered an abysmal two gigalitres of that 450, which put them on track, as the minister said earlier in the House today, to complete the plan sometime around the year 4000. We've delivered more in nine months than those opposite did in nine years, and now we've delivered or contracted 26 gigalitres in total already.

Those opposite were told it wasn't working again and again. They were told that in the first Water for the Environment Special Account report. They were told that in the second account report, which they kept secret before the last election. They knew the program had stalled completely, but for nine years they kept the handbrake on water recovery. What this legislation does is remove that handbrake so that we can finally deliver that water. That means giving the account more flexibility, in line with the Water Act's objectives.

With these changes, we are opening up the full suite of water recovery options. We'll be able to invest in on-farm water infrastructure, in land and water purchases and in other innovative water recovery mechanisms where it's sensible to do so. This is critical nation-building work, and when a community is affected by change, we will never leave them behind. We'll provide significant transitional assistance if these voluntary water purchases have secondary impacts on communities.

Our government has worked with states and territories, with farmers and irrigators, with scientists and experts, with environmentalists and with First Nations groups. This bill offers more time, more options, more money and more accountability. It delivers more water for the environment, more certainty for farmers and industry, more financial support for affected communities, more protection for native plants and animals and more hope for Australia's most important river system.

We can never forget why Australian governments designed the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in the first place. With the consequences of climate change becoming more rampant, we on this side of the House know that the next drought is just around the corner. Our country is facing an environmental emergency. If we don't act now to preserve the Murray-Darling, our basin towns will be unprepared for drought, our native animals will face the threat of extinction, our river ecosystems will risk environmental collapse and our food and fibre production will be insecure and unsustainable. A healthy basin means healthy communities. It means a river that families can enjoy, that promotes recreation and tourism and, most importantly, that provides clean drinking water to three million Australians every day. This is an important moment for basin communities and for any Australian who cares about the health of our environment. That's why we have a Murray-Darling Basin Plan in this country—to help us through the dry years, to make sure that there's enough water flowing through the river system at its lowest moments to make it to the next rain.

Our government made a commitment to deliver the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in full, and that's exactly what we are doing. I thank the minister for the work that she has done on this legislation. I thank the Murray-Darling Basin Authority for the extraordinary work that they have done over the last 10 to 20 years, but particularly in the last decade in difficult circumstances. I commend this bill to the House.